On April 12, 1864, Lieutenant Commander W. Charles A. Flusser wrote his younger sister Fanny from the USS Miami:
The rebs promise to fight us this week with the ironclad ram, for which I have been watching so long, and eleven thousand men.
I wish our garrison was one-third as strong. I don’t know whether the scamps will come or not, but will be prepared by day after tomorrow to give them a good fight so far as the boats are concerned. The longshore people must look out for themselves while we afloat destroy the Sheep—the name we’ve given the ironclad because we thought it would not show fight. It will prove to be a formidable antagonist, and we will have our hands full to whip it. Fortunately it will not be many minutes after her appearance before the result of the passage at arms is known.
I wrote the admiral to send me some good shot to penetrate her armor and I should need no more boats. Fact is, I look on her as peculiarly my own. I am prepared for a very desperate fight, and think unless Fortune frown outrageously on me, my arrangements will defeat her. The plan to fight her was the result of long thought and some anxiety. I was lying sick abed … and trying to read, but was not satisfied with my preparations, and read without understanding, thinking all the while of her.
At 4 o’clock in the morning I had found what I wanted, and turning to a friend who was smoking by my bedside, and who was formerly in the Navy, I gave him my plan. He expressed his delight and his entire confidence of success. The next day it was made known to several officers, and its advantages were so evident that all immediately [gave their support.]
I think there is no instance on record of a fight on the plan I intended to pursue. In fifteen minutes after we get to close quarters my commission as commander is secured or I am a dead man. I am aware that the result of these rests with God. I shall not fail to ask his aid, but do not think the rebel cause so good that we have any reason to fear the end.
That same day, Gilbert Elliott and Commander James Cooke received a surprise visit from General Robert Frederick Hoke, the dashing young commander of a large, seasoned Virginia army brigade.
Hoke had two reasons for his appearance at the shipyard. The first was to conduct an inspection of their ironclad—Cooke had informally named it the Albemarle the previous October—and to judge with his own eyes whether reports of its near completion were trustworthy. The second reason was to convey an urgent message from Richmond.
President Jefferson Davis and his chief military advisor, General Braxton Bragg, had determined that the Union’s tight clamp on North Carolina shipping must end. For two long years, the town of Plymouth had been the home base for Flusser’s relentless squadron of blockaders, a staging area for too many Yankee incursions into the Sounds and its tributary rivers. The raids grew bolder by the day, penetrating deeper into Confederate territory.
General Bragg had been devising a plan to retake Plymouth from the Yankees with a swift, coordinated, and overwhelming offensive. Under the command of General Henry W. Wessells, the federal garrison’s 2,300 troops were scattered around the town in vulnerable earthworks fortifications, none of the detachments larger than 500 men, many isolated by large tracts of forest and marshland. Bragg believed the command insufficient for defending the place against a major expeditionary force—and his sources told him Wessells shared his belief. But Wessells’s superiors, Generals Peck and Butler, had repeatedly ignored his appeals for reinforcements, putting their confidence in the protection given his waterfront flanks by Flusser’s Plymouth squadron.
This small fleet consisted of four gunboats: the USS Miami, commanded by the gallant Flusser himself; the Southfield, commanded by Lieutenant Charles French; the USS Whitehead (French’s former ship) captained by Acting Ensign George W. Barret; and the USS Ceres, commanded by Acting Master Henry H. Foster. An army transport, the USS Bombshell, was also attached to the squadron.
Summarizing things for Elliott and Cooke at the shipyard, Hoke explained that General Bragg had placed him in command of the land forces to participate in the attack on Plymouth, some seven thousand men from half a dozen Confederate states. His assignment was to encircle Wessells’s garrison, wait for the naval patrols to be cleared, and then storm the enemy’s landward fortifications. It would be up to the Albemarle to carry out the naval assault by drawing off and annihilating Flusser’s squadron.
The expedition, Hoke said, was to begin within two weeks, taking advantage of a quiescent Union front. It was essential that the Albemarle play her part.
Elliott and Cooke hesitated at first. There was too much work left on the ironclad. Boilers, engines, roofing, and iron shield were to be fitted before she could be ready for service.
But Hoke was adamant, demanding “a careful statement as to the exact time, with increased facilities, that the Albemarle could be depended upon for assistance.”
As he listened, Cooke recognized a golden opportunity. He had long desired greater military aid. Could he have it now?
“We could do it in fifteen days,” he replied, matter-of-factly. “With ten additional mechanics.”
Hoke did better. Cooke was ordered to prepare the ram, “and guns, ammunition, and a few men quickly arrived,” with a promise of the rest of the crew in short order. On April 16—only a day before the planned attack—Hoke made a return visit to the yard, officially naming Cooke the ironclad’s commander, and bringing with him two officers and twenty added volunteers from his brigade, described as “long lank Tar Heels from the piney woods” with little or no training as sailors.
Though Cooke would have preferred more experienced hands, he felt confident that he could whip the North Carolina soldiers into shape. His larger problem, however, was that despite his “herculean exertions,” the Albemarle was not completed. But Cooke had “named his day for action, and … was not a man to deal in disappointments.”
He intended to keep his promise.
It was on the morning of Sunday, April 17, that the newly christened CSS Albemarle “began her career as a floating workshop,” Cooke atop her pilothouse barking orders to cast off all lines, and Gilbert Elliott aboard as his volunteer aide. Elliott had meant to see the action, firsthand.
To the townspeople on the riverbanks, gathered in small boats and carriages to watch her pass, the ship was a source of great amusement and curiosity as she wound toward her destination. There were ten portable forges on deck, along with a towed forge behind her in case of problems. Mechanics and carpenters thronged her sides, hanging from construction stages and pounding away at her armor plates with huge sledgehammers. Inside her hull, military preparations began amid the clatter, the gun captains drilling their men at the big rifled cannons, shouting commands in a babble of voices.
Years later, Gilbert Elliott would offer this description of his greatest achievement moving down the turbid waters of the Roanoke:
The Albemarle was 152 feet long between perpendiculars…. The shield was sixty feet in length and octagonal in form…. The armament consisted of two rifled Brooke guns mounted on pivot-carriages, each gun working through three portholes…. She had two propellers driven by two engines of 200-horse power each…. The sides were covered from the knuckle, four feet below the deck, with iron plates two inches thick. The prow was built of oak, running eighteen feet back … [and] covered on the outside with iron plating, two inches thick, and tapering off to a four-inch edge [to form] the ram.
Fearsome as the Albemarle was, one farmer also saw humor in her as she set sail. “I never conceived of anything more perfectly ridiculous than the appearance of the critter as she slowly passed by my landing,” he wrote, laconically.
As with most debuts, it was difficult to impress every critic.
At 10:00 p.m. trouble struck. The bolts that held the main coupling of the Albemarle’s center shaft unseated, causing her to grind to a dead halt in the water.
Fortunately, Cooke had the portable forges aboard. His smiths and mechanics labored for six hours to make repairs and were able to get the ship back underway around 3:00 a.m.
But trouble soon struck again. The ironclad had continued some distance downriver when the rudderhead broke off, leading to another halt. Again, workmen scrambled to fix the damage, but four more hours were lost.
Despite these delays, Cooke managed to reach a point about three miles above Plymouth by 10:00 p.m. on Monday. Upon arrival, he became confused. General Hoke’s troops were supposed to have moved against Plymouth the day before, setting up siege artillery around the town. But Cooke had yet to hear from them, and knew nothing of their status, the disposition of enemy shore batteries, or the placement of obstructions such as torpedoes, sunken vessels, and wooden piles in the river. He could not continue responsibly without more information, so he lowered anchor and sent a lieutenant and some men out on a scouting expedition.
Two hours later, the party returned with discouraging news. They had found the obstructions and believed them impossible to pass. Frustrated, Cooke saw little choice but to bank the engine fires and order the off-duty officers and crew to rest.
For Elliott, the disappointment was too much to abide in silence.
“If the ram is to accomplish anything, it is now or never, sir,” he appealed to Cooke, feeling uncomfortable lying at anchor all night. “It will be foolhardy to attempt passage of the obstructions and batteries in the daytime.”
Cooke did not disagree. But what would he suggest they do?
“I request permission to make a personal investigation,” Elliott said, without hesitation.
Given the emergency, Cooke assented, admiring Elliott’s bravery. For the best assessment, Elliott would have to go downriver as far as Plymouth under enemy guns.
At 11:00 p.m., Elliott rowed from the Albemarle in a small lifeboat, Pilot John Luck and two of the few experienced seamen on board having volunteered their services. Arriving at the obstructions in the black of night, the group took soundings with a long pole, and to their “great joy” found there was ten feet of water over and above the obstructions. The oldest seamen said this was due to the remarkable spring melt on the heels of a long, snowy winter.
“Such high water has never before been seen in Roanoke River,” he enthused.
But there was more to reconnoiter. Pushing downstream to Plymouth, Elliott and his volunteers took advantage of the shadow of the trees on the north side of the river, opposite the town, and silently watched federal transports taking on women and children, who were being sent to safety ahead of Hoke’s anticipated bombardment. After a while, almost afraid to breathe, the party made way their back toward the ram with muffled oars, hugging the river’s northern bank.
Reaching the ship about 1:00 a.m., Elliott informed Captain Cooke it would be possible to navigate over the obstructions if the boat were kept in the middle of the stream, where the water was at its highest level.
The indomitable commander was quick to act. At 2:30 a.m., he roused his men, gave the order to get up steam, and in his impatience, slipped the cables and started downriver. He soon passed the fort at Warren’s Neck and took several shots from the battery without returning fire. Protected by their ironclad shield, those aboard the ram thought the noise made by the shot and shell striking the boat sounded no louder than pebbles thrown against an empty barrel.
The Albemarle continued onward, went safely over the obstructions, and lower down the river passed another fortification at Boyle’s Mill. Since its 200-pounder Parrott gun remained silent, Cooke knew his ship went unobserved—fortuitous considering the narrowness of the channel at that point.
Cooke was now less than a mile from Plymouth. Still having heard nothing from the army, he remained unsure what course to pursue. If Hoke’s troops had massed around the town according to plan, they would be waiting to move on his arrival. He needed to determine their position and let them know he was close.
What he did not know was that Hoke was not alone in expecting him. For the better part of two years, Commander Charles W. Flusser had received steady intelligence about the construction of the ironclad which he sarcastically called the Sheep. Recently, he’d heard she was poised for an imminent attack, making her a sheep no longer.
He would lay a clever trap.
Flusser’s preparations had begun a full month before, in late March, as word of increased rebel military activity near Plymouth and the ram’s near completion came filtering out of North Carolina. With snow melting and spring rains raising the river to a depth that would allow the Albemarle’s passage, he had anticipated that it would appear at any time and laid his sunken obstructions upriver near Thoroughfare Gap. Though reports of the ironclad’s exact size and armaments were contradictory, Flusser had known it would be heavily armored and concluded that his best tactic against the vessel was to immobilize her so she could be blasted to smithereens at close range.
But how to stop her advance?
Over a year earlier, Admiral Lee had proposed that Flusser use a rear assault to fend off a floating battery moving toward Plymouth. His idea was for Flusser’s squadron to rush around the battery’s flanks to its rear, and “firing all arms … attack it by ramming and firing.”
Flusser had believed the admiral’s plan suicidal from its earliest mention. The thought of ramming his frail wooden craft against an ironclad—a ship designed to reduce such vessels to splinters—made no naval sense to him. And even if he were mad enough to try it, how were his four fleet boats to sweep past the ram on the Roanoke River, a mere three hundred yards wide in that area, with any hope of success?
No, he would not try this scheme, potentially disobeying superior officers—especially since he had devised what he believed was a far better one.
Of the five warships in his flotilla, the strongest were the Southfield and the Miami, double-ended gunboats designed to maneuver in narrow riverine waterways. Flusser reasoned that if he lashed them together in a V formation with rope and chain cable across their forecastles, he could lure the Albemarle into the V, entangle her, and pound her with the forward deck guns of both ships, while simultaneously bringing to bear the heavy shore guns of Fort Gray and Fort Worth. Then, by having the two warships steam ahead, he could jam the ram’s stern into the bank, where she would be at his mercy—helpless against the land and water artillery leveled against her.
Flusser felt confident of the plan’s success. In his mind, it was the best possible plan under the circumstances, turning the Albemarle’s very size, bulk, and weight against her.
“We will sink her, or I will sink her myself,” he told his squadron commanders.
On April 17, Flusser was ready and waiting for the colossus, having received word that she had embarked from Halifax the day before. He did not know of the drive shaft problems that had forced her to stop for repairs following her launch. He did not know of the second breakdown either.
What he did know was that the Confederate siege of Plymouth had begun with a fury. When the Albemarle did not arrive on time, General Hoke, thinking Captain Cooke and his ironclad might not show, began pounding the town with artillery fire ahead of his invasion.
Under constant shelling, General Wessells on Sunday night ordered all Plymouth’s noncombatants—women, children, slaves, and the sick and disabled—brought to a safer point aboard the Union steamboat Massasoit.
Flusser had helped with the evacuation. As he paced the decks of the steamboat, lending a hand where he could, he was wrenched by the anguished groans of the wounded and the hasty farewells of pale, terrified women leaving their men behind to face the fearsome ironclad.
Pausing amid the confusion, he gallantly tried to reassure them.
“Ladies, I have waited two long years for the rebel ram,” he said. “The Navy will do its duty. We shall sink, destroy, or capture it, or find our graves in the Roanoke.”
On April 18, while repairs were made to the ram upriver, the Ceres was at Plymouth, and the Whitehead at the Thoroughfare a few miles above town, both vessels serving as scouts for the ironclad’s advance. Meanwhile, the Southfield was above Plymouth until the Confederate fire stopped for the night around 9:00 p.m.
About half a mile below the town, Flusser himself was back aboard the Miami waiting for a report from one or both of his outliers. He received it shortly after midnight on April 19, when the Whitehead arrived “by a roundabout passage from below and reported the ram as having passed the Thoroughfare.”
Flusser knew the time had come to set his plan in motion. At 1:30 a.m., he ordered the Southfield to move onto the port side of the Miami. He then made what would prove a critical error in judgement.
In a preliminary report to Flag Officer Davenport, he had written, “I feel confident of success as far as we (the Navy) are concerned. [But] my plan of defense prevents me giving the army what aid I should wish before the ram is whipped.”
The suffering that Flusser saw during the evacuation convinced him to change that plan to its detriment. He would not leave the soldiers on shore fighting without naval support any longer than necessary—even if it meant putting himself at increased risk. Based on a dry run, he reasoned that the amount of time needed to release the chain lashings, and then clear the decks for action, was about twice the time required to release the rope lashings. To be ready in the shortest possible time to assist the army, he decided to pass only rope lashings between the two vessels.
At 3:45 a.m., the Albemarle finally appeared in the predawn gloom. Just moments earlier, her lookouts had spotted the two Yankee gunboats and sounded the alarm, sending her men to quarters.
In his cabin aboard the Miami, Commander Flusser was informed hastily of the ram’s appearance by his executive officer, acting Master’s Mate William Welles. Coming on deck at once, he peered straight out over his bow and saw an enormous shadow in the middle of the river, bearing straight in his direction.
“Steam ahead as fast as possible and run the ram down!” he shouted.
In less than a minute, obeying his order, the Miami and Southfield moved up the river, their bells ringing to go ahead, fast.
At first, Captain Cooke and John Luck, the pilot, did not see Flusser’s snare. But as the ram closed with the vessels, the spars lashing them together suddenly grew visible in the twilight.
Cooke did not take long to recover from his surprise. He knew the steamers would be unable to maneuver in time to avoid a collision, not lashed together as they were. Shouting orders to feint toward the southern shore, he ordered a turn midstream with the throttles wide open. The Miami was now closest to the ironclad off her port bow, the Southfield slightly behind and dead ahead.
He was turning the Yankees’ trap right back on them.
The clash was brief and ferocious. Grazing the Miami near the waterline, the Albemarle tore a ten-foot long gouge into her port bow and then plowed into the Southfield at full speed, her ram crunching nine feet into her starboard side. A moment later, she opened fire on both ships with her forward pivot gun and a hail of musketry.
The Yankee steamers had simultaneously brought their batteries to bear on the ironclad as she came on them, but the solid shot from their hundred-pounder Parrott rifles and nine-inch Dahlgren guns did not so much as leave a perceptible dent on her armor. Impaled on her iron tusk, the Southfield began sinking at once, water rushing through a gaping hole in her starboard bow. The Confederate ram had pierced clear through to her forward storeroom and boiler.
Then the unexpected happened. The impact of the armored behemoth striking the rope lashings put tremendous stress on them—stress the chains Flusser originally intended to use, might have withstood. As the mortally wounded Southfield continued “forging ahead on her own steam,” and the straining ropes buckled and snapped, the Albemarle wedged apart the two federal gunboats, and the Miami swung wildly around toward the Southfield.
Lieutenant French’s ship lost, he ordered his crew into their boats. But as the Miami’s stern came swinging toward them, he instructed “such men as could do so to jump onto her decks.” Some succeeded, while some splashed helplessly into the Roanoke. Still others, unable to get off in time, went down with the ship. French, leaping across the gap, was among those to land on the Miami safely.
Meanwhile, the Miami’s crewmen were lobbing grenades through the ironclad’s portholes. Captain Cooke repeatedly shouted for Luck to reverse engines, but the ram’s iron plates were deeply entangled in the frame of the Yankee vessel. The Southfield had begun to fill and settle down on the Albemarle, forcing her bow to submerge.
“She’s taking water!” the ironclad’s crewmen shouted. The river came gushing through her portholes as she tilted forward.
Again, Cooke shouted for Luck to back up the ship. And once again, he failed to extricate her from the sinking Union vessel. Unable to use his pivot gun with the bow half underwater, Cooke ordered his entire crew on deck to engage the enemy with small arms. On the Miami, a group of Flusser’s hands also gathered up top to form a boarding party, firing their muskets, and dueling with the Confederates at close quarters.
By now, the Southfield had almost dragged the ironclad beneath the surface. But as the Union gunboat struck bottom, she leaned over on her side and shifted away from the Albemarle’s bow, enabling Luck to finally wrench her free. The ironclad bobbed to the surface on an even keel, water sluicing from her foredeck.
She came up under heavy fire. Flusser had been hitting her with “broadside after broadside,” firing the first three shots himself. His six great guns belched and roared, but their shells bounced ineffectually off the ram’s metal hide.
Flusser thought he saw a desperate opening—if one were bold enough to take advantage of it. The Albemarle had moved so close to one of his Dahlgrens that her side was almost touching its muzzle. Flusser could see nothing but a wall of iron. At that close range, he hoped a shot from the Dahlgren nine-inch might pierce the vessel’s armor.
Rushing to the weapon, he ordered his division officer, acting Ensign Thomas Hargis, to fire.
Hargis was reluctant. “There’s a shell in that gun, captain!” he warned.
Flusser understood his meaning. The percussion shell was on a ten-second fuse. If it did not penetrate the armor, it was likely to ricochet back at them. But he waved Hargis off, thinking it his last and best chance to destroy the ironclad.
“In fifteen minutes after we get to close quarters, my commission as commander is secured or I am a dead man.”
It is possible those words written to his sister just days earlier flashed through Flusser’s mind at that instant.
“Never mind, my lad!” he shouted. The side of the iron behemoth filled his vision. “We will give them this first, and solid shot after!”
Pushing the young officer to one side, he sprang to the gun, took hold of its lanyard, and pulled.
It was a courageous but fatal decision. True to Hargis’s prediction, the shell rebounded harmlessly off the ironclad’s side, and thumped back onto the Miami’s deck. Flusser and Hargis barely had time to think before it exploded in a tremendous blast of heat and light.
Flusser died instantly, nearly torn to pieces by shell fragments. Beside him, Ensign Hargis was badly mangled, but he would linger for over a month at the Naval Hospital in Norfolk before dying. Close by, ten others suffered less critical injuries.
Now in command of the Miami, Captain French, with Executive Officer Welles in agreement, ordered a retreat. With the Southfield sunk in twenty feet of water, the iron ram had straightened and was making directly for them. They considered it useless to sacrifice the ship like the other vessel.
As the Miami fled downriver, Captain Cooke was free to turn the Albemarle’s guns on the Union shore defenses at Fort Williams.
The battle for Plymouth was practically over. Surrounded by Hoke’s troops, battered by “terrible fire,” General Wessells capitulated on April 20.
As he extended his sword to Hoke in crestfallen surrender, he remarked, “General Hoke, this is the saddest day of my life.”
“General, this is the proudest day of mine,” Hoke responded.
After two years, the Confederacy had reclaimed the North Carolina Sounds, taking 1,600 prisoners, and capturing spoils that included twenty-five Union artillery guns, a huge storehouse of food and supplies, and 200 tons of fuel coal. More devastatingly, Gilbert Elliott’s ironclad controlled the strategically vital Roanoke. It was one of the Union’s worst defeats of the war.
For the next six months, the Albemarle reigned supreme over the state’s eastern waters.