Doyle, I would place very little reliance on the entries for Union and Confederate Navy vessels, as included in series 2, volume 1 of the ORN. Just a cursory glance at some of these entries, and with my limited knowledge (although I am very interested in the subject) of the Naval vessels, I have already found numerous errors and omissions relating to some of these entries. These errors and omissions are included for both Navies, but even more so for the Confederate Navy entries, obviously because the compilers did not have access to many of the records that were destroyed.
Just to mention a few of these errors and omissions:
USS Harvest Moon is incorrectly shown as sinking on May 1, 1865, when it was in fact March 1, 1865.
USS Congress and USS Cumberland are shown as having been sunk in action with the MERRIMACK, when in fact it should be the CSS VIRGINIA. I know that technically this can be construed as correct anyway, but it shows that the compilers of the information were basing their knowledge on the subject on scattered and wild information.
The boiler explosion on the USS Chenango, which was a major event in the vessel's history, is entirely omitted, as is the attempted attack upon the USS New Ironsides.
Those are only some of the errors and omissions I managed to locate for just the Union Navy entries. These errors and omissions are even more so for the Confederate Navy entries. Here are some of the most glaring ones:
CSS Caleb Cushing is shown as being captured on April 18, 1863, but the actual date was June 27, 1863. I should know especially about this, as I am quite heavily involved in research on this particular aspect of the Clarence-Tacony-Archer expedition of lieutenant Charles W. Read and his small band from the CSS Florida.
The privateer Jefferson Davis was wrecked in a gale off the coast of Florida, but this is entirely omitted from the entry for that vessel, as is the well known boiler explosion on the CSS Chattahoochee.
The CSS Hunley is stated to have been sunk with the USS Housatonic, but we all know, from recent developments, that she managed to get away, and was headed home when she somehow sank, drowning all on board. Once again this is purely a technical matter, as the assumption about her loss, until fairly recently, was that she had gone down when she struck the Housatonic. However, this proves that the compilers had based their entries on assumptions, and not on official documentary proof.
But the most glaring errors that I located, was that of the several vessels on the James River, that were destroyed at the evacuation of Richmond. We all know that the Confederates had evacuated the city during April 2-3, 1865, and early that morning (April 3), Union forces had already started entering the city. I believe that President Lincoln visited the city the next day. Yet the several entries for the Confederate vessels that were destroyed on the James River, show them as being destroyed on the 4th of April. This is clearly incorrect, and it is even more incorrect for one of these vessels, the CSS Beaufort, which is shown (in the ORN entry) as also having been blown up. Yet there are dispatches in ORN 1, 12, 101, which show that she was in fact captured intact by the Union forces on the river. The strange thing about this is that the other vessel that was captured with her, the CSS Texas, and is stated so in the same sentence of that dispatch, is shown in the entry in series 2, volume 1, as correctly being captured. So how could the compilers have got it so wrong? There are several other errors and omissions that I found, but which are too numerous to mention here. And these are only the errors that I know off, from my limited knowledge of the subject. I'm sure that there are many more to be found, if I did a thorough search. So I would advise complete caution when checking these entries, and to cross check with other more valid sources.