Lt. William Cushing finally decided on two thirty-foot steam picket launches, each fitted with a fourteen-foot spar and a torpedo, and mounting a twelve-pounder howitzer in the bow. Moving south from New York by the inland water route, one of the picket boats was lost to the Confederates on Oct. 8, 1864, in Virginia, but te other one arrived in the sounds of North Carolina on 24 October.
As Cushing later reported: "Here,I, for the first time, disclosed to my officers and men our object and told them that they were at liberty to go or not as they pleased. These, seven in number, all volunteered."
--Old B-Runner
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