William Edward Bloomer, son of John Wagoner and Catherine Eaton, was a native of Baltimore, Maryland and is believed to have been born about 1840. In 1850 he is shown on records living with his parents, brothers Frederick, Anderson, John and a sister Mary in Baltimore. Prior to his enlistment in the US Navy in 1861 Bloomer was employed as an office boy and later as a civil engineer; still living in Baltimore. He enrolled aboard the receiving ship “Allegheny” at Baltimore, Maryland as a Landsman, according to his pension records, on May 16, 1861. Later while serving aboard the USS “Wissahickon” on the Mississippi River, Bloomer contracted dysentery and malarial fever, in July 1862, and was sent to the U.S. Naval Hospital at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where he was discharged; on September 6, 1862. He had been confined to bed with chronic dysentery for fourteen days in late August, 1862, and medical care and treatment for Bloomer continued from September 20, 1862 until the end of November, 1863; months after his discharge from military service.  

 The USS Wissahickon was a propeller-driven, 700 ton capacity steamship but brigantine rigged, to save coal when at sea. Due to a scarcity of guns, she was equipped with one gun amidships, capable of firing both to port and starboard. The USS “Wissahickon” was built at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and commissioned in November 1861. The USS Wissahickon initially served in the Gulf of Mexico and on the Mississippi River, where on April 24, 1862, while accompanying other Federal gunboats, the USS “Wissahickon” made her way past two Confederate forts to ascend the Mississippi, and assisted in capturing the city of New Orleans.

Another engagement included bombarding Grand Gulf, Mississippi on June 9th and 10th. and in July the “Wissahickon” came up against the CSS Iron-clad “Arkansas”. The C.S.S. “Arkansas” was constructed at Memphis, Tennessee during the winter of 1861-62 and in April 1862 the “Arkansas” was moved to the Yazoo River in Mississippi, to prevent its capture when Memphis fell to the Federal Navy. On July 15th a Union fleet, including the USS “Wissahickon”, that had been bloodied the morning before, attempted to join up with other Union ships and sink the CSS “Arkansas; above Vicksburg. Before the “Arkansas” could sally forth, she was struck in the engines by a passing shot, causing considerable damage. The Vicksburg batteries were able to force the Union vessels away from the Arkansas, but were unable to stop them from linking up below Vicksburg. The “Arkansas” lay tied up at Vicksburg the following week, making repairs, as the Union fleet and the USS “Wissahickon” sailed on.

The USS “Wissahickon” saw continuous use until the war's end. It participated in the attack on Fort Wagner in July 1863 and, in September of that same year, was engaged in the ill-fated assault on Fort Sumter. Her crew suffered several casualties with one man, seaman Garrett, killed in action. Another, Henry Shutes, shown in Navy records as Captain of Forecastle, won the Medal of Honour. The USS “Wissahickon” was decommissioned in July 1865 and the warship was sold for commercial use. Re-christened Adele, she endured yet another 20 years.

During the period he was recovering from sickness he incurred while in service, Bloomer met Annie W. White, and eventually married her on August 17, 1863 at the English Evangelical Lutheran Church, at Baltimore, Maryland. Until late 1863 Bloomer remained unable to work; finally landing a job as a sutler's clerk in Washington, D.C.; where he remained until March 1864, then accepting employment in the same position in and around Annapolis until February 1865.   Bloomer resided in several eastern US cities and towns and was employed in various pursuits, from a railroad employee, bookkeeper and salesman in Baltimore, Maryland, to a simple clerk in Washington, DC and Annapolis, Maryland to a photographer in  Goldsboro and Wilson, North Carolina, from February 1865 until April 1866, and then at Glen Rock, Pennsylvania, afterwards returning to Baltimore.  He was forced to sell his business in Glen Rock in 1867 due to his ever-failing health problems.

In Baltimore he again recuperated and in late 1867 found employment as a brakeman with the North Carolina Railway until    mid 1869 when he again fell to ill to continue. Other positions of employment came his way, between reoccurring periods of sickness, that included working as a travelling salesman until late 1870, as a book keeper for sixteen months in 1871 – 1872, as a railway conductor from January until September 1873, and then as a railway ticket agent until 1880.

The mid-1880's, however, found Bloomer in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia; without his wife. It was there, while working as an importer, that he married Hannie Josephine Carden in 1893, at Paddington, Sydney, New South Wales. Having been awarded a very modest pension, as were most American veterans, of $4 a month, his was increased to $8 a month in 1886 due to increased disabilities. After suffering from “phthisis pulmonalis”, or tuberculosis, for some three years, William Edward Bloomer passed away on June l8, 1896, being laid to rest at the Rookwood Cemetery in Sydney, New South Wales. Cemetery officials relate he lay in an unmarked grave until 1990, when the American Veterans Administration provided a marble headstone, which was erected on his gravesite.

Birth, Death and Marriage Records, New South Wales, Australia

Department of the Navy, Naval Historic Center, Washington, D.C.

Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Volumes I-VIII

Friends of the Wissahickon, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, Maryland

Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies, Series I

Rookwood Cemetery, Sydney, New South Wales

Simply Australia

United States Census Records, Baltimore, Maryland. 1860 - 1880

“USS Wissahickon”, Koey Rivinus

Warships of the Civil War Navies, Paul H. Silverstone

William Edward Bloomer Pension file