USS Aroostook, a 691-ton, 158-foot Unadilla class screw steam gunboat built at Kennebunk, Maine, was commissioned February 1862. She was armed with one 11-in. Dahlgren on an amidships pivot, two 24-lbr. Dahlgren shipboard howitzers mounted broadside, and one 20-lbr Parrot rifle mounted as bow chaser. In early March she assisted USS Vermont, suffering damage in the process. After repairs, Aroostook arrived at Hampton Roads where she participated in operations against Norfolk and afterwards, up the James River. She engaged Confederate forces on several occasions, among them the bombardment at Drewry's Bluff on 15 May. On 9 June, Aroostook proceeded to Jamestown Island and landed a party which destroyed guns, ammunition, gun carriages and buildings of abandoned Confederate batteries. In September 1862, after the end of General McClellan's Peninsula Campaign, the gunboat served briefly with the Potomac Flotilla before being ordered to the Gulf of Mexico. Aroostook joined the blockade of Mobile Bay in October 1862, and served there for nearly a year, during that time assisted in capture or destruction of several blockade running sailing vessels. Stationed off the Texas coast from November 1863, she took three more blockade runners and assisted destroying another. Aroostook left the Gulf in September 1865, and was decommissioned at Philadelphia. Recommissioned in December 1866, Aroostook voyaged to the Far East by way of the Cape of Good Hope, arriving at Hong Kong in August 1867. As a unit of the Asiatic Squadron, she operated off Japan and on anti-piracy patrols along the China coast. USS Aroostook was finally decommissioned at Hong Kong in September 1869 and sold a month later.

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