USS Essex was a wooden-hulled steam-and-sail sloop of war built for the United States Navy after the Civil War, launched in 1876, and designed as a transitional warship between the age of sail and steam. She served widely in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Asiatic stations, including voyages to Liberia, Africa, and the Caroline Islands, and aboard her two crewmen earned the Medal of Honor for rescuing a shipmate at Monrovia in 1877. Later used as a training and receiving ship on the Great Lakes, she was sold for scrap in 1930 and burned near Duluth in 1931. Her wreck on Minnesota Point is the only known surviving remnant of shipbuilder Donald McKay’s work.