USS Quaker City was a heavy, 1,428 long tons (1,451 t) sidewheel steamship leased by the Union Navy at the start of the American Civil War.

She was subsequently purchased by the navy, outfitted with a powerful 20-pounder long rifle, and assigned to help enforce the Union blockade of the ports of the Confederate States of America.

Two days later she helped fight CSS Chicora and Palmetto State when the Confederate rams attacked the Union squadron in the morning fog off Charleston.

Departing Port Royal on 8 March, she took schooner Douro off Wilmington, North Carolina, the following day, heading for Nassau with a cargo of cotton, turpentine, and tobacco.

In 1867, she was chartered to carry a group of American travelers on a "package tour" of France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, the "Holy Land", and Egypt, departing 8 June from New York City.

Mark Twain was a member of the tour group, sponsored by the newspaper The Daily Alta California, and his humorous letters about the trip became his best-selling book The Innocents Abroad.