The first USS Ellen was a side-wheel steam gunboat in the United States Navy during the American Civil War.

Ellen exchanged fire with the enemy at Tybee Island on 24 December and on the 31st sailed to take part in the successful joint Army-Navy expedition against Port Royal Ferry on the Coosa River.

During 26–29 January 1862 she reconnoitered Wilmington River and Wassaw Sound, Georgia, and engaged five ships under Commodore Josiah Tattnall III, CSN, near Savannah, damaging two of the Confederates.

On 16 June she took part in an Army-Navy reconnaissance in the direction of Secessionville, South Carolina, target for an unsuccessful attack by the Army the day before.

Ellen was decommissioned 30 October 1862, and used as a carpenter shop by the fleet at Port Royal until the war's end.