USS Kearsarge, a Mohican-class sloop-of-war, is best known for her defeat of the Confederate commerce raider CSS Alabama off Cherbourg, France during the American Civil War.

The new 1,550-long-ton (1,570 t) steam sloop-of-war was launched on 11 September 1861; she was sponsored by Mrs. McFarland, the wife of the editor of the Concord Statement, and was commissioned on 24 January 1862, with Captain Charles W. Pickering in command.

However, Sumter's captain, Raphael Semmes, having returned to England for reassignment, was soon recommissioning off the Azores, in international waters, the newly-built British sloop Enrica as CSS Alabama.

Unknown at the time to Captain Semmes aboard the Confederate raider, Kearsarge had been given added protection for her vital machinery, by chain cable, mounted in three separate vertical tiers, along the port and starboard of her midsection.

This was stopped up and down in three layers to eye-bolts with marlines, and secured by iron dogs, then concealed behind 1 in (25 mm) deal-boards, painted black to match the upper hull's color.

This chain cladding was placed along Kearsarge's port and starboard midsection down to her waterline, for protection of her engines and boilers, when the upper portions of the cruiser's coal bunkers were empty.

One hour after she fired her first salvo, Alabama had been reduced to a sinking wreck by Kearsarge's more accurate gunnery, and by its powerful 11 in (280 mm) Dahlgren smoothbore pivot guns.

Alabama went down by the stern shortly after Semmes struck his colors, threw his sword into the sea to avoid its capture, and sent one of his two remaining longboats to Kearsarge with a message of surrender, and a rescue appeal for his surviving crew.

Kearsarge finally sent ship's boats for the majority of Alabama's survivors, but Semmes and 41 others were instead rescued by the nearby British yacht Deerhound, and escaped to the United Kingdom.

Kearsarge then sailed along the French coast in an unsuccessful search for the commerce raider CSS Florida, then proceeded to the Caribbean before turning northward for Boston, Massachusetts, where she was decommissioned for repairs on 26 November.

After cruising the Mediterranean Sea and the English Channel south to Monrovia, Liberia, Kearsarge was decommissioned on 14 August 1866 in the Boston Navy Yard.

From 4 September to 13 December, she carried Professor Asaph Hall's scientific party from Nagasaki, Japan, to Vladivostok, Russia, to observe the transit of Venus.

Kearsarge was recommissioned on 2 November 1888 and largely spent her remaining years protecting American interests in the West Indies, off Venezuela, and along the Central Americas.

The salvaged items, along with a damaged section of her stern post with an unexploded shell from CSS Alabama still embedded in it, are now stored or on display at the Washington Navy Yard.

Clive Cussler, an American adventure novelist and marine archaeologist, wrote the 2001 novel Valhalla Rising, in which Kearsarge is attacked by a submerged vessel and run aground, causing her wreck.