High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! USS Benton (1861) was an ironclad river gunboat in the United States Navy during the American Civil War. She was named for American senator Thomas Hart Benton. Benton was a former center-wheel catamaran snagboat and was converted by James B. Eads, St. Louis, Missouri, in 1861 and commissioned 24 February 1862 as part of the Army`s Western Gunboat Flotilla.