USS Rescue was a small (111-ton) steamer commissioned by the United States Navy during the American Civil War.
She served the Union Navy during the blockade of ports and waterways of the Confederate States of America as a gunboat and dispatch boat. After the war’s end, Rescue continued to serve the Navy, but this time as a tugboat and as a fireboat.
Rescue joined the Potomac Flotilla prior to mid-September and took up station near Alexandria, Virginia. By the 18th, she had shifted to the Mathias Point-Popes Creek area where she seized the schooner Harford and her cargo of wheat and tobacco.
On 11 October, the gunboat, with USS Resolute and USS Union, captured and burned the schooner Martha Washington which had been awaiting Confederate troops in Quantico (Dumfries) Creek. Ten days later, she returned to Mathias Point to engage enemy batteries there.