page_title: USS Agamenticus
section_title: Construction and career
hierarchical_section_title: USS Agamenticus / Construction and career
caption_attribution_description: English: Bow view of the Miantonomoh-class monitor USS Agamenticus, renamed Terror in 1869, while laid up
context_page_description: USS Agamenticus was one of four Miantonomoh-class monitors built for the United States Navy during the American Civil War. Commissioned as the war was ending in May 1865, the ironclad saw no combat and was decommissioned in September and placed in reserve. The ship was reactivated in 1870, having been renamed Terror the previous year, and was assigned to the North Atlantic Fleet where she served in the Caribbean Sea. The monitor was decommissioned again in 1872 and was sold for scrap two years later. The Navy Department evaded the Congressional refusal to order new ships by claiming that the Civil War-era ship was being repaired while building a new monitor of the same name.
context_section_description: Agamenticus was named after Mount Agamenticus in York County, Maine.
  The monitor was laid down in 1862 at the Portsmouth Navy Yard in Kittery, Maine and launched on 19 March 1863. To speed her construction, her hull was built from green wood. While still building in early 1864, she was modified with the addition of a turret-roof-height "hurricane deck" that stretched between the two turrets and around the funnel and main ventilator to improve her navigational facilities. Agamenticus was commissioned on 5 May 1865 and was prepared to fight the Confederate ironclad CSS Stonewall that was at sea somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean at that time. Stonewall went elsewhere and the monitor operated off the northeastern coast of the United States until she was decommissioned at the Boston Navy Yard on 30 September. Agamenticus remained laid up for nearly five years and was renamed Terror on 15 June 1869.
  Before she was formally recommissioned on 27 May 1870, the ship was tasked in January to join a small group of ships under the command of Admiral David Farragut that escorted the British ironclad HMS Monarch to Portland, Maine, as it ferried the body of the philanthropist George Peabody from London to his final resting place. Terror was assigned to the North Atlantic Fleet when she was reactivated. At that time it mostly operated in the Caribbean Sea, protecting American citizens and interests during the Ten Years' War in Spanish Cuba and unrest in the West Indies.
  The monitor was relieved of her assignment at Key West, Florida, on 17 May 1872 and she was towed to the Philadelphia Navy Yard, Pennsylvania, by the tugboat USS Powhatan. Terror was again laid up on 10 June. Around this time the ship was fitted with an elevated wooden pilot house above the armored pilot house on the forward turret. Two years later, her wooden hull was rotting and she was sold for scrap. Although Congress was informed by the Navy Department that the Civil War-era ship was being repaired, a new iron-hulled monitor of the same name was built with repair money and the proceeds of her sale because Congress refused to fund any new construction at this time.
caption: A bow view of the monitor circa 1872–1874 while laid up, showing the elevated pilot house and breakwater
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