CSS Albemarle
Ironclad Gunboat
In 1863, 19-year-old engineer Gilbert Elliott contracted with the Confederate Navy Department to construct an ironclad gunboat designed by John L. Porter, the navy’s chief architect. Elliott built the vessel at Edwards Ferry on the Roanoke River, 60 miles upstream from here, where his “shipyard” was Peter E. Smith’s cornfield. It took more than a year to construct CSS Albemarle, which was 158 feet long, 35 feet wide, and topped with a 60-foot-long case-mate sheathed with two layers of two-inch-thick iron plates. Inside the casemate, two large Brooke Rifle cannons could fire hundred-pound shells. An 18-foot-long white-oak ram, also sheathed with iron plates, extended from Albemarle’s bow to puncture the sides of wooden vessels and sink them.
Albemarle first saw action on April 19, 1864, during the Battle of Plymouth, when it rammed and sank USS Southfield. It also indirectly caused the death of the Federal fleet’s commander, Charles W. Flusser. A shell fired from Flusser’s ship (USS Miami) at Albemarle bounced off the iron plating back onto Miami and exploded, killing Flusser, who was standing next to the cannon that had fired the shell.
On May 5, in an engagement in Albemarle Sound, the Albemarle faced seven U.S. gunboats. Despite being outgunned 60 cannons to two, outshelled 557 to 27, and rammed, Albemarle escaped destruction. The ironclad finally was torpedoed (blown up with a mine on the end of a wooden spar) on October 27, by a motor launch commanded by Lt. William B. Cushing, and sank. The Federals recaptured Plymouth on October 31.
Marker can be reached from the intersection of East Water Street and Madison Street, on the left when traveling east.
Courtesy hmdb.org
