Action, Elizabeth City

Following closely on the heels of the fighting at Roanoke Island, the clash at Elizabeth City unfolded on February 10, 1862, along the Pasquotank River close to that North Carolina town. On one side stood ships from the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron of the U.S. Navy, while facing them was the Confederacy's Mosquito Fleet, bolstered by four cannon positioned in a shore battery at Cobb's Point (known today as Cobb Point) near the town's southeastern edge. This engagement formed one piece of the larger North Carolina campaign directed by Major General Ambrose E. Burnside, an operation remembered as the Burnside Expedition. When the fighting ended, Union forces had prevailed, seizing control of Elizabeth City along with the surrounding waterways, while the Confederate ships were either taken, destroyed, or scattered.

Background

When the Civil War began, Union strategists moved to put the Anaconda Plan into motion, a scheme designed to strangle the Confederacy through isolation. Establishing a blockade along the Confederate coastline formed the essential opening move, and it proved fairly straightforward to accomplish since almost all prewar naval vessels belonged to states that remained loyal to the Union. Building on this naval edge, Union forces then aimed to sever various regions of the Confederacy from each other, furthering the broader strategy.

Situated near where the Pasquotank River empties into Albemarle Sound from the north, Elizabeth City held a strategically important position. The Dismal Swamp Canal ran along the city's northern edge, while the southern portion of the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal lay to the east, divided from the Pasquotank only by a slender strip of land. These waterways served as vital arteries, carrying food and forage supplies from North Carolina into southeastern Virginia. Norfolk, Virginia in particular relied heavily on uninterrupted use of these canals to sustain itself. As long as Confederate forces controlled the North Carolina Sounds, Norfolk could receive adequate supplies regardless of Union Navy blockading efforts positioned at the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay.

This situation shifted dramatically in early February 1862. During fighting that took place on February 7 and 8, combined Union forces, comprising an Army division commanded by Major General Ambrose E. Burnside alongside a naval flotilla led by Flag Officer Louis M. Goldsborough, seized control of Roanoke Island. This location within Croatan Sound had until then blocked Federal forces from penetrating the sounds. Before this victory, any Union vessel attempting to enforce the blockade against the canals faced a difficult route, entering through Hatteras Inlet into Pamlico Sound and then navigating past multiple Confederate gun batteries on Roanoke Island before finally reaching Albemarle Sound. Once those batteries fell, the only remaining obstacle confronting the Union Navy was the Confederate States Navy's Mosquito Fleet.

Prelude

The opening engagement of the Burnside Expedition erupted on February 7, 1862, when fighting began at Roanoke Island. During the first of the two days of combat, nineteen Union gunboats traded fire with four Confederate forts positioned along Croatan

Battle

While the Union flotilla sat at anchor, Lynch used the pause to organize his vessels for the fight ahead. His plan centered on the four-gun battery at Cobb's Point, with the schooner CSS Black Warrior stationed opposite it and his other five steamships arranged in a line across the river just upstream. This arrangement reflected his belief that the Federals would first attempt to knock out the battery before advancing, mirroring what had happened three days earlier at the start of the fighting on Roanoke Island. To his captains he gave a final directive: under no circumstances should the vessels be surrendered to the enemy. If escape proved impossible, the ships were to be destroyed rather than captured.

On the morning of February 10, Lynch went to inspect the Cobb's Point battery himself, hoping to align its defense with the rest of his fleet. Instead he discovered it held by a mere seven militiamen and one civilian. Since this position was meant to anchor his whole defensive scheme, he had little choice but to send Lieutenant Commander William Harwar Parker, commanding CSS Beaufort, ashore with most of his crew to work the guns, leaving behind just enough sailors to pilot the ship into the canal. Even with these reinforcements, only three of the battery's four guns could be operated. Once fighting began, the militiamen fled at once, leaving only two guns still able to fire on the approaching enemy.

In the end, the battery played no real part in the outcome. Rowan, aware that his ammunition was limited and focused on wiping out the Confederate squadron, chose to sail his ships past the position entirely. Parker's men managed a handful of erratic shots that struck nothing, and once the Union vessels had moved upriver, the guns could no longer be aimed at them at all. From that point forward, the defenders could do nothing but watch their fleet fall apart under attack.

The schooner Black Warrior was the first Confederate ship lost, targeted by the full weight of the passing Union force as it went by Cobb's Point; her crew abandoned ship and set her ablaze. Fanny met a similar end, run aground and burned. CSS Ellis fell to a boarding party from Ceres after close combat on her deck; her commander had intended to blow her up, but a coal heaver found the explosive charges first and alerted the boarders. CSS Sea Bird tried to flee but was overtaken and sent to the bottom by Commodore Perry. Both CSS Beaufort and Appomattox managed to slip away into the Dismal Swamp Canal, though Appomattox proved to be two inches too wide to fit through a lock there and had to be burned. CSS Forrest, then undergoing repairs on the stocks for a damaged screw suffered on February 8, was destroyed as well, along with an unfinished gunboat that had never been named. CSS Raleigh, remaining at Norfolk throughout, escaped harm entirely. Along with Beaufort, she was one of only two vessels in the Mosquito Fleet to avoid either capture or ruin.

The human cost of the engagement was relatively light. The Union attackers suffered two dead and seven wounded, while the Confederates counted four killed, six wounded, and thirty four taken prisoner.

For his conduct aboard the Valley City during the battle, Quarter Gunner John Davis received the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Aftermath

Word of the shattered fleet and the fall of the Cobb's Point battery sent Confederate soldiers fleeing Roanoke Island into a panic, and as they withdrew through Elizabeth City they put the town to the torch on orders from Brigadier General Henry A. Wise, who wanted it destroyed rather than left for the enemy. By the time Union sailors from the flotilla reached shore, roughly two blocks lay in ashes, but their arrival kept the flames from spreading any further.

Near where it met the North River, the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal had already been fouled by the departing Confederates, who began blocking the passage themselves. Federal troops, now in control, finished the job on the instructions of Flag Officer Goldsborough.

Edenton fell next, seized without any loss of life on 12 February when four gunboats under Commander Cowan moved in. The action yielded two captured schooners, a third destroyed, and eight cannon taken as prizes. With this, Confederate power on Albemarle Sound effectively vanished, a state of affairs that held for nearly the whole remainder of the conflict. Only once was that Union grip seriously tested, when the ironclad CSS Albemarle made its brief and ultimately fleeting appearance in the summer of 1864.

Norfolk itself never came under direct assault, yet cut off from support and stripped of strategic value, it offered the Confederacy little reason to hold on. Its forces gave up the city in May.