surprise, disaster,
and defeat.

LIEUTENANT CUSHING AND THE RAM "ALBEMARLE"

God give us peace! Not such as lulls to sleep,
But sword on thigh, and brow with purpose knit!
And let our Ship of State to harbor sweep,
Her ports all up, her battle-lanterns lit,
And her leashed thunders gathering for their leap!
--Lowell.

The great Civil War was remarkable in many ways, but in no way more
remarkable than for the extraordinary mixture of inventive mechanical
genius and of resolute daring shown by the combatants. After the first
year, when the contestants had settled down to real fighting, and
the preliminary mob work was over, the battles were marked by their
extraordinary obstinacy and heavy loss. In no European conflict since
the close of the Napoleonic wars has the fighting been anything like
as obstinate and as bloody as was the fighting in our own Civil War.
In addition to this fierce and dogged courage, this splendid fighting
capacity, the contest also brought out the skilled inventive power of
engineer and mechanician in a way that few other contests have ever
done.

This was especially true of the navy. The fighting under and against
Farragut and his fellow-admirals revolutionized naval warfare. The
Civil War marks the break between the old style and the new. Terrible
encounters took place when the terrible new engines of war were brought
into action for the first time; and one of these encounters has given
an example which, for heroic daring combined with cool intelligence, is
unsurpassed in all time.

The Confederates showed the same skill and energy in building their
great ironclad rams as the men of the Union did in building the monitors
which were so often pitted against them. Both sides, but especially
the Confederates, also used stationary torpedoes, and, on a number of
occasions, torpedo-boats likewise. These torpedo-boats were sometimes
built to go under the water. One such, after repeated failures, was
employed by the Confederates, with equal gallantry and success, in
sinking a Union sloop of war off Charleston harbor, the torpedo-boat
itself going down to the bottom with its victim, all on board being
drowned. The other type of torpedo-boat was simply a swift, ordinary
steam-launch, operated above water.

It was this last type of boat which Lieutenant W. B. Cushing brought
down to Albemarle Sound to use against the great C