USS Rocket was a tugboat acquired by the Union Navy during the American Civil War. She was used by the Navy to patrol navigable waterways of the Confederacy to prevent the South from trading with other countries. Rocket, built at Mystic, Connecticut, in 1862 as the wooden harbor tug J. P. Billard, was purchased for the Navy on 12 October 1863 from Copeland & Howe at New York City and renamed the same day.