Cottage Industry Ships 1/96 Lt. William Cushing's US Steam Picket Boat Kit

The confederate ironclad C.S.S. Albemarle was completed in 1864 near Edwards Ferry, N.C. Designed with an extremely shallow draft of only 6 feet, she became a nuisance upon the inland waters. While she did participate in at least two naval battles and sank one union warship, her mere presence proved much more of an issue to the Union. Fear of what she might do outweighed her actual performance. Orders for shallow draft ironclads were rushed forward to counter Albemarle, but something much smaller and wooden would prove her undoing.

After acquiring two, thirty-foot steam launches at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Lt. W.B. Cushing modified the boats with howitzers and spar torpedoes. He and his crews set off for the south to undertake an audacious plan to destroy the southern ironclad. Along the way one of the launches broke down and had to be destroyed to avoid capture. On the night of October 27-28, 1864, Cushing and thirteen other men proceeded upriver, broached the torpedo booms around the Albemarle, and detonated the spar-mounted torpedo against the ironclad's hull. Both the Albemarle and the launch were sunk in the attack. Cushing himself swam to safety after the attack, two of his crew drowned, another eleven were captured. The Albemarle sank in eight feet of water and was out of the war, left to be captured and raised by the Union in April 1865.