The third USS Virginia was a 581-ton blockade-running steamer captured by the United States Navy and put to use by the Union Navy during the American Civil War. Virginia served the U.S. Navy primarily as a mortar gunboat. Her ordnance included six 24-pounder howitzers and a 12-pounder rifled gun. British and Confederate service Virginia was originally the British merchant screw steamer Pet, built at Dumbarton, Scotland, in 1861. Renamed Noe-Daquy, she operated during the early months of the American Civil War and in December 1862 was acquired by merchant at Havana, Cuba, for use as a Confederate blockade runner. Renamed Virginia, she was captured off Mugeres Island, Mexico, by the U.S. Navy sloop-of-war and sidewheel gunboat on 18 January 1863. U.S. Navy service The U.S. Navy commissioned the ship as USS Virginia, the third U.S. Navy ship to bear the name, at the New York Navy Yard in Brooklyn, New York, on 12 June 1863. The U.S. Navy later officially purchased her from the New York City prize court on 1 September 1863. West Gulf blockade Virginia was assigned duty with Rear Admiral David G. Farragut's West Gulf Blockading Squadron and, within a week of her commissioning, departed New York City, bound for the Gulf of Mexico. En route, she stopped briefly at Hampton Roads, Virginia, finally joining Farragut's squadron in July 1863. However, further repairs and modifications were needed before she could become a fully effective fighting unit, and she spent August and most of September 1863 at New Orleans, Louisiana, undergoing overhaul. Texas coast operations Virginia finally returned to active duty in late September 1863 and was deployed along the coast of Texas for the duration of the war. There, she conducted numerous patrol and reconnaissance missions – which often took her up the rivers – and also compiled an impressive list of captures while enforcing the Union blockade of the Confederacy. Her first success was the seizure of the British blockade runner Jenny with a cargo of cotton off the coast of Texas on 6 October 1863. Between 2 and 14 November 1863, screw sloop-of-war , gunboat , and Virginia convoyed and supported Major General Nathaniel Banks's successful landing at Brazos Santiago, Texas, near the mouth of the Rio Grande. The expedition began a Union offensive aimed both at wresting Texas from Confederate control and deterring French troops in Mexico from attempting to invade Texas, and on