From the January 2020 America's Civil War magazine "Infernal Machine" by Gordon Berg.
The rumors had begun drifting in to the North Carolina river port of Plymouth that something was going on up the Roanoke River from them and it did not bode well. It was something dangerous, especially to a sizeable Union fleet and some 3,000 soldiers guarding the place.
What it was, was something out of the mind if a young engineer-inventor named Gilbert Elliott. His "infernal machine" was taking place and would be named the CSS Albemarle. And, he had created a makeshift shipyard in the middle of a cornfield on Peter Smith's Edwards Ferry plantation.
His maternal grandfather, Charles Grice, owned a shipyard in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, but growing up, Gilbert had leaned toward a law career, but when the war broke out he enlisted in the 17th N.C. regiment and was captured at Cape Hatteras Inlet in December 1861. After exchange, he was assigned to the James River Drewry's Bluff battery near Richmond.
To pass the time, he began sketching designs for warships and on a whim sent them to the Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory. Mallory had three warship construction contracts to give and Elliott got one.
--Old B-Runner
No comments:
Post a Comment