USS General Lyon, a 390-ton side-wheel river steamer, was built in 1860 at New Albany, Indiana, as the civilian ship De Soto. After serving as the Confederate gunboat De Soto in 1861-62, she was captured by Federal forces at Island Number Ten on 7 April 1862. The U.S. Army employed her as a transport until the U.S. Navy acquired her in September 1862. Changing her name from De Soto to General Lyon in October 1862, the Navy's Mississippi Squadron used her as a ordnance, stores and dispatch vessel during the remainder of the Civil War. General Lyon was decommissioned and sold in August 1865. Renamed Alabama as a civilian steamer, she burned on 1 April 1867 at Grand View, Louisiana.