Commissioned just after the end of the Civil War, for more than a year—until the arrival of the larger monitor Monadnock—Camanche was the only U.S. ironclad on the Pacific coast, and she was one of but two stationed there for nearly 25 years.

Camanche's career was a quiet one, with the ship generally maintained in decommissioned status at the Mare Island Navy Yard, in northern San Francisco Bay.

She was the California Naval Militia's training ship in 1896–97 and appears to have been reactivated for a few months in 1898, during the Spanish–American War, for coastal defense purposes.

[2] According to page 10 of the San Francisco Call dated November 20, 1899, Camanche had her machinery, her weapons and her armor removed by the Union Iron Works in Oakland and she was converted into a collier, hauling coal.

She did duty until oil and gas took the place of coal and is now lying at the east end of the Bethlehem shipyard, a useless forgotten hulk.