USS Amazon was a wooden-hulled bark of 318 tons that had previously sailed as a whaler out of Fairhaven, Massachusetts.

During the beginning of the American Civil War, she was one of the older vessels and hulks chosen by the Union Navy to be sunk in selected waterways and harbors of the Confederate States of America in order to create underwater obstructions and hazards that could damage and prevent Confederate ships from attempting to "run" the Union blockade.

During the first year of the American Civil War, she was purchased for $3,675 by the Union Navy at Fairhaven, Massachusetts, on 30 October 1861, for the Stone Fleet.

[1] Amazon was to be laden with stone and sunk as an obstruction blocking the channel of Savannah, Georgia.

Upon her arrival at Savannah early in December, she found that the defenders of that port had themselves, already blocked the channels of the harbor with sunken hulks in the hope of barring the approach of a Northern invasion fleet.