The Gordon was a Confederate privateer. She had been a packet running on the Charleston—Fernandina line, and was a fast side-wheel steamer of 519 tons. She carried fifty men and mounted three very fair pieces of ordnance. Her commander, Captain Thomas J. Lockwood, at the commencement of the war the master of a sister ship, the Carolina, likewise belonging to the Florida Steam Packet Company, had been handed his commission on July 15, 1861.