CSS Teaser had been the aging Georgetown, D.C. tugboat York River until the beginning of the American Civil War, when she was taken into the Confederate States Navy and took part in the famous Battle of Hampton Roads. Later, she was captured by the United States Navy and became the first USS Teaser.
CSS Teaser
Teaser was built at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Purchased at Richmond, Virginia by the State of Virginia in 1861, she was assigned to the naval forces in the James River with Lieutenant James Henry Rochelle, Virginia State Navy, in command. Upon the secession of Virginia, Teaser became a part of the Confederate States Navy and continued to operate in Virginia waters. With Lieutenant William A. Webb, CSN, in command, she took an active part in the Battle of Hampton Roads on March 8–March 9, 1862, acting as tender to CSS Virginia. She received the thanks of the Congress of the Confederate States for this action.
Teaser was a pioneer "aircraft carrier", serving as a base for an observation gas filled balloon; she also became a pioneer minelayer when ordered on June 17, 1862, to assist General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Under Lieutenant Hunter Davidson, CSN, she was used by the Confederate Naval Submarine Battery Service to plant and service "torpedoes" (mines) in the James River. While engaging at Haxall's on the James on July 4, 1862, a Union shell blew up Teaser'''s boiler and forced her crew to abandon ship. When seized by Maratanza, Teaser was carrying on board a balloon for aerial reconnaissance of Union positions at City Point and Harrison's Landing.
Commanders
The commanders of the CSS Teaser were:
Lieutenant James H. Rochelle (May–June 1861) Lieutenant Robert Randolph Carter (June–July 1861) Acting Master William H. Face (June 1861-January 1862) Lieutenant William A. Webb (February 1862-) Lieutenant Hunter Davidson (June–July 1862)
USS Teaser
Later that summer, Teaser was taken into the United States Navy and was assigned to the Potomac Flotilla. With the exception of three brief deployments elsewhere, USS Teaser plied the waters of the Potomac River from Alexandria, Virginia, south to Point Lookout, Maryland to enforce the blockade by interdicting a thriving trade in contraband between the Maryland and Virginia shores.
On September 22, she captured schooner Southerner in the Coan River. On October 19, while operating in the vicinity of Piney Point in St. Mary's County, Maryland, she captured two smugglers and their boat as they were nearing the exit of Herring Creek and preparing to cross the river to Virginia. On November 2, near the mouth of the Rappahannock River, the tug surprised three men attempting to violate the blockade in a canoe. Teaser took them prisoner and turned their contraband over to pro-Union Virginians living on Gwynn's Island. Four days later in Chesapeake Bay, Teaser took the cargo-less sloop Grapeshot and captured her three-man crew.
By December 1862, she had moved to the Rappahannock River with other units of the Potomac Flotilla to support General Ambrose Burnside's thrust toward Richmond. On December 10, she exchanged shots with a Confederate battery located on the southern shore of the river about three miles below Port Royal, Virginia. After Burnside's bloody rebuff at Fredericksburg, Virginia on December 13, Teaser and her colleagues returned to their anti-smuggling patrol along the Potomac.Teaser joined to make March 1863 an active month. On March 24, the two ships sent a boat expedition to reconnoiter Pope's Creek, Virginia. The landing party found two boats used for smuggling and collected information from Union sympathizers in the area. Almost a week later, on the night of March 30—March 31, they dispatched a three-boat party to Monroe's Creek, Virginia. The previous day, a Federal cavalry detachment had surprised a smuggler in the area; and, though the troops captured his goods, the man himself escaped. Boats from Teaser and Primrose succeeded where the Union horsemen had failed, and they gathered some intelligence on other contrabanders as well.
In April 1863, Teaser left the Potomac for duty with Acting Rear Admiral Samuel Phillips Lee's North Atlantic Blockading Squadron at Hampton Roads. On April 17, she joined and in an expedition up the Nansemond River west of Norfolk, Virginia. However, she ran aground, damaged her machinery, and had to retire from the venture.