Tuscaloosa was launched at Selma on February 7, 1863. She steamed to Mobile under her own power, where she was fitted out. Admiral Franklin Buchanan supervised her trial runs. The trials began in April, and found that she was too slow and that her boilers leaked. Another attempt at using coal, which was in limited supply, instead of wood and installing forced draft fans to improve ventilation and speed did not lead to substantially better results. Tuscaloosa could only go about , which was barely faster than the current in Mobile Bay. Buchanan reported that the ship's machinery worked well, and Bisbee attributes most of the speed problems to the nonstandard hull.
