The Powhatan, The Pocahontas, The Pawnee, The Harriet Lane, The Yankee, and even the Thomas Freeborn has a big cannon on it. The "Baltic" was being used as a troop carrier and had troops and munitions on it.
Let me show you a picture of some of these "supply" ships.
The Powhatan and the Pocahontas were even more formidable.
Do those look like "Supply" ships?
By today’s standards, hell yes.
By their concurrent standards, maybe. The determination of who started a fight is ... who started the fight... by firing first.
The south fired first. They coulda sent out some kind of surrender monkey whiteflag shipe to “negotiate”. And so could have the North. Failure on both sides.
“The Yankee, and even the Thomas Freeborn has a big cannon on it.”
You have made this assertion many times over the years.
Yet you have never been able to prove the contention that the civilian owned contract steam tugs were armed with cannon. You offered up a photo taken in 1863 of Yankee with a 32 pounder on her deck. That was a long time after Sumter. Once the tugs were purchased by the U.S. Navy, they were armed. But that was after the Fort Sumter mission ended.