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CSS Lark

Confederate paddle steamer and blockade runner during the American Civil War

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 11, 2025
Entity authorityQ5014309
Source-derived summary

The Lark was a paddle steamer employed by the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. She was the last blockade runner to successfully escape from a Southern port before the Union blockade completely closed off this vital source of supplies.

Lark was designed and built by John Laird & Sons. The ship made four successful round trips through the blockade between Galveston, Texas, and Havana, Cuba. In April 1865, she ran aground near the entrance to Galveston harbor. Two launches dispatched from the Union blockading squadron attacked the Lark, which managed to fend off the assault with help from Confederate ground forces. On May 24, she dashed into Galveston again and managed to slip through the blockade back out to open sea, the last Confederate blockade runner to do so.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “CSS Lark” as confederate paddle steamer and blockade runner during the American Civil War. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Lark, Confederate and paddle.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1865—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Lark, Confederate and paddle providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “CSS Lark”, the useful work is to connect “confederate paddle steamer and blockade runner during the American Civil War” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 11, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5014309. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1865.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “CSS Lark”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow CSS Lark primary sources, CSS Lark archive and Lark research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “CSS Lark”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from CSS Lark” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.