USS Berberry-- Part 5: Continued Operations in North Carolina Waters

Repairs were finished by November 1864 and the Berberry departed Norfolk on the 23rd and headed back to the waters off New Inlet, arriving ion the 26th.  That night her guns persuaded a blockade runner to give up its attempt to escape to sea.

Early in December, illness forced Ensign Milton Griffith (who had commanded the Berberry ever since commissioning) to request relief and Ensign Robert W. Browntree took command of the tug on December 4.    On the 10th, a bad storm forced the Berberry to Beaufort, N.C. for repairs.

Mid-month, the ship was in the Sounds of N.C. where she served the rest of the year.

On January 3, 1865, Acting Ensign Peter C. Asserson took command and returned to blockade duty off New Inlet.   She operated there until February 26.  She then returned to Beaufort and operated in the sounds until the collapse of the Confederacy.

On 29 May, it left N.C. waters and returned to Hampton Roads the following day. Then on to New York where she was decommissioned at New York Navy Yard on June 10 and sold at public auction two days later.

She was redocumented as the tug Rescue and  served through the turn of the century before being purchase by a foreign interest in 1902.

Quite a Busy Service.  --Old B-Runner