The Raven was a 42-gun frigate under the command of Captain Meade, docked in Dubrovnik, Croatia that was being used primarily as a passenger vessel to transport people and cargo.

The Raven was purchased by Count Vlad Dracula from the owner for ten thousand Drachmas – three times the ship’s actual worth – in gold. The count had Meade and his crew load his personal possessions aboard and they set sail immediately for America.

Against the protests of the captain that the ship could not make such a voyage at that time due largely to the chill winter weather and the persistent storms that raged across the Atlantic Ocean, Dracula commanded it set sail, and as it did, the storms seemed to part, and the fog banks lifted at the ship’s approach.

Ever a superstitious lot, the crew began to speculate that the count was more than he appeared and believed that he was somehow in league with Lucifer himself.

As the crew became more suspicious, they began to “disappear” one by one; food to slake the vampire lord’s thirst. By the time the ship reached American waters, the American Civil War was in its second year, and northern warships were blocking entry by any vessels into southern territories. Dracula used his mastery of the elements to mask its approach with a thick fog, allowing the Raven to easily elude the Union blockade and port safely in Savannah, Georgia.

Upon his arrival to the city, Dracula encountered Nathan Beauregard, a leading merchant in the area, and a confederate sympathizer. He had the Raven pressed into service to aide the confederacy’s cause, which annoyed the count, who only allowed it to happen as he no longer had need of the ship.

What happened to the Raven as it switched ownership from Dracula to Beauregard is unknown. What is known, however, is that the angry vampire killed the merchant in his home moments before taking his wife as one of his vampiric thralls.