Aroostook -- a wooden-hulled, steam-propelled, screw gunboat—was laid down by Nathaniel Lord Thompson sometime soon after 6 July 1861, at Kennebunk, Maine; launched on or around 19 October 1861; and commissioned at the Boston Navy Yard on 20 February 1862, Lt. John C. Beaumont in command.

On 1 March 1862, toward the end of the gunboat's fitting out process, word reached the yard that, during a fierce storm, USS Vermont had lost her rudder, her bower anchors, all of her rigging, and four of her boats and was drifting helplessly amid raging seas some 95 miles south-southeast of Cape Cod Light.

William L. Hudson, the commandant of the yard, ordered Beaumont to proceed in Aroostook to the vicinity where the disabled ship of the line had last been seen and, upon finding Vermont, to stand by her until other aid arrived.

The Southern ironclad had reentered the Norfolk Navy Yard to get a new ram to replace that which had broken off in Cumberland's hull as Virginia backed free of her first victim.

Meanwhile, the Union Navy withdrew its sailing warships and some of its deep-draft steamers from Hampton Roads and replaced them with light-draft steam gunboats which were able to maneuver freely in the trick shoal waters inside the Virginia Capes.

Lt. Beaumont decided that he might bring Virginia to bay by ensnaring her propeller in a long heavy net and seine that Aroostook's crew had made of "rattling" stuff.

When his fellow commanding officers had learned of Beaumont's plan, they seemed to fear Aroostook even more than they dreaded Virginia lest the gunboat's now notorious net might foul their own screws.

Keep your eye on the Aroostook.Virginia rounded Sewell's Point on 11 April; but, since strategic considerations prevented her from challenging Monitor or the other nearby Union warships, Aroostook's dreaded net never entered the water.

John Rodgers, was one of the Navy's most imaginative strategists and most skillful tacticians; and he immediately began studying the situation facing Union forces in the area.

The channel marks had been moved causing Galena to run aground off Hog Island, 4 miles downstream from Jamestown on the southern side of the James River.

The Confederate gunboats Patrick Henry and Yorktown—which had been in sight during the action at Mother Tyne's Bluff—had retired upstream ahead of the northern flotilla where Rodgers believed they had joined three other Southern warships.

This appeal reached the flag officer at a most propitious moment, for the South had just evacuated Norfolk and, since Virginia had lost her base, had destroyed the dreaded ironclad ram—lest she fall into Union hands—Goldsborough for the first time, was able to deploy elsewhere the forces he had held in Hampton Roads to check the rebuilt Merrimack.

Only one obstacle stood between the Union warships and Richmond, the Confederate capital which they hoped to capture, just as a Federal force commanded by Flag Officer David Farragut had taken New Orleans, Louisiana, a few weeks before.

For the next few months, the gunboat continued to operate in the James, occasionally dropping as far downstream as Fort Monroe, but never venturing far enough upriver to come within range of the guns at Drewry's Bluff.

In a series of bloody battles which began on 25 June, Robert E. Lee drove McClellan's troops across the peninsula to this new base on the James where Aroostook joined other Union warships in protecting the beleaguered Federal ground forces.

On 5 March 1863, a lookout in the "Old Rooster" made out "... a sail close to the beach trying to run into Mobile Bay", and the Northern gunboat immediately raced off in pursuit.

The following night, the same two blockaders, chased and fired upon another small sailing vessel; but "an ugly sea", darkness, and shoal water enabled this runner to reach safety inside Mobile Bay.

In response to their signals, the steam sloop Ossipee also gave chase; soon passed her informants; and, shortly after dawn, brought the fleeing ship to with a few well directed rounds.

On the 22d, while en route to Galveston, Texas, she captured the schooner Eureka which had slipped out of the Brazos River laden with cotton for delivery to Havana, Cuba.

On 8 July, after Kanawha had forced the blockade runner Matagorda aground near Galveston, Aroostook and Penguin joined that Union gunboat in shelling the stranded steamer to destruction.

Lester A. Beardslee in command, Aroostook proceeded to the Far East via the Atlantic Ocean-Cape of Good Hope-Indian Ocean route, arrived at Hong Kong late in August 1867; and joined Bell's force which had recently been renamed the Asiatic Squadron.

A short time later, she sailed for Japan with most of Bell's flotilla to take part in a mass demonstration of Western and Japanese warships off the southern coast of Honshu on 1 January 1868 when the ports of Kobe and Osaka were to be opened to foreign trade.

While he was being rowed ashore to pay a farewell visit to the American resident minister to Japan at Osaka on the morning of 11 January, his barge was upset by"...three heavy rollers ..." and all on board plunged into the icy surf.

After word reached Yokohama that the British P&O steamer City of Bombay had struck Oneida on the evening of 24 January 1870, sinking that American screw sloop of war, the senior United States naval officer in port chartered the former USS Aroostook to search for any survivors of the accident.

Manned in part by volunteers from the Russian man-of-war Vsadnik, the former American gunboat steamed waters in the general vicinity of the collision for over a month seeking traces of the Oneida's crew.