USS G. W. Blunt was a Sandy Hook pilot boat acquired by the Union Navy during the American Civil War in 1861. See George W. Blunt (1856) for more details. She was used by the Union Navy as a gunboat as well as a dispatch boat in support of the Union Navy blockade of Confederate waterways. Towards the war's end, she was reconfigured as a rescue and salvage ship. Her new task was to remove many of the shipwrecks, hulks, and other in-water debris of war.