USS Wilderness was a wooden-hulled, side-wheel steamship in the United States Navy during the American Civil War. After the war, she served as a revenue cutter. In 1873, she was renamed John A. Dix for former Secretary of the Treasury John Adams Dix. Service in the US Civil War Wilderness was built as B. N. Creary – sometimes spelled B. N. Crary – in 1864 at Brooklyn, New York. Acquired by the Union Navy at New York City on 30 May 1864 and simultaneously renamed Wilderness, she fitted out at the New York Navy Yard and was commissioned on 20 July 1864. After arriving at Hampton Roads shortly thereafter, Wilderness was assigned immediately to the 2nd Division of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron. She operated between Hampton Roads and various points along the James River through the end of August. While she performed a variety of duties during that time, she operated primarily as a supply ship. She also served as a transport and dispatch vessel when the occasion demanded. On the average, she apparently made two trips upriver from Hampton Roads per week, delivering fresh vegetables and provisions to the crews of naval vessels operating up the James River and to the crews of the lighthouses situated along that waterway. On 15 July 1864, when Confederate guns located near Malvern Hill fired on Union ships, Wilderness made a night run down the James with casualties embarked, bound for the hospital at Norfolk, Virginia. On the 27th of that month, Wilderness was compelled by the heavy movement of Union troops across two pontoon bridges spanning the James to remain between them. While thus immobile, the side-wheeler observed the gunboats and shelling Confederate positions across nearby Four Mile Creek. On 25 August, Acting Rear Admiral S. P. Lee, commanding the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, reported to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles that "to promote the efficiency of the blockade of the bars" (off the North Carolina coast) he had directed Captain Melancton Smith, the commander of naval forces on the James, "to have the Wilderness prepared at once for service on the blockade of Wilmington." By 1 September, when Admiral Lee reported the composition of his squadron, he listed Wilderness as a "supply steam; ordered to fit out as gunboat and join (the) blockade." By late October, Wilderness had been armed with a battery of four 24-pounders, enabling her to