Thus was gratified his most legitimate ambition. When there was a talk of making him a candidate for the Presidency he said, “I am greatly obliged to my friends, but am thankful that I have no ambition for anything but what I am, an Admiral.”
CUSHING AND THE ALBEMARLE. OCTOBER, 1864.
The Sounds and waters of North Carolina were early the scenes of important enterprises by the combined Army and Navy of the United States. The Hatteras forts, Roanoke Island, Newbern, Plymouth and other places were early captured, some of them after regular actions. A position was gained from which the important inland communication was threatened, which was vital to the Confederacy, while the commerce of the Sounds was entirely put a stop to.
It was important for them to regain what they had lost, and to this end they put forth every effort.
Among other means they commenced and hastened to completion a formidable iron-clad vessel. In June, 1863, Lieutenant-Commander C. W. Flusser, an excellent and thoroughly reliable officer, had reported that a battery was building at Edward’s Ferry, near Weldon, on the Roanoke River, to be cased with pine sills, fourteen inches square, and plated with railroad iron. The slanting roof was to be made of five inches of pine, five inches of oak, and railroad iron over that.
Unfortunately, the light-draught monitors, which should have been on hand to meet this vessel, turned out failures, and the light wooden gun-boats and “double enders” employed in the Sounds had to encounter her. She was accompanied by a ram, which the Union fleet had no vessel fit to meet.
In April, 1864, the Albemarle being completed, the Confederates were ready to carry out their plan of attack, which was first to recapture Plymouth, by the assistance of the ram, and then send her into Albemarle Sound, to capture or disperse our fleet. A force of ten thousand men, which they had collected, made an advance, and gained possession of the town.
Lieutenant-Commander Flusser was then at Plymouth, with four vessels, the Miami, a “double-ender,” and three ferry-boats, armed with nine-inch guns, and exceedingly frail in structure, called the Southfield, Ceres and Whitehead. At half-past nine, on the evening of April 18th, he wrote to Admiral Lee that there had been fighting there all day, and he feared the enemy had had the best of it. “The ram will be down to-night or to-morrow. * * * I shall have to abandon my plan of fighting the ram lashed to the Southfield. * * * I think I have force enough to whip the ram, but not sufficient to assist in holding the town, as I should like.”
Six hours after writing this, Flusser lay dead upon the deck of his ship.