USS New London was a screw steamer of the Union Navy during the American Civil War. She was outfitted with a Parrott rifle and 32-pounders, and was assigned as a gunboat in the Union blockade of the Confederate States of America. Service history New London was built at Mystic, Connecticut in 1859, purchased by the Navy at New York City on 26 August 1861; and commissioned at New York Navy Yard on 29 October 1861, with Lieutenant Abner Read in command. Ordered to the Gulf of Mexico on 2 November, New London, aided by , captured the schooner Olive laden with lumber shortly before midnight on 21 November. Early the next morning, she took the steamboat Anna carrying turpentine and rosin from Pascagoula, Mississippi, to New Orleans, Louisiana. About dawn a week later, she took the steamboat Henry Lewis carrying sugar and molasses; and that afternoon she captured a schooner trying to slip through the blockade with naval stores for Havana, Cuba. On 28 November 1861 she captured , which was later put into service in the U.S. Navy. New London captured the steamer Advocate on 1 December; and the schooner Delight with sloops Empress and Osceola on 9 December. On the 28th the schooner Gypsy became her prize. Not content just to capture ships, New London, with and Henry Lewis, rounded out her record on the last day of 1861 by sending a landing party ashore to capture Biloxi, Mississippi, destroying a Confederate battery and taking possession of two guns and the schooner Captain Spedden. On 20 February 1862 a boat expedition from New London landed on Cat Island, Mississippi and interned 12 small sloops and schooners suspected of being pilot boats for blockade runners. On 4 April, with and , New London engaged CSS Carondelet, CSS Pamlico, and CSS Oregon while Henry Lewis landed 1,200 Union Army troops at Pass Christian, Mississippi and destroyed a Confederate camp there. Boats from New London captured the yachts Comet and Algerine near New Basin, Louisiana on 2 June. On 17 June she captured and destroyed batteries at North and South passes. On 18 July, accompanied by the Grey Cloud, the New London approached the large hotel at Pascagoula and announced its arrival by firing two shells over the hotel. Both steamers had been reinforced by men from the for this raid. The New London docked at the Hotel Wharf at Pascagoula,