The loss of the control of the North Carolina sounds, as already told, proved more damaging to the Confederate forces than they realized at first, but they very soon began making efforts to establish themselves there once more, and the oftener they were defeated in their hopes the more determined they became. To tell the complete story of the skirmishes that took place between the Dismal Swamp and Newbern would be to give a hundred instances of the courage, enterprise, and persistence of the men on both sides. There was the case of John Taylor Wood, who, with a party of Confederates, boarded and destroyed the Union gunboat Underwriter under the eyes of the Union forces afloat and ashore. As another instance, there is also the story of Cushing’s trip up the New River Inlet with the Ellis, where he got into the wrong channel and had to destroy her, and then row in an open boat for a mile and a half under fire of the Confederates to escape. They were all brilliant, but none of them was decisive in any way.

Eventually it became apparent that no dashing exploit could restore Confederate supremacy there, and their hope was dying, when two flatboat-builders living at Edward’s Ferry, on the Roanoke River, offered to build an ironclad, somewhat on the plan of the Merrimac, that should be able to navigate the shoal waters of the Sound and yet be invulnerable to the shot of the Union gunboats. Because the water at Hatteras Inlet was too shoal for any of the Union ironclads to pass, it was reasonable to suppose a well-built craft could clear the Union wooden gunboats from the waters of North Carolina.

The chief contractor for the boat that was, in accordance with these ideas, laid down at Edward’s Ferry, was Mr. Gilbert Elliott. Naval Constructor John L. Porter, who had rebuilt the Merrimac, was sent to work out the plans, and Commander J. W. Cooke was appointed to gather the outfit and supervise the construction.

Work began on her in January, 1863. Her keels (she was flat-bottomed) were laid in a cornfield. A common country blacksmith shop was the only “machine shop.” Her engines were put together from the scrap heaps of the iron works at Richmond and Wilmington. The timbers were from good pine logs, and her armor was like that of the Merrimac, but the ship, as a whole, excited the amusement even of many of the Confederates until she was afloat.

At this time the gunboats Miami, Capt. C. W. Flusser, and the Southfield, Captain French, were stationed at the west end of Albemarle Sound, rather in the mouth of Roanoke River, near Plymouth. Flusser, as early as June 8, 1863, sent to Rear-admiral S. P. Lee, then commanding the station, a very accurate description of the new ironclad. An expedition was sent up the river to destroy her on the ways, but it could not pass—at least it did not pass—the Confederate forts. Then an appeal was made to Gen. John G. Foster, commanding the Federal troops, to send a cavalry regiment to burn the ship, but “General Foster expressed his unconcern about the rebel ram.” Sorrowful to relate, the vigilant Flusser, and not the self-satisfied Foster, suffered the penalty of this unconcern.

The Albemarle was “122 feet over all, had forty-five feet beam and drew eight feet of water. The casemate, built of massive pine timbers, covered with four-inch planking, was sixty feet long, and was covered with two layers of two-inch iron. The vessel was propelled by twin screws, operated by engines of 200 horse power each. She was armed with an Armstrong 100-pounder in the bow and one in the stern, while the casemate was so pierced that they could be used as broadside or quarter guns.”

She was not ready for action, however, until April, 1864. On the 17th of that month the Confederate General Hoke advanced on Plymouth. Captain Cooke, of the Albemarle, had promised to coöperate in order to deprive the Union soldiers of the help of the Union gun-boats. The Albemarle was not quite ready, but she left her moorings with the mechanics still at work screwing on her armor plates. While the foreman shouted orders to the mechanics, naval officers alongside were drilling the crew at great guns; and John N. Maffitt tells an amusing story of how the orders were mingled: “Drive in spike No. 10! Serve vent and sponge! On nut below and screw up! Load with cartridge!” And the fact that all this was done is especially interesting when we remember that the men equal to such an occasion were the kind to win, and they did win in their first onslaught.

The Union forces had driven piles to keep her up the river, but, aided by high water, the Albemarle passed them with no delay whatever, and just before midnight, on April 19th, the Union gunboats found her upon them. The Miami and the Southfield had been yoked together with long booms and chains in such fashion that the Albemarle was expected to strike in between them and there get caught at such short range that their nine-inch Dahlgren projectiles would easily penetrate her armor. But instead of going between them, the Albemarle crossed the Miami’s bow and rammed and sunk the Southfield. Flusser bravely worked his guns, but one shell that he himself fired against the Albemarle’s side broke into pieces, which, rebounding back, killed him where he stood. Then the Miami fled and Plymouth surrendered.

On May 5th the Albemarle had another fight with a squadron gathered to disable her. She was rammed by the Sassacus. The blow hurt the Sassacus more than the ironclad, and a few shot from the Albemarle’s guns sent the Union ship adrift and almost unmanageable. She would have been entirely so but for a heroic engineer who kept her engine going in spite of escaping steam in the engine-room. The Whitehead, the Mattabesett, and the Wyalusing also took part, firing as rapidly as possible. The action is described in one history as a “desperate battle.” The casualties on the Union side in this desperate affair amounted to four killed, twelve wounded by projectiles, and fourteen scalded by steam from a cut pipe. The hero of the battle was Engineer J. M. Hobby, who stood at his post on the Sassacus in spite of the scalding steam when every other man fled, and so saved the ship.

Thereafter the Albemarle was tied up at the Plymouth wharf to await the completion of another ship like her that was building on Tar River, and this needless delay was fatal, for Lieut. William B. Cushing asked for, and obtained, the task of destroying her, and he was of the kind that succeed.

Cushing, after serving as a cadet nearly four years at the Naval Academy, resigned on March 21, 1861—just why has never been told. In May he entered the navy once more. He was made a master’s mate, and by July, 1862, had obtained a lieutenant’s commission through repeated “acts of successful daring.” He was with Rowan at Elizabeth City, and obtained command of the Ellis, captured there. His courage, combined with good judgment, continued to keep him in the eyes of his superior officers. He was constantly looking for something to do, and when he offered to destroy the Albemarle he was allowed to try.

At about this time Engineer John L. Lay, U. S. N., had devised a torpedo boat that consisted of a light steam launch rigged to carry a torpedo at the end of a long spar—a torpedo that might be placed against a ship’s side and fired by means of a string that led from the trigger of the torpedo to the launch’s bow. It would be considered a crude affair now, for the man operating the torpedo had to stand erect in the bow of the launch, wholly unprotected even from musketry. Two of these little boats were built in New York, and Cushing carried one of them through inland waters to Albemarle Sound, Norfolk being then in Federal hands. Admiral Ammen, in his history, complains that “the newspapers had gratuitously furnished the enemy with information” about all the movements of Cushing, “as well as the avowed object of destroying the Albemarle.” The writer hereof was not a reporter in those days, but he imagines that some naval officer told the reporters where Cushing was going before the destination was announced in any newspaper; though the matter is important only as a warning to naval officers not to tell vital secrets to reporters. As to the effect of this publicity, the Confederates put double lines of pickets along the river below Plymouth, stationed 1,000 soldiers about the wharf, built a boom of cypress logs around the Albemarle at such a distance that no torpedo spar could reach over it to the hull, and kept the sentries on board, pacing to and fro at night, constantly on the lookout, while an outpost was established in the river on the wreck of the sunken Southfield, one mile down-stream.

It was in the month of October, 1864, that Cushing brought his boat to the waters below Plymouth, and on the night of the 26th the gunboat Otsego towed the launch to the mouth of the river, where Cushing cast off, and with a ship’s cutter loaded with armed men in tow of his launch, he started up the river. The cutter’s men were to land at the outpost, on the old wreck, if necessary, and care for the Confederates there, while the steam launch was to be driven at full speed to the Albemarle, a mile away. But luck was against the expedition. The launch grounded, and before she could be gotten afloat day was at hand, and Cushing returned to the Otsego.

And then came the night of the 27th. There were thirteen officers and men in the launch with Cushing, besides the cutter load in tow. It was a dark night, and with no light and with his machinery working in perfect silence, Cushing steamed up the river. Cushing himself stood in the bow, steering-wheel in hand, with a loaded howitzer on one side ready for firing, and with the gear for working the torpedo on the other. There were two schooners beside the old wreck; but the sentinels failed to see Cushing, and wholly unobserved, he arrived opposite the well-guarded ironclad, and then for the first time learned that the boom was so far out from the ship that the torpedo could not reach her.

For a moment Cushing thought to land, walk boldly on board, and strive to carry her out into the stream. But even as the thought came to him he was discovered by the sentinels on shore, and a hail was heard.

“Boat ahoy!” followed almost instantly by a musket-shot, and then by a rattling fire from an uncounted line of sentinels up and down the shore and on the ship. A huge bonfire of fat pine knots blazed up to illuminate the shore, and the call of the ship’s crew to quarters arose on the air.

To the mind of any other man than a Cushing the expedition was a failure, but casting off the cutter with orders to pull for life, Cushing turned his launch out into the stream, swung her around in a wide circle to give her full speed, and then headed straight at the log-boom abreast of the fated ram. A host of Confederates gathered on the ram’s deck to beat him off. Two howitzers loaded with canister, and a score of muskets, were fired at him, and a man by his side fell, but Cushing with his own well-aimed howitzer scattered the Confederate host. And then the sled-runner bow of the launch struck the half-submerged boom, rose with the impetus, and over she went with her bow half under water, but inside the boom. The muzzle of a hundred-pounder was shoved out through the Albemarle’s broadside port, directly in front of the launch, but Cushing drove the torpedo under the hull of the ironclad, raised it up until he felt it strike her bottom, and then, as the Confederates fired their big gun, he pulled the trigger. A dull roar from beneath the ship answered to the crash of the broadside gun. The charge of the gun flew over the heads of the launch’s crew, but the torpedo opened wide the hull of the Albemarle, and down she went.

The huge wave thrown up by the torpedo swept over the bow of the little launch, and she, too, sank. Even then the fortitude and resourcefulness of Cushing preserved him. Plunging into the river, he swam away unhurt and reached the swampy shore below, utterly exhausted. There he lay in the water until day was breaking, when he crawled into the woods and hid himself. While lying there he heard two men talking as they walked in an alongshore path, and learned how complete had been his work. During the day he found one of the enemy’s picket-boats, and that night he paddled his way off to the Valley City, where he arrived at 11 o’clock at night.

He was only a boy—he was but twenty-one years old—but no man, old or young, has ever surpassed him. He was officially complimented by the Secretary of the Navy, and this was the fifth time that the department had “had the gratification of expressing its approbation” of his conduct. He had said when leaving the Otsego, “another stripe or a coffin,” and he got the stripe. But no gold medal was voted to him. Gold was at a premium in those days—so high a premium, apparently, that Congress could not afford it. The writer does not mean to carp, but to deplore the fact that men who during the Civil War showed the most magnificent qualities of mind did not receive every recognition possible. For it is the men who write rank with a capital R that make and save the nation.

It is comforting to note that of the launch’s crew but two were killed, though all the rest were captured except Cushing and one other. The following is a list of the crew:

“William B. Cushing, Lieutenant, commanding expedition, escaped; William L. Howarth, Acting-Master’s Mate, picket-boat; William Stotesbury, Acting-Third-Assistant Engineer, picket-boat; John Woodman, Acting-Master’s Mate, U. S. S. Commodore Hull, drowned; Thomas S. Gay, Acting-Master’s Mate, U. S. S. Otsego; Charles S. Heener, Acting-Third-Assistant Engineer, U. S. S. Otsego; Francis H. Swan, Acting-Assistant Paymaster, U. S. S. Otsego; Edward T. Horton, ordinary seaman, U. S. S. Chicopee, escaped; Bernard Harley, ordinary seaman, U. S. S. Chicopee; William Smith, ordinary seaman, U. S. S. Chicopee; Richard Hamilton, coalheaver, U. S. S. Shamrock; R. H. King, landsman, picket-boat; —— Wilkes, landsman, picket-boat; —— Demming, landsman, picket-boat; Samuel Higgins, first-class fireman, picket-boat, drowned.”

Cushing became a commander in 1872, and he was then the youngest man of the rank. He died of brain fever at Washington in 1874. He was tall (six feet) and slender, and, as his portrait shows, looked more like a poet than a warrior. And the student of history who reads his dispatches will say that he was both.

With the destruction of the Albemarle the hope of the Confederates fled. But two seaports remained to them—Charleston and Wilmington.