
The President’s Message:
The Round Table has
received two series of books.
Thank you to Linda Franke for this generous donation in memory of
Round Table member Bob Franke.
The first group is
the Collector’s Library of the Civil War Time-Life series.
Each book is a reprint of an original work written after the war.
They were reprinted in 1982.
The twenty books are leather bound and in pristine condition.
The second group is
The
Virginia Regimental Histories Series.
In 1974 Harold Howard determined to publish a history of every
Virginia Regiment that served in the Civil War.
The first book was published in 1982 and the last in 2004.
Each book contains a unit history and annotated muster roll
including every soldier known to serve with the unit.
Each book is hard bound in gray cloth with the seal of the
Virginia Commonwealth and in mint condition.
Many of them are out of print and no longer available.
If you have any
interest in purchasing these sets of books please contact me,
honeybell7@aol.com.
Gerridine LaRovere
April 12, 2023 Program:
Janell Bloodworth will be presenting a two-part
program. Through the years
the name Mudd has been denigrated and always has a negative connotation.
Janell will tell us the actual facts of Dr. Samuel Mudd’s
encounter with John Wilkes Booth.
The second part of the program answers the “burning” questions
about General Ambrose Burnside’s spy girl friend.
Did he know that she was a secret agent?
Did the general follow his rule of a death sentence to anyone
spying?
March
8, 2023 Program:
Robert
introduced his talk with a brief description of a few of the prominent
players both North and South, the naval vessels in use, and the
geography of eastern Virginia and North Carolina.
With a nod to the size of this article I will mention just three
people here and develop more as the story develops.
The most senior person who plays a part in this drama is
Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles.
Without his intervention at various points in time, this story
would never have happened.
The Confederate Secretary of the Navy was Stephen Russell Mallory.
Robert mentioned John L. Porter who was responsible for the
construction of ironclads.
William Cushing was born in Delafield, WI on November 4, 1842.
He was the central player in this talk and, as you will come to
learn, a giant character in the history of the American Navy.
Will, as he was known, was the tenth of eleven children of Milton
and Mary Cushing. Four of
the Cushing boys served in the Civil War.
With the help of a family member Will enters the Naval Academy in
1857 as the youngest member of the Class of 1861.
This class had some well-known members, like George Dewey and
Alfred Thayer Mahan, but our boy Will will not graduate with this class
as he was removed from it just three months before graduation.
Discipline, attitude, and poor academics were to be his downfall.
His attitude, he was very arrogant, which will actually serve him
well as this tale unwinds.
Thus, he leaves Annapolis
Cushing tried to fight this dismissal by enlisting the help of a cousin
who happened to be good friends with Gideon Welles.
Although William could not be reinstated at Annapolis, he did get
back into the Navy as that branch needed experienced personnel after
Fort Sumter is bombarded on April 12th.
Once again, Will uses
connections to get a naval commission.
He contacts a gunnery instructor, Charles Flusser, who knew him from the
Academy. Flusser knows MG
Benjamin Butler then in command of Army forces in Annapolis.
Butler speaks to his former college roommate Assistant Secretary
of the Navy, Gustavus Fox, who work for Gideon Welles.
Do you see how this works?
His appointment is backdated to April 1, 1861 and Cushing is
assigned as acting masters mate on
USS Minnesota.
He was very lucky as there were only 42 operational warships in
the Navy and only 3 were available for service on the Atlantic Coast.
That number will swell to 240 vessels by the end of the year and
to 650 ships by the end of the Civil War.
Aboard
Minnesota,
Will is serving the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron.
If a ship is taken by the Union warships, a crew will be assigned
to take the captured vessel to a major port.
Flag Officer Commander Silas Stringham assigned William Cushing
to take the prize of war, the schooner
Delaware Farmer,
to the Admiralty Court in Philadelphia.
While at the Naval Academy it was pointed out that Cushing had "talent
for buffoonery." This did
not end with his dismissal as he was always getting into scuffles.
Shortly after his return from sailing prizes to the ports of the
Admiralty Court, Will was at it again.
On September 13th
he clashed with a superior officer aboard
Minnesota.
While this did not result in any serious charges being leveled at
him, Cushing submits his resignation from the Navy.
After resigning he lobbies to be reinstated in his academy class.
The decision goes back to Welles who seeks the opinion of George
Blake. Blake was the
Commandant at the time of Cushing’s dismissal.
After reviewing actual performance aboard
Minnesota
he is warranted a USNA midshipman with a reinstatement date of June 1,
1861. His class rank is 21
out of 26 members of the Class of 1861, but he is
not
considered a graduate of the academy.
It is hard to believe that after all this he is given an assignment
aboard
Cambridge,
a gunboat. It seems that
the blockading squadron has need of such officers like him.
The larger ships cannot get into the shallow waters of eastern
Virginia and North Carolina.
Boats like
Cambridge
work well in rivers and bays found in this area.
There he will be witness and part of naval history.
Cushing is assigned to work the mouth of the Rappahannock River.
There he meets a group of slaves who tell of a schooner loaded
with wheat and wood anchored about five miles upstream.
He left
Cambridge,
found the schooner, and burned the sailing vessel.
While in the area in November, he bombarded the town of Urbana
destroying a storehouse of ammunition.
Going up and down the Rappahannock Will located and noted many
batteries. While on patrol
Cambridge
brought 400 slaves to safety at Fort Monroe.
In the waters off the Virginia capes, he is intercepting small
crafts. The weather is very
cold and it begins to take a toll on his health.
On March 8, 1862 he watches the ironclad, renamed the
Virginia,
sink a number of wooden blockade ships.
Cushing towed the ship
St. Lawrence
away from the action. While
doing this a shell from
Virginia
wounded his hand. On the
next day he watched the battle of the ironclads
Monitor
and
Virginia.
Will’s next assignment will be to serve under his old friend, Charles
Flusser on
Commodore Perry,
a sidewheeler steamer which has been converted to a gunboat.
By the summer of 1862 the whole coast from Cape Fear, NC to the
Virginia line was under Union control.
Only Wilmington was in Confederate hands as it was the premier
base for blockade runners.
The
Commodore Perry
has been assigned to a joint Army-Navy operation against Franklin, VA
along the Blackwater River.
Cushing demonstrates bravery by firing field pieces at the enemy.
Through his action Will is given his first command the captured
Confederate vessel,
Ellis.
Cushing takes his crew down the coast to New Topsail Inlet, NC,
just north of Wilmington.
There he spots the schooner
Adelaide,
loaded with turpentine, cotton, and tobacco headed out for Nassau,
Bahamas. Since the schooner
draws too much water she is aground.
Will takes this opportunity to torch the ship.
In October he finds a saltworks inland from New Topsail Inlet and
burns it to the ground.
The last mission of
Ellis
is on the New River Inlet.
They discover a vessel loaded with cotton and turpentine; however, the
Confederates decide to burn their own ship.
Way out in the channel they are attacked by enemy artillery.
Will and his crew burn the
Ellis,
row a small boat, and board a schooner and make good their escape.
With the loss of
Ellis,
Will takes charge of
Commodore Barney,
a ship five times the size of his last boat.
In April 1863 Rebel forces under the command of James Longstreet
advance on Suffolk, VA.
Union forces, including
Commodore Barney,
are sent to delay Longstreet.
The Union boats are ambushed and casualties occur but the
fighting delays Longstreet’s departure until May 4th.
Thus, his corps is too late to take part in the battle in
Chancellorsville.
Robert presented more stories, but we now need to move to the part of
the tale where our hero, Lieutenant Cushing, writes his name in US naval
history. This is the story
of the sinking of
CSS Albemarle.
All of the work Will has done to date is nothing more than a
preview of coming attractions.
In the spring of 1864 a mighty ironclad, second only to the
CSS Virginia
in the amount of damage done to the US Navy, posed a threat to all of
eastern North Carolina.
Based in Plymouth, NC,
CSS Albemarle,
was a target of opportunity to any Union commander who could devise a
plan of attack.
You can easily see what a problem this would be.
The blockading fleet had no ironclads with which to attack this
monster directly as the
USS Monitor
did. Confederate Secretary
of the Navy, Stephan Mallory wanted to build a large fleet of ironclads
in order to break the northern blockade.
However, only 35 were actually built and only one third of that
number actually entered into combat.
CSS Albemarle,
was one of the best. It was
158 feet long but only drew 8 feet.
This made it ideal for operations on the river and on out into
Albemarle Sound.
This ship is in Plymouth because she attacked the town and captured it.
She scooped up Union soldiers, artillery pieces, and two hundred
tons of coal. Along the way
Albemarle
destroys a number of wooden vessels.
Once in town, she remained a threat to the blockading squadron
stationed in Albemarle Sound.
It was of great concern to the Navy chiefs in Washington, DC.
How to handle the growing threat was the problem for Rear Admiral
Samuel P. Lee, the commander of the North Atlantic Blockade Squadron.
Lee was a member of the famous Lee family of Virginia and a
cousin of Robert E. Lee.
Naturally, Navy high command was concerned about Samuel’s loyalties.
When questioned about it, sailor Lee replied “When I find the
word Virginia in my commission I will join the Confederacy.”
Lee’s logic with respect to
CSS Albemarle
was as follows. First,
Union Monitors drew too much water to get over the bar into Albemarle
Sound. Second, he did not
want to risk any more wooden ships fighting an ironclad.
A small boat raid seemed like the best option, but… Who best to
head up such a daunting operation?
William Cushing was Lee’s solution.
A number of alternatives were considered for the raid.
But it all came down to a small boat fitted with a torpedo.
On July 28, 1864 Cushing receives orders from Secretary Wells to
report to New York. Once
there, the final plan involved a wooden screw fitted steam cutter about
30 feet long. It was fitted
with a 12-pound howitzer and, central to the plan, a torpedo fitted to
the end of a long spar.
Although dangerous, floating torpedoes could be controlled.
In this plan the spar placed the explosive where it could do the
most damage. When set, the
device was set free from the spar with one line; another line detonated
the charge. Before heading
south Cushing practiced the attack in the Hudson River.
Time
has passed. It is now 3:00
AM early on October 27th.
The weather is rainy with the air temperature of 65° and the
water is 55°. Will, along
with an all-volunteer crew have brought their small craft within viewing
distance of their prey. The
weather, along with muffled engines, have gotten them this far
undetected, however, pickets on a sunken Union ship spot the Yankees.
Flickering lights on
Albemarle
illuminate the target, while the totally dark cutter is hard to spot.
As Cushing nears the ironclad, he sees a ring of logs meant to
protect it from such an attack.
Flying in at full speed the attacking ship smashes into the logs
as Will hopes that slime on the logs will act as a lubricant.
He makes it only halfway in.
Captain A. F. Warley yells out “what boat is that?”
“We’ll soon let you know,” replied Cushing as he yanked the
lanyard on the grape filled howitzer.
While grape shop did nothing to the ironclad it certainly cleared
the deck.
In running into the logs, the cutter managed to get over the barrier,
but the cutter was now trapped in the encirclement.
It was in good position to position the torpedo.
As they were trained to do, the crew lowered the weapon into the
water and under the victim.
This took time such that Warley had his crew load a parrot gun from
inside the casement and prepared to blow Will to kingdom come.
Small arms fire hit Cushing and his men.
Will loses the heal of one shoe, parts of his sleeve, and the
back of his coat. He does
not flinch. Warley has
problems of his own. They
are having trouble depressing the gun.
Will could hear him shout “lower, lower, lower…”
Finally, the torpedo is in good position under the water near the bow of
Albemarle.
Now! Just as Will
pulled the torpedo’s firing lanyard, he hears Warley scream “fire.”
Then all was lost in sensation, a huge roar, hot wind,
floorboards vanish, a wave of water, and all went quiet.
Will and his men are thrown out of the boat and into the water.
The torpedo’s explosion, while not perfectly placed, was good
enough to hole
Albemarle.
Because she did not have steam up, the ironclad’s crew could not
keep up with the rising water and so the ship went down.
The beast of the Roanoke River, the Confederate’s most effective
ironclad, fell to a man standing in an open boat.
All of Cushing’s men had been thrown into the river.
Of the 15 men on the cutter, Will and one other crewman make good
their escape. Two men drown
and the other 11 are captured.
Cushing swims to the mouth of the river and is taken aboard a
Union picket vessel. He is
taken to Hampton Roads where he reports to Admiral David Dixon Porter.
This adventure made William Cushing a hero in the media of the time.
Gideon Wells sent him a letter of commendation from the Navy
Department. Lincoln
recommended Cushing for a vote of thanks.
Congress passed that vote on December 20th.
In those days this vote was a higher honor than the Medal of
Honor. He also was promoted
to Lieutenant Commander, the youngest of that rank in the Navy, age 21.
Robert gave a brief summary of Cushing’s Civil War wrap up,
followed by his post war naval career.
By 1874 his health declines and he dies on December 17, 1874.
William Barker Cushing was one of the most daring men in American naval
history. Like men of
today’s Navy SEALs he excelled at raids behind enemy lines, missions
that today are called special operations, and he was better at it than
any of his contemporaries Union or Confederate.
During the Civil War he always seemed to be planning, executing,
or recovering from raids.
He destroyed vessels, burned facilities, and gathered intelligence.
During these missions he fought all manner of rebel forces, from
regular infantry, artillery, and cavalry to guerillas.
By the end of the war, he had amassed four commendations from the
Navy, the thanks of Congress, and the thanks from President Lincoln.
All this by a man who was only 22 years old when Lee surrendered
at Appomattox.
Cushing is more than image, in virtually single handedly sinking the
Confederate ironclad
Albemarle.
This was done with a torpedo mounted on an open boat which is
perhaps the greatest single feat of arms in American history.
We may not know it, but he is in a great many respects more a
hero fit for our times than he was for his.
Last changed: 03/28/23 |