THE _ALBEMARLE_ AND CUSHING
A FORMIDABLE WARSHIP WAS BUILT UNDER REMARKABLE CONDITIONS TO ENABLE
THE CONFEDERATES TO REGAIN CONTROL OF THE INLAND WATERS OF NORTH
CAROLINA--VERY SUCCESSFUL AT FIRST, BUT SHE WAS LAID UP TO AWAIT
THE BUILDING OF ANOTHER ONE, AND THEN CAME CUSHING WITH HIS LITTLE
TORPEDO BOAT, AND THE CONFEDERATE HOPES WERE DESTROYED WITH THEIR
SHIP.
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.
[Illustration: William B. Cushing.
_From a photograph._]
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.
[Illustration: Cushing Blowing up the _Albemarle_.]
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.