USS Shokokon was a large (709-ton) steamer with powerful 30-pounder rifled guns, purchased by the Union Navy during the beginning of the American Civil War. With a crew of 112 sailors, she was employed by the Union Navy as a heavy gunboat outfitted to pursue blockade runners of the Confederate States of America, and to participate in river operations. When required, towards war's end, she acted as a minesweeper, removing Confederate naval mines from Northern Virginia rivers. Service history Shokokon—a wooden-hulled ferry built as Clifton in 1862 at Greenpoint, New York—was purchased by the Navy at New York City on 3 April 1863; altered for naval service there by J. Simonson; and commissioned at the New York Navy Yard on 18 May 1863, Acting Volunteer Lieutenant Samuel Huse in command. The double-ender was assigned to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron and arrived at Newport News, Virginia, on the morning of 24 May 1863. Shokokon was first stationed in the outer blockade off New Inlet, North Carolina; but, late in June, she was recalled to Hampton Roads, Virginia, and ordered up the York River to the Pamunkey River to threaten Richmond, Virginia, in the hope of diverting Southern reinforcements, munitions, and supplies from General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia which had invaded the North and was endangering Washington, D.C. On 4 July, as battered Confederate troops retreated from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, she ascended the Pamunkey from White House, Virginia, and destroyed an unidentified schooner which had run aground some five miles upstream. A week later, Shokokon was switched to the James River where, on the 14th, the former ferryboat joined seven other Union fighting ships in capturing Confederate stronghold, Fort Powhatan. The force destroyed two magazines and 20 gun platforms. On 10 August, after repairs at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Shokokon returned to blockade duty off Wilmington, North Carolina, and was stationed off Smith's Island. On the 18th, she assisted in destroying steamer, Hebe, which Niphon had chased aground while that blockade runner was attempting to slip through the Union cordon of warships with drugs and provisions badly needed by the South. Four days later, two boats from Shokokon destroyed schooner, Alexander Cooper, in New Topsail Inlet, North Carolina, and demolished extensive salt works in the vicinity. Late in August 1863, the ship was damaged in a hurricane and sent north for repairs which lasted through the end of the