CSS Albemarle
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| History | |
|---|---|
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| Name: | Albemarle |
| Ordered: | 16 April 1862 |
| Laid down: | January 1863 |
| Commissioned: | 17 April 1864 |
| Fate: | 27 October 1864 sunk by spar torpedo, captured, raised, and sold |
| General characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 376 tons |
| Length: | 158 ft (48 m) |
| Beam: | 35.4 ft (10.8 m) |
| Draught: | 9 ft (2.7 m) |
| Propulsion: | Steam |
| Speed: | 4 knots (7.4 km/h; 4.6 mph) |
| Range: | 120 miles, 193 km |
| Complement: | 150 officers and men |
| Armament: | two 6.4 Brooke double-banded rifles |
CSS Albemarle was a steam-powered ironclad ram of the Confederate Navy (and later the second Albemarle of the United States Navy), named for a town and a sound in North Carolina. All three were named for General George Monck, the first Duke of Albemarle and one of the original Carolina Lords Proprietor.
On 16 April 1862, the Confederate Navy Department, enthusiastic about the offensive potential of armored rams following the victory of their first ironclad ram CSS Virginia (the rebuilt USS Merrimack) over the wooden-hulled Union blockaders in Hampton Roads, Virginia, signed a contract with nineteen-year-old detached Confederate Lieutenant Gilbert Elliott of Elizabeth City, North Carolina; he was to oversee the construction of a smaller but still powerful gunboat to destroy the Union warships in the North Carolina sounds. These men-of-war had enabled Union troops to hold strategic positions that controlled eastern North Carolina.
Since the terms of the agreement gave Elliott freedom to select an appropriate place to build the ram, he established a primitive shipyard, with the assistance of plantation owner Peter Smith, in a cornfield up the Roanoke River at a place called Edward's Ferry, near modern Scotland Neck, North Carolina; Smith was appointed the superintendent of construction. There, the water was too shallow to permit the approach of Union gunboats that otherwise would have destroyed the ironclad while still on its ways. Using detailed sketches provided by Elliott, the Confederate Navy's Chief Constructor John L. Porter finalized the gunboat's design, giving the ram an armored casemate with eight sloping, 30-degree angle sides. Within this thick-walled bunker were two 6.4-inch (160 mm) Brooke pivot rifles, one forward, the other aft, each capable of firing from three different fixed positions. Both cannons were protected on all sides behind six exterior-mounted, heavy iron shutters. The ram was propelled by twin 3-bladed screw propellers powered by two steam engines, each of 200 hp (150 kW), and built by Elliott.
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