USS Wyalusing was a double-ended, side-wheel gunboat that served in the United States Navy during the American Civil War.
Gunboats Mattabesett, Sassacus, Whitehead and Wyalusing immediately formed a line of battle supported by Miami, Commodore Hull and Ceres.
Wyalusing and her consorts resumed blockade station in the sound, but all efforts were made over the next five months to destroy the Confederate ironclad.
During the ensuing months, while Wyalusing remained on station in the sound, more unsuccessful plans to destroy the Confederate ram were developed.
The next day, the gunboats exchanged shot and shell with Confederate shore batteries and rifle pits protecting Plymouth.
On 9 December, an expedition, of which Wyalusing was a part, moved farther up the Roanoke to capture Rainbow Bluff and another Confederate ram, rumored to be under construction at Halifax, North Carolina.
Wyalusing and the remainder of the expedition left the two partially sunken ships under the protection of their own unsubmerged guns and headed upriver, cautiously dragging for torpedoes as they went.
By the time they had reached the point of attack, the Confederate positions at Rainbow Bluff had been so well reinforced and the approaches so heavily strewn with torpedoes that the Union ships had to abandon the enterprise.
She continued duty in the Albemarle Sound and Cape Hatteras areas until a month after General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Virginia on 9 April.