USS Grand Gulf was a wooden-hulled, propeller-driven steamer acquired by the Union Navy during the American Civil War.

Her two exits to the sea at Beaufort and the Cape Fear River made Wilmington one of the most important and most difficult to blockade of all Confederate ports.

On 21 November 1863, assisted by Army Transport Fulton, Grand Gulf took blockade runner Banshee with a general cargo of contraband from Nassau.

Off the Carolina coast, Grand Gulf, 6 March 1864, captured the British steamer Mary Ann trying to run the blockade with a cargo of cotton and tobacco; seizing the cargo and 82 passengers and crew members, Grand Gulf put a prize crew on the steamer and sent her to Boston, Massachusetts.

Returning to New York 4 August 1864, she was ordered out in search of the Confederate raider CSS Tallahassee, reported in Long Island Sound.

One day from New York on the outward passage, Grand Gulf, herself leaking badly, took into tow sinking British bark Linden.