Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History
Benson Lossing, Ed.

---

Wilkinson, John 1821-

Naval officer; born in Norfolk, Va., Nov. 6, 1821; joined the navy in 1837; served on the Portsmouth in 1845-46; promoted master in June, 1850, and lieutenant in the following November. He resigned from the National service in 1861 and joined the Confederate navy as a lieutenant; was executive officer of the ram Louisiana, which was captured by Farragut in the spring of 1862, when New Orleans fell; was exchanged in the following August and appointed an agent to buy and load a vessel with war materials in England. He purchased the Giraffe, with which he ran the blockade at Wilmington, N. C. In 1864 he commanded the Chickamauga, with which he destroyed numerous merchant vessels, and in the following year commanded the blockade runner Chameleon, in which he sailed to Liverpool, where she was seized by the United States governemnt after the war. Wilkinson published The narrative of a blockade runner.