USS Young Rover ( 1861 ) USS " Young Rover " ( 1861 ) was a bark with auxiliary steam motor acquired by the Union Navy during the American Civil War . She was used by the Union Navy as a gunboat in support of the Union Navy blockade of Confederate waterways . Commissioned in 1861 at the Boston Navy Yard . " Young Rover " , a bark with auxiliary steam propulsion , was purchased by the Navy at Boston , Massachusetts , on 27 July 1861 ; converted to naval service at the Boston Navy Yard ; and commissioned there on 10 September 1861 , Acting Master I . B . Studley in command . Assigned to the Atlantic Blockade . On 6 September , the warship received orders to report for duty with the Atlantic Blockading Squadron . She arrived in Hampton Roads , Virginia , on the 17th and was soon dispatched to blockade duty off the Carolinas . On " 1 November " , she brought help and stood by during the rescue of a United States Marine Corps battalion and the ship ' s company of the chartered steamer " Governor " which soon thereafter sank in a heavy gale off the southern Atlantic coast . Later that month , she returned to Hampton Roads and blockaded the mouth of the York River . The warship operated out of Hampton Roads into the spring of 1862 serving as a unit of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron which was laboring to seal off the Confederate coast . Reassigned to the Potomac River Flotilla . On 17 April 1862 , " Young Rover " was reassigned to the Potomac River Flotilla to guard against the traffic in supplies to the South between Maryland and Virginia . That assignment lasted less than a month . On 14 May 1862 , she received orders to join the East Gulf Blockading Squadron at Key West , Florida . She served briefly off the South Pass at the mouth of the Apalachicola River in far northwestern Florida and then settled down to a summer ' s worth of duty blockading St . Marks , Florida , on Apalachee Bay where the gulf coast of Florida begins its southward turn , and the Florida panhandle becomes a peninsula . " Young Rover " proceeds to Philadelphia for repairs . She returned to Key West early in October and , on the 11th , received orders to proceed to Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , for repairs . At the conclusion of the yard work , she resumed duty along the Atlantic Ocean coast from the base at Hampton Roads and remained so employed during the winter of 1862 and 1863 . Continued operations along the Atlantic coast . After repairs at Baltimore , Maryland , in April and May of she returned to Hampton Roads where she began duty as guardship as a consequence of her deteriorating sailing and her almost nonexistent steaming abilities . That assignment , conducted at various locations in the southern Chesapeake Bay - - Fortress Monroe , Hampton Roads , and at the mouths of the James and York Rivers — occupied her until the fall of 1864 . On 20 November she received orders to proceed to the Delaware breakwater , there to protect American shipping entering and leaving the Delaware . She departed Hampton Roads on 1 December and arrived at the mouth of the Delaware River several days later . Final operations of the war . For the remainder of the war , she served on the Delaware River under the cognizance of the Commandant , Philadelphia Navy Yard . Post - war decommissioning and sale . Following the collapse of the Confederacy , " Young Rover " was sold at auction at the Boston Navy Yard on 22 June 1865 .