USS Vanderbilt
USS Vanderbilt in port during the Civil War
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| History | |
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  United States
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| Name: | USS Vanderbilt |
| Namesake: | Cornelius Vanderbilt |
| Builder: | J. Simonson |
| Cost: | $800,000 |
| Laid down: | 1856 |
| Launched: | 1857 at Greenpoint, New York |
| Acquired: | 24 March 1862 |
| Commissioned: | September 1862 |
| Decommissioned: | 30 June 1866 |
| In service: | 13 October 1866 |
| Out of service: | 24 May 1867 |
| Struck: | 1873 (est.) |
| Fate: |
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| General characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 3,360 tons |
| Length: | 331 ft (101 m) |
| Beam: | 47 ft 6 in (14.48 m) |
| Draught: | 19 ft (5.8 m) |
| Installed power: | Twin vertical beam steam engines |
| Propulsion: | Sidewheel |
| Speed: | 14 knots |
| Complement: | not known |
| Armament: |
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USS Vanderbilt (1862) was a heavy (3,360-ton) passenger steamship obtained by the Union Navy during the second year of the American Civil War and utilized as a cruiser.
Vanderbilt—with her high speed of 14 knots—was outfitted with a large battery of heavy guns and sent out on the high seas in a futile search for commerce raiders of the Confederate States of America which were inflicting serious damage to Union commercial shipping. Later she served as part of the Union blockade of the Confederacy, and, post war, she had the honor of transporting the Queen of Hawaii from San Francisco, California, to Hawaii.
Vanderbilt—originally a transatlantic passenger and mail steamer—was built by Jeremiah Simonson of Greenpoint, Long Island, New York, in 1856 and 1857; chartered by the Union Army shortly after the start of the Civil War in April 1861; offered to the Army by her owner, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, in early 1862; and transferred to the Navy on 24 March.
Popularly known as "Vanderbilt's Yacht", the former flagship of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt's North Atlantic Mail Steamship Line began her military career in Hampton Roads, Virginia, intended for use as a ram against the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia. Commodore Vanderbilt, himself, suggested filling the bow of the vessel with concrete and reinforcing it with iron plating.
This was not done, however, and Vanderbilt was turned over to the Union Navy on 24 March and fitted with a heavy battery of 15 guns at the New York Navy Yard during the summer of 1862. She left New York on 10 November and—after conducting a brief search for CSS Alabama, the most destructive Confederate commerce raider of the entire war—put into Hampton Roads, Virginia, on 17 January 1863.
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