USS Rescue (1861)

Rescue joined the flotilla prior to mid-September and took up station near Alexandria, Virginia. By the 18th, she had shifted to the Mathias Point-Popes Creek area where she seized the schooner Harford and her cargo of wheat and tobacco.

On 11 October, the gunboat, with USS Resolute and USS Union, captured and burned the schooner Martha Washington which had been awaiting Confederate troops in Quantico (Dumfries) Creek. Ten days later, she returned to Mathias Point to engage enemy batteries there.

A week of courier duty followed; and, on the 28th, she was detached from the Potomac Flotilla and ordered to the Rappahannock River for duty in the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron.

On 6 November she captured and burned the schooner Ada at Corrotman Creek and, on the 8th, seized the ammunition storage ship Urbana. At midmonth she was ordered to Hampton Roads, Virginia, where she assumed tug and patrol duties which took her into 1862. In October 1862 she moved up to Washington, D.C. for repairs, after which she got underway for Port Royal, South Carolina, and duty in Samuel Francis Du Pont's squadron, then blockading Charleston, South Carolina.

Rescue arrived at Port Royal early in November. Through the summer of 1863, she performed tug and patrol duties in the anchorage area and in September shifted to Charleston. In October she returned to Port Royal to continue tug and patrol duties there until June 1864 when she was ordered to Baltimore, Maryland, for repairs.

On 2 September, she departed Baltimore and shortly thereafter resumed duty with the Potomac Flotilla. Stationed in the St. Mary's area, Rescue remained in the Potomac Flotilla through the end of the Civil War.

She then proceeded to Washington, D.C., where for the next 24 years she served as a district craft, first as a tug, then as a fireboat. Declared unserviceable in 1889, she was condemned and sold on 25 March 1891.

 This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entry can be found here.