USS Pontoosuc
Union Navy vessal of the American Civil War
USS Pontoosuc was a Union Navy vessel in the American Civil War. A side wheel gunboat, Pontoosuc was built under contract with G. W. Lawrence and the Portland Company, Portland, Maine, and was named for Pontoosuc, Illinois, on the Mississippi River. She was commissioned at Portland on 10 May 1864 with Lieutenant Commander George A. Stevens in command.
Service history
Ordered to the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron on 9 June 1864, she soon returned north and on 12 August departed New York in pursuit of the Confederate raider CSS Tallahassee. Arriving at Halifax soon after 0600 on 20 August, she discovered her quarry had sailed. Underway immediately, Pontoosuc continued her search to the north among the fishing fleets in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Tallahassee, however, had turned south en route back to Wilmington, North Carolina.
Pontoosuc returned to New York on 30 August 1864 and took up escort duties. By mid-December, she had resumed blockade duties, off Wilmington. On 24 and 25 December she participated in the assault on Fort Fisher, returning to shell the Fort again in the successful mid-January 1865 attack.
The public source identifies “USS Pontoosuc” as union Navy vessal of the American Civil War. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Pontoosuc, Union and Navy.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7873016. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1864 and 1865.
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This entry incorporates text from “USS Pontoosuc” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.