the top of the turret to protect the crew against Confederate snipers based on a suggestion by Commander Tunis A. M. Craven, captain of her sister ship . The contract for Saugus, the first Navy ship to be named Saugus after the town of Saugus, Massachusetts, was awarded to Harlan & Hollingsworth; the ship was laid down in 1862 at their Wilmington, Delaware shipyard. She was launched on 14 December 1863 and commissioned on 7 April 1864 with Commander Edmund R. Colhoun in command. The ship's construction was delayed by multiple changes ordered while she was being built that reflected battle experience with earlier monitors. This included the rebuilding of the turrets and pilot houses to increase their armor thickness from to 10 inches and to replace the bolts that secured their armor plates together with rivets to prevent them from being knocked loose by the shock of impact from shells striking the turret. Other changes included deepening the hull by to increase the ship's buoyancy, moving the position of the turret to balance the ship's trim and replacing all of the ship's deck armor. As far as is known the ship was not modified after her completion. Service Saugus was assigned to the James River Flotilla and arrived at Fort Monroe on 1 May. By 22 May, the ship was deployed with her sisters and Tecumseh on the James River where they protected the transports of Major General Benjamin Butler's Army of the James, supplying the army as it operated on the south bank of the river during the Bermuda Hundred Campaign. On 21 June, Commander Craven of the Tecumseh spotted a line of breastworks that the Confederates were building at Howlett's Farm and his ship opened fire at the workers. The Confederates replied with a battery of four guns near the breastworks and Saugus and Canonicus joined in the bombardment. A half-hour later, Confederate ships near Dutch Gap joined in, but their fire was ineffective because they were firing blindly at the Union monitors. During the engagement, Saugus fired thirty-six 15-inch shells and was hit once by a Confederate shell that struck the deck and ricocheted into the turret; no one was wounded or killed during the engagement. Eight days later, Saugus and the side-wheel gunboat engaged a battery at Deep Bottom Creek. The same pair of ships engaged another battery on Four Mile Creek on 30 June