High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The first USS Hatteras was a heavy 9 ft 4 in (2.84 m) 1,126-ton steamer purchased by the Union Navy at the beginning of the American Civil War. She was outfitted as a gunboat and assigned to the Union blockade of the ports and waterways of the Confederate States of America. During an engagement with a disguised Confederate commerce raider, she was taken by surprise and was sunk off the coast of Galveston, Texas. The wreck site is one of the few listed on the National Register of Historic Places, because of its location away from destructive surf, and because of its side-wheel design, which represents the transition between wooden sailing ships and modern steamships.