About dawn a week later, she took the steamboat Henry Lewis carrying sugar and molasses; and that afternoon she captured a schooner trying to slip through the blockade with naval stores for Havana, Cuba.

Not content just to capture ships, New London, with USS Water Witch and Henry Lewis, rounded out her record on the last day of 1861 by sending a landing party ashore to capture Biloxi, Mississippi, destroying a Confederate battery and taking possession of two guns and the schooner Captain Spedden.

The New London docked at the Hotel Wharf at Pascagoula, Mississippi, and deployed about 60 sailors and marines to the village to capture mails and confiscate the telegraph equipment.

The Grey Cloud moved about a half-mile west and attempted to enter the Pascagoula River with the intent on capturing local schooners with turpentine and lumber.

About a mile from the mouth, where the river is not but 200 yards wide, the launches were ambushed by a platoon of 30 troopers of the Mobile Dragoons under Lieut Hallett, a cavalry unit armed with Sharps carbines.

Ref: Charleston Daily Courier, 29 July 1862 During the ensuing years New London served on blockade duty in the Gulf of Mexico, operating primarily off the Texas coast.

She and USS Cayuga captured the British schooner Tampico off Sabine Pass, Texas, attempting to run out laden with cotton on 3 April 1863.

Three days later, while steaming to New Orleans, the ship engaged Confederate batteries at White Hall Point, Mississippi.