THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 30, 1995 TAG: 9504280205
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 236 lines
IT WAS 131 YEARS AGO this week that the furious booming of a naval battle rolled across the Albemarle Sound.
Ten miles to the northwest, windows rattled in Edenton, and farther away in Plymouth at the mouth of the Roanoke River loyal citizens of the Confederacy knew the distant rumbling wasn't thunder.
The sounds of gunfire echoed over the waters when a lone Confederate ironclad ram, the CSS Albemarle, took on seven Union warships off Sandy Point in Chowan County in the late afternoon of May 5, 1864. The Albemarle, flying the Stars and Bars, fought the Yankee gunboats to a standstill and then safely retired to Plymouth.
An eyewitness on shore reported:
``Sometimes the whole number (of warships), the ram included, were completely shrouded in thick white smoke which lay upon the blue, rippling, waters like a cloud in a summer sky, while naught else was seen of the fierce combat but columns of snowy spray, rising successively in long lines as the balls ricocheted across the waters.
``Then the soft south wind would lift the curtain just in time to disclose the red flashes of new broadsides . . . or the jet of lurid fire which preceded one of the sonorous, metallic voices of the iron monster (the Albemarle).''
The quote was one of hundreds recovered from records of the Albemarle by Robert G. Elliott, a retired General Electric engineer, in his 1994 book ``Ironclad of the Roanoke.'' The book is a biography of Gilbert Elliott, who as a teenage Elizabeth City shipwright-lawyer-to-be got the contract to build the Albemarle. Robert G. Elliott, who lives in Daytona Beach, is a direct descendant of Gilbert Elliott.
This week hundreds of visitors are expected at Civil War land battle sites in and around Plymouth, in Washington County, for a three-day history festival marking the anniversary of the extraordinary seven-to-one naval engagement fought by the Albemarle. The festival will open on Friday at the Plymouth museum on the Roanoke riverfront and continue through May 7.
Gilbert Elliott joined the North Carolina militia as a lieutenant at the onset of the war, but was called back to build the 376-ton Albemarle by Stephen R. Mallory, secretary of the Confederate Navy.
``I regard the possession of iron-armored ships as a matter of the first necessity,'' Mallory told the Confederate Congress in 1861.
It was through Mallory's urging that the USS Merrimac, a former Yankee frigate, was ironplated by Confederate salvors at the Gosport Navy Yard in Portsmouth and sent out as the CSS Virginia to battle the Monitor in Hampton Roads on March 9, 1862.
Gilbert Elliott started out to be a lawyer in Elizabeth City, where his mentor was William F. Martin, a local attorney, whose brother was adjutant-general of North Carolina. Early in the war, Col. William Martin was captured while leading North Carolina troops in an unsuccessful defense of Hatteras Island.
William Martin also operated a shipyard on the west bank of ``The Narrows'' of the Pasquotank River at Elizabeth City.
Gilbert Elliott, then 19 and a fledgling lawyer, was appointed to attend to the affairs of the captured William Martin, including management of Martin's Elizabeth City shipyard.
In those days menfolk and womenfolk had to grow up young and in a hurry in Elizabeth City. Gilbert Elliott's mother had been a Grice, another industrious local family, and today there is an Elliott St., and a Grice St. in downtown Elizabeth City as reminders of an earlier heritage.
On Jan. 4, 1862, young Elliott received a contract to build gunboats for $10,000 each at the Martin shipyard. Not long afterward, the Federals moved up the Pasquotank to capture Elizabeth City. Elliott managed to move many of Col. Martin's workmen and the shipyard equipment, first to Norfolk, and, when the Yankees overran Tidewater, safely west to the final building site of the CSS Albemarle far up the Roanoke River.
To understand the need for the ironclads on the North Carolina sounds and rivers, picture a pair of Union hands trying to choke off the Confederacy's lines of communication and supply south of Richmond.
One Yankee thumb would be pressed against Plymouth on the Roanoke River, and the other would be on New Bern on the Neuse River to the south. Both towns were gateways to the Confederate heartland in North Carolina. The Roanoke and Neuse rivers intersected most of the railroads supplying Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, and both waterways led to some of the Confederacy's vital victualing and munitions centers.
By early 1864, the choking Yankee blockade was tightening with the occupation of much of coastal North Carolina, including the cities of Plymouth and New Bern. Gen. Robert E. Lee told President Jefferson Davis how important he felt the rams would be in the planned recapture of New Bern:
``I regret very much that the boats on the Neuse and Roanoke are not completed,'' Lee wrote. ``With their aid I think success (in the retaking of New Bern) would be certain. Without them, though the place may be captured, the fruits of the expedition will be lessened and our command . . . of the waters of North Carolina uncertain.''
Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, who opened the bombardment of Fort Sumter in 1861, pointed out that Southern forces would have to patrol every mile of the interior railroads if the gateway river ports were not held on the Roanoke and Neuse rivers.
The difficult work of constructing a 136-foot Confederate ironclad is shown in a Kinston museum where the timbered remains of the CSS Neuse are on display.
The Neuse was a sister ship of the CSS Albemarle and was built on the upper Neuse River while Elliott was constructing the Albemarle on the Roanoke River.
Four-inch oak planks were fastened over 14-by-14-inch pine frames spaced so closely that the Albemarle would have floated if the the frames had been caulked. Locomotive boilers provided coal-fired steam for two huge single-cylinder engines that turned 8-foot, three-bladed twin-screw propellers.
All of the back-breaking, knuckle-skinning construction work on the Albemarle was done in a ``navy yard'' that was once a cornfield at Edwards Ferry on the south bank of the Roanoke River near present-day Scotland Neck in Halifax County.
Down on the Neuse River, a similiar ``shipyard'' was set up on a riverbank at White Hall, between Kinston and Goldsboro.
At both locations, ship timbers were hewn from nearby forests, and metal fastenings were forged on the spot by rural blacksmiths.
But while the need for the ironclads became critical after Union forces grabbed the Outer Banks and Albemarle and Pamlico Sound areas early in the war, it was to be two long years before Elliott's ironclad Albemarle set sail.
The main armor plating of the Albemarle (and the Neuse) was on the slanted sides of the long fixed turret, or casemate, that contained a pair of Brooke rifles firing a variety of 6.4-inch projectiles. The two guns in the main battery were designed to pivot within the casemates so that each covered a 180-degree sector forward or aft. The guns fired through metal ports that were swung out of the way when the ship was in action.
One of the Albemarle's Brooke rifles is at the old NATO headquarters at the Norfolk Naval Base.
Cmdr. James W. Cooke of the Confederate Navy set the standards of fighting spirit that marked the brief career of the Albemarle. As the ironclad's first skipper, Cooke mustered the nearly 100 members of his crew and took the Albemarle on her maiden voyage down the Roanoke early in April of 1864.
All of the historical references to the doughty Cooke agree he was a Halsey and Hornblower-style captain when the guns began to shoot. When he was surrounded by cannonading Union warships in the climactic battle off Sandy Point, Cooke ordered his crew topside to capture a Union warship after the heavier gunboat collided with the Albemarle.
The Albemarle's first engagement after steaming down the Roanoke was at Plymouth, then held by Federal troops and warships.
Union commanders knew Cooke was coming. Young Gilbert Elliott was with him, and later volunteered to locate and clear away obstructions placed in the river.
Before dawn on the morning of April 19, 1864, Cooke sighted two Union gunboats chained together in the river off Plymouth in an effort to trap the low-riding Albemarle.
Cooke ordered the ram's engines full ahead and steamed toward the enemy ships, the USS Southfield and the USS Miami.
``Protected by the ironclad shield, to those on board (the Albemarle) the noise made by shot and shell as they struck the boat sounded no louder than pebbles thrown against an empty barrel,'' young Elliott reported later.
In seconds, the Albemarle's port bow caromed off the Miami and the powerful ram smashed through the Southfield's starboard bow planking. The Southfield began to sink immediately, threatening to carry the Albemarle down with it.
The scene was vividly set by Robert G. Elliott in his book ``Ironclad of The Roanoke:''
``The Southfield's uninjured crewmen below decks scrambled topside, hastily lowering small boats in which to escape. . . . Others leaped into the water. wounded sailors was the screeching of escaping steam (from the sinking Southfield).''
``The ram is heavy and powerful and none of the (U.S.) gunboats here can stand against its power,'' a Union general told U.S. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, commanding occupying forces on Roanoke Island.
The Albemarle's epic fight against the seven Federal gunboats in Albemarle Sound soon followed.
With Plymouth reoccupied by Confederate forces, the southern high command decided that the Albemarle should proceed to New Bern to help in the recapture of that key town on the Neuse.
On May 5, Cooke sortied down the Roanoke. The Confederate commander soon sighted Union picket boats off the mouth of the river and, when they fled, he followed them until he sighted a sizable Union fleet off Sandy Point.
The seven Federal gunboats had a combined fighting weight of nearly 3,000 tons compared to the 376-ton displacement of the Albemarle.
What followed was a naval melee.
The Union ships steamed around the Albemarle, firing at random. Cooke cooly called his shots from the big Cooke casemate guns. When the USS Sassacus bore down to ram the Albemarle, the forward gun on the ironclad sent a point-blank projectile into it. A second shot heavily damaged the Union ship's engine room, but not before the Sassacus had struck the Albemarle, causing the Confederate ram to heel over far enough to allow water to pour into one of the gun ports.
``To those inside the ironclad the impact felt like an earthquake, sending many tumbling to the deck,'' said a later battle report quoted by Robert Elliott.
The badly damaged Union flotilla had had enough - fortunately for the Albemarle. The Confederate ram's smokestack was so full of holes from shellfire that the boilers couldn't draw enough to maintain steam. The funnel is now on display in a Raleigh state museum.
Cooke turned out all hands to break up furniture and fetch bacon and lard to fire the boilers. Slowly, the Albemarle steamed to Plymouth, and the Federals let her go.
Another act of heroism, this time by a Union naval officer, ended the Albemarle's career.
After repairing damage upriver, the Albemarle returned to her moorings at Plymouth, proudly wearing the sunken USS Southfield's funnel to replace her own riddled smokestack. Off the mouth of the Roanoke, Union picket boats kept guard.
Union Navy Lt. William B. Cushing volunteered to attempt to sink the Albemarle with a ``torpedo.'' A ``torpedo'' in those days meant a heavy explosive charge mounted on the end of a long boom sticking out from the bow of a small boat.
Cushing and a small crew of volunteers set out under cover of darkness to explode their gunpowder charge against the Albemarle's hull at Plymouth.
They succeeded, with magnificent valor.
Perhaps aided by ``a grand bacchanalian feast and dance'' in Plymouth, the raiders crept by dozing sentries until finally, amid a flurry of belated Confederate gunfire, Cushing and his bold men did what a small fleet of Union warships had been unable to do.
With a tremendous blast, their boom-mounted explosives blew a hole ``big enough to drive a wagon through'' in the ram's hull.
And there the Albemarle sank.
Not many months later, the war ended at Appomattox, and the Confederate ram that was largely created by an Elizabeth City teenager was eventually raised by Union salvors and towed off to Norfolk as a Union prize of war. ILLUSTRATION: [Cover]
HOME-MADE IRON-CLADS GAVE SOUTH LAST SHOT AT VICTORY
Illustration by JIM POOLE
The CSS Albemarle as it might have appeared on April 19, 1864, as it
approached the USS Southfield.
Staff photo by DREW C. WILSON
Jefferson Weaver, a tour guide at the CSS Neuse in Kinston, picks up
a firing pin for a main battery gun.
An artist's conception of the interior of the 136-foot Confederate
ironclad, the CSS Neuse, the sister ship of the CSS Albemarle. The
Neuse was built on the upper Neuse River while the Albemarle was
constructed on the Roanoke River.
Staff photo by DREW C. WILSON
Jefferson Weaver, a tour guide at the CSS Neuse in Kinston, picks up
a firing pin for a main battery gun.
by CNB