USS Osceola was a wooden, sidewheel Sassacus-class gunboat which saw combat with the Union Navy in the American Civil War. She was designed with shallow draft and double-ends specifically to allow her to operate in the narrow rivers and inlets along the Confederate coast. She was well suited to this role and took part in major battles on the James and Cape Fear Rivers. After her military service she was converted to a four-masted schooner to carry lumber between St. John, New Brunswick, and Montevideo, Uruguay. She was unsuited to this role and was disabled and abandoned on her first sailing.