Union Ships
At the start of the Civil War, the Union had only about forty ships that were fit for active duty, and many of them were scattered all over the world. By the end of the war in 1865, the Union had over 600 ships on active duty, the largest navy in the world at the time.
In particular this list includes ships present during naval adventures of Gavin MacKenzie, the officer character in my Civil War novels.
- The unsuccessful expedition to relieve Fort Sumter; the Civil War begins
- USS Pawnee – Gavin MacKenzie’s first ship in The Carolinas
- USS Pocahontas
- USRC Harriet Lane
- SS Baltic
- Norfolk (Gosport) Navy Yard Expedition; destruction of the Navy Yard and ships to prevent them falling into the hands of the Confederates
- USS Pawnee
- USS Cumberland
- USS Plymouth
- USS Germantown
- USS Dolphin
- USS Merrimack – raised and converted into the ironclad CSS Virginia
- USS Keystone State
- USS Pennsylvania – the biggest sailing warship built by the United States; 120 guns; used as a receiving ship
- USS Delaware (1820)
- USS United States
- USS Yankee
- Battle of Aquia Creek; shelling a Confederate shore facility
- Hatteras Inlet Expedition; capture of the inlet, the entrance into Pamlico Sound
- Roanoke Island Expedition: Burnside’s capture of the important island
- USS Delaware (1861) – Gavin MacKenzie’s second ship in The Carolinas
- USS Southfield
- USS Underwriter
- USS Hunchback
- USS Commodore Perry
- USS Hetzel
- USS Picket
- USS Philadelphia
- USS Valley City
- USS Whitehead
- USS Morse
- USS Ceres
- USS Louisiana
- Winton, North Carolina Expedition
- USS Delaware – Gavin MacKenzie’s first ship in Duel at Hampton Roads
- USS Commodore Perry
- USS Hunchback
- USS Louisiana
- USS Morse
- USS Whitehead
- USS John L. Lockwood
- USS Commodore Barney
- At Elizabeth City, North Carolina prisoner paroling
- USS S. R. Spaulding
- USS New York
- In Hampton Roads, the Virginia (Merrimack)/Monitor Battle
- USS Dragon
- USS Roanoke
- USS Minnesota
- USS Cumberland – Gavin MacKenzie’s second ship in Duel at Hampton Roads; destroyed by the CSS Virginia
- USS Congress – destroyed by the CSS Virginia
- USS St. Lawrence
- USS Monitor – Gavin MacKenzie’s third ship in Duel at Hampton Roads
- USS Monitor Center, Mariners’ Museum
- Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, NOAA
- River Gunboats
- USS Cairo Photo Album, CivilWarAlbum.com; the Cairo was sunk by a Confederate “torpedo”
- USS St. Louis
- USS Pittsburg
- USS Carondelet
- USS Tyler
- USS Essex
- USS Eastport
- USS Benton
- USS Conestoga
- USS Lafayette
- USS Choctaw
- USS Lexington
- USS Marmora
- USS Rattler
- USS Signal
- USS Peosta
- USS Queen City
- USS Iosco
- USS Vindicator
- Monitors – The USS Monitor gave its name to an entirely new class of low-freeboard, turreted ironclad warships.
- Other ships
- USS Constellation Museum, Historic Ships of Baltimore
- USS Harvest Moon Home Page, Walter Smith; flagship of South Atlantic Blockading Squadron
- USS Powhatan
- USS Potomac
- USS Kearsarge – sank the CSS Alabama in a dramatic one-on-one ship engagement
- USS Vincennes
- USS Housatonic – first warship to be sunk by an enemy (Confederate) submarine
- USS New Ironsides
- USS Galena
- USS Water Witch
- USS Jacob Bell
- USS Naugatuck
- USS Norwich
- USS Rhode Island – towed the USS Monitor on the night the ironclad sank in a storm
- USS Santiago de Cuba
- USS Sciota
- USS Miami
- USS Paul Jones
- USS Port Royal
- USS Fort Jackson
- USS Fuschia
- USS Tallapoosa
- USS Quaker City
- USS San Jacinto
- USS Brooklyn
- USS Hartford – flagship of David G. Farragut
- USS Iroquois
- USS Richmond
- USS Vanderbilt
- USS Wampanoag
- USS Intelligent Whale – an experimental Union submarine
