Plymouth, NC,  was a port town on the Roanoke River.  When the war began, loyal citizens asked for Union Troops to occupy the town.  Supported by the navy using converted ferry boats and double ended gunboats, 3000 troops were eventually stationed there.  Up river the Confederates had other plans and had begun building an iron clad in a cornfield.  This was the CSS Albemarle.  Due to an uncooperative Army commander, the Navy was unable to mount an expedition to destroy the ironclad before she was completed.
     Commander Flusser, the local squadron commodore,  thought that it would be possible to defeat the ironclad.  He ascended the river with the double ender Miami and the converted ferryboat Southfield.  They met the Albemarle and snagged her with a chain stretched between them.  The Albermarle rammed the Southfield and they started to sink, tangled together.  It was at this point that a shell fired by Flusser bounced off the Albemarle's armor back on to the Miami and killed him.  With their leader dead, and the Southfield sinking, the captain of the Southfield stepped across and assumed command of the Miami and ordered a retreat back down the river.  Unable to bring their own ironclads over the bars at the mouth of the Roanoke, the US Navy was forced to retire down river, leaving the town and troops to be captured.
     Flusser was a close personal friend of Lt. Wm. B Cushing, USN.  When Cushing had failed out of Annapolis in 1861, Flusser used his influence to assist him in obtaining his commission.  Outraged by Flusser's death, and that of his brother, Alonzo, at the high water mark at Gettysburg (yes, THAT Cushing's Battery), Cushing proposed a daring and dangerous plan to remove the ironclad.  He would approach her in small craft and surprise her.  He hoped that he would be able to board her and take her down the river as his prize, however, if that failed he would torpedo her where she lay.
     Although his superiors had little faith in his plan, Cushing had been carrying out successful small boat raids all over the southern coast.  He was sent to the Brooklyn Navy  Yard, where he acquired two thirty foot steam powered picket launches.  They were fitted with a spar torpedo designed by Acting Master Lay.  After training with the boats, they and their crews began the voyage south.  Cushing, however, went home on leave to see his family, intending to meet the boats on their arrival.  All did not go well for the small boats on the open sea.  Plagued with engine problems, they were forced to split up, and No 2. was forced ashore in confederate territory and destroyed.
      Though losing half of his equipment was a set back, when Cushing arrived he was presented with local Confederate newspapers that described his plan in detail. Undaunted, he asked for volunteers from the Shamrock.  The entire crew of the warship volunteered to man a cutter to be towed behind the launch to capture a picket station on the wreck of the Southfield.  Cushing's first try was stopped when an army tug detained them too long to make the attack.  The next trip would turn out better.
     On Oct. 27, 1864, the two craft steamed into the current.   The pickets gave no alarm, and so Cushing's plan to capture the ram seemed to be falling into place.  The men in the cutter seemed to realize what was happening and boated their oars.  It was not to be, however.  As they approached the ram a dog began to bark, waking the pickets.  Bonfires were lit and surprise was gone.  Cushing cut lose the cutter to maneuver for the torpedo attack.  The launch was clearly lit.  Unable to believe that such a small boat had come to challenge them they kept hailing, "what ship is that!"
     The confederates had placed a log boom around the ironclad to protect her from torpedoes.  Cushing skimmed the log boom, then shot out into the river and circled to gain speed.  The crew of the Albemarle had begun to load one of their Brooke rifles, and as luck would have it the steam launch hit the log boom, jumped the logs and became trapped on the inside.  Cushing had a number of delicate tasks to do, and he performed them under musket fire.  He was stuck once by a ball, and others passed through his clothes.  The Brooke rifle and the torpedo went off at the same time.  The launch was blown underwater by the blast.  Cushing dove over the side.  He would swim down the river back to the fleet.  The captain of the Albemarle sent his carpenter to check the damage.  He reported that she had a hole in her bottom big enough to drive a wagon through, thus ending the career of the confederate's most successful ironclad.