Very curious that Balston served on the 'CS Ship Clifton.' The USS Clifton was one of the Union gunboats sunk during the Battle of Sabine Pass. As a child, my Dad once took me down to the jetty at Sabine Pass where there was some rusted metal wreckage (this was before WWII) that were the remains of the USS Clifton's boiler/engine. As late as the middle 1950s, the 'rocking arm' of the Clifton was part of a WBTS monument in downtown Beaumont, near the Neches River.

Did the Confederate Navy also have a CS Clifton...possibly named in a bit of cynical humor for the sunken Union ship?