 Thank you, John. Thank you very much. I'm very honored to be able to talk about Will Cushing here at the the Naval War College and I'm a little sorry that my bad luck keeps me from seeing the museum, but I'm very happy to Be here at Brett Hall He and his father Bobby were two of my favorite hockey players and I'm glad to be here with Will Cushing indeed was called by Theodore Roosevelt the behind Farragut as the second greatest hero of the Civil War, but if he asked Farragut He said young Cushing was the hero of the war. So Admiral Farragut was a modest man, but that is his testimony and The thing is you never would have predicted it because as John alluded to Will was a rascal. He grew up in Upstate New York in a town called Fredonia and A neighbor said that Will was the pride and peril of everyone who knew him Will was the guy who you know we get the wagon and drive the wagon too fast and up and down hills and around breakneck turns He's the guy who would take the sailboat out on the lake on a rainy day and go through the storm And you know shock and dismay everyone and come home laughing He's the guy who chased snakes and chased him into their holes and then dragged them out of their holes to ring their necks And there was never a fight that he turned down and plenty that he instigated He was a prankster of the first order he He when he was about ten years old he organized the boys of his age in Fredonia into a group called the Musks group and They barge around act like a little military outfit Well, Will and his brother went to different schools than most of the guys in the Musks group Will and his brother went to the school run by his mom and The others were in the in the other school and mom Cushing let the students out for lunch 15 minutes before the other folks So he would go at lunchtime. He'd go over to the other school Whistle and all the other boys in the left group will get up and come out and leave the school teacher there So, you know teaching addition and subtraction finally the other teacher got so irritated He went and talked to mrs. Cushing and said please tell your son to stop doing this And she said if you can't control your students any better than that you should get out of teaching So there Will's from an amazing family he is He is He he and his four siblings are from the second wife of a doctor who died very young His he was though he was the fourth son and then he was followed by a sister all four boys Served in the military the eldest Milton was a paymaster and didn't see much action and the other in the war, but the other three brothers Were great heroes. We'll talk about will but his brother Alonzo was a hero at the Battle of Gettysburg and the third brother Howard that almost nobody ever talks about fought with distinction at Shiloh Antietam Chickama Gwa At the wilderness after the war joined the cavalry went out west became an Indian fighter and died in combat with the Indians with a Apache in Arizona where if you go out there, he's known as the custer of Arizona, which I'm not sure is a good thing, but Nonetheless only in the Cushing family would Howard Cushing be like have to like hey, what do you hear what I did? So it's a kind of an amazing family but as a the father died young and when will was only four and But mom Cushing had her resources including some family connections she was related to the Adams family and to Pilgrims who came over and there was a Brother-in-law who had just gotten elected to Congress as part of the know-nothing party and another cousin Joseph Smith who was the commandant of the Washington Navy Yard and between the cousin and the brother-in-law they arranged for will to be appointed to the Naval Academy and His brother Alonzo who was about 18 months older to be appointed to West Point and At West Point Alonzo was everyone's darling. He was loved by teachers. He was loved by students who was respected He did well at the Naval Academy will distinguish himself in nothing except laying around and underachieving he if you Look at the grades You know the class standings each year that he's through Annapolis. He's continually just skirting through just you know just avoiding being Expelled for poor grades and his demerits your two hundred demerits. You're kicked out of the Academy He was always 193 195 189 he was always right up near the top and Again though, he was he was the class prankster. He Was very well known for Various antics made him very popular with the fellows One of the famous antics was there was a army sergeant who put the midshipman through closed-order drill and He was not liked. He was something of a Martinette and the midshipman really disliked him quite a bit, but he was also a man who was plagued by a stutter and So one day they were out on the field marching and he gave the order to you know forward march and Will was in the front row But the man could not get out the command for the word halt He just and will led the men led the midshipman straight into the Severin River Just to embarrass the sergeant So it was it's it's amazing that But he was clearly very intelligent clearly Clearly a young man with great personality and charisma and and and Widely liked and He ran afoul of a lieutenant commander named Rogers who was the number two at the Academy and Rogers came from Military elite Naval elite. I'm surprised. They don't have a road named for him here Although they do I think some of his relatives his father his grandfather Captain to ship in the revolution and his father captain to ship in the 8th war of 1812 He married a woman whose grandfather captain to ship in the revolution and whose father captain to ship in the war of 1812 He was the nephew of Oliver Perry and Matthew Hazard Perry so I get that right and If you see the picture of him, it's in the book. He is he is the he looks like the very model of Unable officers straight up and down neatly trimmed Van Dyke. I'm just a handsome You know model of confidence, but he was a reformer within the Navy the Navy was a kind of a looser organization They it was kind of an old-school place guys got in they joined the Navy when they were nine as cabin boys And they were running the place when they were 65 and 66 years old and some of them had problems with alcohol Some were just not up to the job anymore And Rogers was a reformer. He thought I will reform this by starting at West at Annapolis and Will was just not his kind of guy and in his senior year will in the middle of his senior year will failed a Spanish midterm and That was all the leverage That Porter needed because he had been campaigning as well for a long time He wrote a letter. He said will has a talent for buffoonery Which I think is a great phrase and he Went to the common dot and he got will kicked out People were shocked at this You know for one thing will was kicked out in February of 1861 by that time seven states had seceded About a third of the naval officers had left the service in order to go south About a third of the midshipmen at the Naval Academy had left And it was you know, it was not automatic the war was coming But it seemed pretty evident that some kind of conflict was coming and here you had a fellow who was an almost completely trained naval officer and they just tossed him away Will's cousin the commandant of the Navy Yard watching the Navy Yard Said what was just could not believe it. He said To expel a midshipmen for reasons academic and not nautical You know, you could throw a kid out for a failing seamanship or gunnery or Navigation or any of the tools of the trade but to throw him out for failing a Spanish midterm. Well, that had never been done before But fortunately or unfortunately I mean war came and fortunately for will he was able to get back into the service Started as a master's mate, which is the lowest ranking officer that there was and for the year of 1861 into 1862 he did all the hard work that Low ranking officers did, you know sitting out on an open boat in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, you know searching ships for contraband and You know hard difficult work In the middle of 1862 they rapidly expanded the Size of the Navy they needed a lot more ships. They need a lot more officers He got promoted to Lieutenant and as at that point the lung the youngest lieutenant in the U.S. Navy. He got assigned to a ship And it was really the making of him this assignment it was with I'm under the he was number two under Lieutenant commander Charles Flusser. Now Flusser was actually a friend of wills from the Naval Academy He taught gunnery to will it was the only class at the Naval Academy where will really did well He finished third in the gunnery class And when will was expelled he went and stayed with Flusser in Washington And Flusser gave will a little book called Naval Enterprise which was published in England Which is really a book for like, you know high school students it and it's about 128 pages of Tales of naval exploits Admiral Nelson Admiral Cochran, you know people Roman sailors and Egyptians With many and a lot of them had very colorful illustrations and while will was just laying around waiting to see what was going to happen next He's he looked he soaked up this book and in some ways. I think it kind of Made him got it helped him get his mind right made him think that this is what I'm missing But this is what I'm turning you know was foolish enough to squander a chance to have this kind of life So we're serving with Flusser and they're in Virginia and There's somebody gets the idea to do a Army Navy joint operation, but we know how these always turn out the idea was there was a Bunch of Confederate forces and the Union forces were over here But there was a water a river called the Blackwater River that ran behind where the Confederates were and they said We'll send a couple of gunboats back behind the Confederates and when the Union Army Marches on the Confederates though will push them back into the gunboats will have the rebels trapped so The gunboats went Blackwater is a terrible river snakey narrow Lot of you know overgrown Logs in the water they had to get a lot of times and pull the ship along with ropes to get it up the river And it's still that way except for the they constructed a sewage treatment plant within sight of the battlefield now But it's still narrow and twisty anyway, they got the Ships in place But as it turned out the army failed to march and The rebels turned around said whoa, what are those boats doing back there and they attacked them and these Little gunboats were not particularly well equipped to repel a charge they You know the sailors were underarmed mostly I just cut laces and pistols and And so they were under terrible fire for a while and seemed like they were going to be overrun, but They ships had brought supplies that were going to be given to the army once they hooked up with the army and lashed to the side of the Ship was a howitzer and will stepped into the line of fire cut the ropes on the howitzer and turned the howitzer on and Broke up the rebel attack so that was the first time that he was mentioned in official dispatches for his courage and cool under fire and It would there would be a regular Drumbeat of these kinds of notices for the next couple of years He fought in Virginia. He fought he had an independent command while most naval officers at the time were part of the gun part of the blockade He was given a little tugboat and essentially sent up the rivers and bayous in Virginia, North Carolina and Told to do whatever damage he could do so he sank blockade runners and Stole the mail for intelligence and freed slaves when he found them and You know, it was generally a kind of you know a raider going up and down the coast doing these things he at one point he He was in an action on the Namsik and River in Virginia and One of his men had gone ashore hunt for some game and was killed and and Will was pretty incensed by this so he took a force of sailors and he landed he went and in search of the Confederates who killed his his his sailor and they marched up To a town called Chukka tuck. It's about 80 sailors. They had a little little howitzer with them and they found a burrow they Stole a burrow whatever liberated a burrow to pull the thing along so they marched into Chukka tuck and which is a town so small now Google won't admit to knowing where it is and When they arrived in the middle of town the town was deserted except they found a bunch of Confederate cavalry waiting for them and so the two sides lined up and they began shooting at one another and The burrow was frightened by the gunfire and just ran off ran right at the Confederate lines and will said well Where a burrow can go a sailor can go and he ordered his men to charge On foot and they ran right at the Confederate cowboy and the cowboy ran away so It's exploit like this one after another after another and if I went into them all Honestly, we wouldn't we didn't need another hour, but it's You know amazing audacious attacks. He you know, he did one of those Mosby like raids where his officer was saying, yeah, I sure wish I knew what the Confederate commander was keep thinking So that night he and gotten a robot with 20 men. They rode over to Smithtown across the Cape Fear River Snuck around at night found where the Confederate headquarters was in broke in grabbed an officer That they thought was the leader of their bed. Lucky. He had you know, I'm up to Williams Anyway going to another town and So they took this officer back and presented him to the commander the next morning at breakfast and So it was one audacious thing after another amazing exploits at one point You know, he went out looking for a ship He got caught in the middle of a tropical storm and his choice was either to pull up to land where he was certainly be captured We're to try to navigate through the storm and he did You know, even though You know chances are very small of getting one of these library gunboats through So it's one amazing thing after another in the meantime his brother Alonzo had been building a very amazing record with the Army of Northern Virginia He graduated in June of 1861 in July of 1861 He was at the Battle of Bull Run and he fought with McClellan's army and the wilderness Fought at Antietam Chancellorsville and in July of 1863 He's at Gettysburg We're on the third day he and his guns are stationed in the middle of the Union line And when Robert E. Lee sends to says to his officers, I want you to go across the field attack Union lines. I want you to focus your attack on that little group of trees that you can see on the horizon Alonzo Cushing and his guns were under that little cops of trees As you know the battle of Gettysburg were in with an intense barrage Lasts a couple hours could heard so far away as in Pittsburgh. They could hear the barrage Five of Alonzo's guns get damaged a lot of his men and horses and limbers get damaged Alonzo himself is shot in the in the shoulder and in the testicles His officers tell him his superior said go back for treatment go back for help. He refuses to He said in fact He says if you give me some of the men from this Pennsylvania group that's here We'll move the gun up to this little wall and we will defend the line when as the rebels are coming And that's what he did and leaning on the shoulder of his sergeant He continued to direct the fire of this one cannon against the rebel line as it advanced and And he lasted a good long time until another bullet killed him and at that point With the confederates bearing down the sergeant ordered a final round of triple canister fired into their lines and then the The gun was momentarily overrun and for that stout defense of Of Gettysburg Alonzo was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Obama Just about a year ago. It took a long time. There's a lot of politics involved But it was you know for a period of time officers didn't get the Medal of Honor and then they became eligible, but It would have taken the you know People didn't want to bother the southern the congressman from the southern states to Get their approval In any event it happened. He got his award at long last much deserved Will was terribly despondent as you can imagine having lost his beloved older brother Uh, and he was not in action at the time. He didn't really have anything to occupy his mind the ship that he was in command of was in um dry dock in philadelphia getting repairs and will's kind of just moped around philadelphia for the fall of 1863 There was an incident where he was checking in a into a hotel in late october and there was a The gubernatorial election was taking place in pennsylvania Governor curtain was a republican and a big lincoln man and the democrats were really pushing hard to get him ousted And will as it turned out was checking in a hotel where a lot of democrats were staying And uh, some weisenheim or a pharmacist as it turned out said, oh, you know, look how desperate they are they're getting the uh men in uniform to come check in so they can you know pad the vote for carton and um Will beat him with a cane And he was arrested and taken spent the night in jail and paid his fine or whatever and um And uh, and then he got his orders to ship out. So he went and told he went prepared to do that But he told his number two you take the ship down to uh Hampton roads in virginia and i'll meet you there You got in the carers. He said take me to the train station. But first he made a stop at the pharmacy. He went and he beat the pharmacist again so um Will will would do that kind of thing. Um, he made trouble if trouble wasn't finding him Um, but he didn't get any trouble for that So he went down and then was assigned to uh The north atlantic block way blockade squadron which was in uh, north carolina And again, he had a kind of independent command where he was, you know, free. He said that You know, he was given freedom to essentially go around and try to chase after blockade runners And it wasn't a very fruitful exercise. There's a lot of water out there and uh, it was hard to find these blockade runners But that's what he was doing uh In the beginning of 1864 meanwhile Every story needs a villain and the confederates give us a very good win with the css album moral uh after the success of the the css virginia and hampton roads the Confederates got the idea that they would build a lot more uh iron clads The naval yard at norfolk had been taken back by the Yankees so they kind of uh decentralized and Throughout the south people, you know, they were every place they had some water They were trying to build iron clads and they built about 40 throughout the course of the war Most of them were just terrible ships. There was some sank right away Milled with rotted wood. They were they were pretty bad And some that didn't get out saw action for a day There was an iron clad, uh, you know at the battle mobile bay that You know fought honorably for a day and then was sunk but Um Kind of the most successful of the ones that were built outside was the album moral Which was built not even in a shipyard But was built in a cornfield on the tar river in north carolina by a young 26 year old um, you know intrepid Builder named gilbert elliott He cut down that fine north carolina pine to make the superstructure And a naval captain named cook Went around he was called the iron monger cabin and he went to everybody's house and he took the hinges off the barn doors. He took the you know studs off the Reigns of the horses and the collars and the bridles and Melted it all down and they ended up building a pretty fine ship 180 feet long 50 feet wide Good strong boilers in it six guns and in two inches four inches of plating and in the front uh, uh, uh A claw an iron claw And it was pretty evident that the only thing that they had intended to do with that was run against wooden Yankee ships and sink them They got the idea that they were going to do a joint army navy operation Against the town of Plymouth North Carolina is a hard state to conquer for a land's force It's got a lot of lateral rivers and it's very and marshy and it's very hard to move around And these things also made north carolina the the favorite place for the blockade runners because once they got in There's all these in inlets and the outer banks and Islands and bays and all kinds of places to hide But you get in the rivers then you can get up the rivers and you can get up to Plymouth and And to the other other towns that have railroads and you can unload your cargo and get that right up to the army you know in virginia, so It was very important that they that the union tried to Capture north Carolina and they were not making very much success But one place where they had success was this town of uh, Plymouth, which was about eight miles up the Rowan oak river from the ocean and they had Sent troops in there in 1862 and we're holding it now But they the rebels got the idea that we would use the album oil to come down and bombard the that union position chase them away and And that is eventually what happened, but before The album oil could get into position to do that it was met by two union gunboats and They knew that they weren't going to be able to penetrate The armor with their cannon fire, but they put a net in between them and their plan was to kind of wrap up the album oil and board it and slug it out like they were You know Like navy men had been doing for two centuries. I had two more than two centuries two thousand years You know board it fight it out Capture the ship Captain cook In charge of the album oil a little too smart to go right in the middle of the net He veered and he plowed right into one of the ships He ripped such a big hole in it That he penetrated so deeply into it The the the ship sank right away and pulled The album oil down with it and if the rowan oak river had been any deeper Um, I wouldn't be here today telling this story because the album oil had been sunk right them But the river was shallow and it uh the the ships bounced and the album oil bounced back up and um the the Captain of the miami Turned his fire and did the best he could kept shooting shells at the ship One he pulled the lanyard Shell bounced off the side of the ship landed at his feet and blew him up And that was how Will's friend charles flusser met his end He was the captain of that ship Then the album oil went around helped the armed forces that confederate forces liberate Plymouth from union hands chased off the garrison The confederate high command in north carolina was elated. They were thrilled That's just the best news they had had in a long time. They said let's take the show on the road We'll send it up. We'll go capture new burn next So two weeks later they ordered the album oil to go down the rest of the Plymouth into alamol sound and then come up And go up the next river and capture new burn Uh, except what's one that as they arrived at album oil sound they found Eight union gunboats waiting for them And for about three hours in the afternoon the album oil fought those gunboats to stand still the It couldn't get close enough to the Yankee younger boats to use its claws the union troops forced the ships could not use their Can fire to penetrate the armor And so sort of a stand still at 1.1 of the federal warships Pulled out and decided that it was going to ram the ship got a big head of steam The album oil You know had a hull made of pine and there was a flat Portion and then on the top was a casemate the sort of eight sided Base where the guns were located and the commands commanders Operated and the idea was this officer was going to just ram Hit the casemate straight on try to kind of decapitate the ship Well after plowing across the sea they just missed it Didn't quite hit the casemate ended up on the large flat part of the ship when the album oil turned its guns around just um Shot the boilers out from the union ship and they had to kind of pull back and limp away So then both sides retreated again The Confederates were just elated again another big victory You know fought against overwhelming odds our monster of the Roanoke River prevailed Um And the Yankees were just desolated because they did not have an answer They had pulled every trick they had somebody said well, why don't you bring a monitor down here? No, we can't get them over the soundbars Somebody said why don't you bring the equipment down and build one here? that idea was uh Rejected as well and there really wasn't They didn't really have much of an idea of what they were going to do And they began thinking the thing that's going to have to do is that we're going to have to send some people Up there with a bomb and blow the thing up so one day Admiral Samuel Lee cousin of Robert E. Lee Did not leave the Union either the u.s. Navy Was looking through reports And he kept saying the name of will cushion over and over again will cushion captures this officer will cushion goes on a scaling mission Will cushion evades capture by six troop, uh, you know rebel ships One amazing little tale after another he says bring me will cushion Will cushion shows up. He says young man. What do you think we ought to do about this ship? He says, I think we ought to go up river and blow it up Uh, take two indian rubber boats go up there with about 80 guys You know blow up the ship. Well, they thought about it for a while. They devised a plan um And they said well, we'll take about 30 guys up Plans had to be approved in washington the secretary of the navy gideon wells Had grown to know will and had commended him on many of his exploits He was very reluctant to send will on this suicide mission He was he had grown very fond of him, but In the end did so And so will got his orders go up to the new york navy yard get a couple indian rubber boats And come on back and we'll we'll do this He gets up to the navy yard and the guy in charge of the navy yard Says, no, you don't want any rubber boats for this. I got some new cutters 30 35 feet long got a cannon in the front You know steam engine Uh It's just terrific for this kind of operation. I'll give you two of them. Well, so it's great. I'll take the two cutters And he says plus I've got this weapon that you'll like a spar torpedo Fab what am I going to do with a spar tortillas? Well, it's like this it sits on these two Planks in the front of your boat And when you get by your target you lower it into the water And then the bomb the torpedo they called it was really like a maw in a round bomb floats under The um Under your target when it gets under your target You explode it great. How do I explode it? Well, there's a string that's attached to a firing pin And when it gets there you use your string and you pull the firing pin out So, okay, and while it's while it's floating down there. What do I do? Well, you know Bring a magazine So will takes the a bunch of these torpedoes out into the Hudson River and he tests them and like You know Half of them the pin breaks half of them the spring break the string breaks. So I'm just don't go off I'm getting no more than three halves, but they finally got one to work. He said great. I'll take it And he takes his two answers and he says take these two boats these two cutters down I'm going to go up and visit my mother And he goes up to Fredonia, New York and and he visits mom and Excuse me and when he arrives It's the same well pushing that had left Some years before seven years before he's who comes on horseback He rides up the porch steps and into his aunt's kitchen. Oh, I've come to call All the girl cousins are laughing and everything like that and people were very amused to see him but after a couple of days They're they're thinking this is a different will pushing than we've last seen these Rather more melancholy and a little sadder They throw a party for him in which a bunch of towns people come And at one point he does the most amazing thing. There's a girl there 15 years old And she's wearing a locket and he reaches around and he unclass the locket and puts it around his own neck He knew he'd met the girl she was a girl, you know from the same town he grew up in But it wasn't as though they had courted her anything like that And he said I was just accustomed from the old Navy But everyone was like this is odd and then The next morning he took his mom out in the carriage and they went up in the hills And he told her about the mission and She couldn't believe it. She said, you know, we've lost one son Our other son is out who knows where we haven't heard from him in months You've been serving for two years now and they want to send you to do a mission That eight ships and a thousand men have failed to accomplish Why why they said mom They have no one else And then they prayed So he went back to north Carolina One of the ships one of the little cutters got lost on the way I uh the ensign who was Operating it pulled up in the Chesapeake Bay to take a nap and He thought he was in Maryland, but he was actually in Virginia and got captured um So they gave will another cutter full of men And on the night of october 27th, they set out to go up the Roanoke River And they didn't they weren't going a half hour before union pickets stop it stop them. You're making too much noise We can hear you a mile away Pull back next morning. They muffled the engines making much more quiet Set out again on october 28th This time far more quiet To go up the river They set out at 11 30 at night. It's a rainy night. So there's clouds The uh, uh, Roanoke River is not a very wide river It's lined with 40 foot Cypress and gum trees on both sides hanging over the river. So it's dark. It's enclosed. It's close. It's It's uh It's got that kind of confined feeling Two little boats go for about two hours They finally come across the wreckage of The first ship that the album moral sank the south wick they expected to see Confederate pickets there But in fact, there weren't on that Confederates did not have any will ordered the Other ship to stay here to cover our retreat If it comes to that and he proceeded up with his one boat It's got about 10 guys with him um they get You know after about a half hour they get to the outskirts of Plymouth And they can see silhouetted against the dimming campfires and You know few town lights the hulk of the album moral in the river Will creeps up Will's plan was never to blow the thing up will's plan was to land his ship Storm the album moral the tradition was never to let crew sleep on where there'd only be a couple of guys He's going to overcome the guards cut the ropes steal the ship Take that album moral back for the union aving What a prize that would be So he's about to pull up and And land his little cutter One a alert loyal confederate dog Starts barking I can't do a wolf with a southern accent. So I won't try but Starts barking wakes guards up. Who's there? What ship is that? What's out there? They don't wait. They start shooting. It starts waking up other guys You can hear all the commotion on the banks where the confederate army is is sleeping And then all of a sudden there's this whoosh And someone lit a campfire they bonfire. They had built a big bonfire doused it with turpentine And you know these and tar and lit it up Just for this very purpose To be able to see and suddenly the whole little area is lit up in this boiling orange flame And Will can see the ship can see the confederates on the shore And can see for the first time that there is a log boom built around the album moral Designed to foil this very kind of attack So there goes any idea of Of stealing the ship Will revs the engine he rides around the log boom. There's a lot of shouting and firing and commotion He's looking he's looking at the boom He's looking to see if there's some kind of break some kind of chink some kind of thing where you can get through It gets the other side turns his little vessel around takes it back out And then he turns and goes full speed ahead straight For the album moral and his idea is that he's going to try to aim for one of the Chinks where the two logs come together try to vault it through there count on the moss and and Stuff that's on the logs that slime that to lubricate his passage over it He hits it at full speed There's a big crash You can hear the boards on the bottom of his ship cracking And he gets and he turns out to be half right. He gets halfway across and he is then stuck And he's under the guns right under the guns of the album moral The new captain of the album or warly has by this time gotten the crew alert. They're up on the ship and they're shouting and warly Is saying lower the guns lower the guns. He's going to try to blow him out of the water, of course But the guns are in the case mate and the guns come out of a window and he can only get them lowered so far And not can't quite bring them to bear. Well, he starts lowering the spar torpedo lowers it into the water lets it start floating He stands there. He's watching it go a bullet takes off the heel of his boot A bullet creases the sleeve of his coat A bunch of buckshot takes off the back of his jacket. He's still waiting Warly's yelling Lower lower lower. There's more commotion. There's more gunfire Finally finally. These are two men who are trapped by physics right Will can't do anything faster than the river can flow and warly can't do anything lower than the guns can be depressed But finally the bomb slips under The Albemarle will pulls the pin At the moment warly yells fire and at the same time there are two explosions Will said he could feel the shot right over his head the Little cutter. There's a suddenly a kind of opening in the seat a little cutter gets sucked down thrown back up And then everybody stand there. No one knows what has happened But will knows they've done all they can he tells his men to abandon ship Swim forward fellows. We've done all we can and he jumps he takes off his coat. He jumps into the river And begins swimming on board the Albemarle captain warly turns to his engineer He says go down and find out what happened the engineer comes back in five minutes He says there's a hole down there big enough to drive a carriage through And five minutes later the Albemarle's at the bottom of the Royal Oak River Will is swimming swimming. He's being swimming down river as fast as he can Along the way he encounters two of his men Both of them die within seconds of meeting him Finally he reaches shore. He's exhausted. He falls asleep in the in the reeds Next thing you know, it's dawn and there's a black man standing over him presumably a slave And will says do you know what happened? He says no, I don't know what happened He says, you know, please go find out he gives him $20. Please go find out the man comes back And he says A ship is dead gone sunk messa and if they find you they're gonna kill you And it was true because from where he was standing in the in the reeds You could hear the posseys on both sides of the river going up and down the rebel cavalry looking for him And he could see rebels in the water too with boats He's he spends several hours, you know cutting through the brush the reeds The marshland finally he comes upon a pot and all you know all the whole time You can hear the rebels nearby finally he comes upon a pot posse that is not taking his job very seriously And so he steals their boat And he begins rowing and rows and rows and rows rows all afternoon rows all night Finally about 10 30 at night. He reaches Albemarle sand he sound he's of course exhausted the hands are bloody from rowing The union navy does not know what has happened They have heard from the guys who were stationed to cover his retreat That there was an explosion at which point they assumed everyone was dead and they left But so they assumed that will and the whole crew were killed And um So the the union navy was just there just being alert to any some kind of some sort of confederate retaliation So they heard the noise out there and they sent They wondered what that might be they sent an ensign out to investigate. He goes out. He finds the little row boat And he says cushing is that you he says yes, it is on So is it done? He says yes It is done It brings him on board the ship he makes his report The ship sends signals to the rest of the union fleet there in Albemarle sound And right around midnight will cushing 21 years old has the exquisite pleasure of sitting on the deck with a glass of brandy And watching the sky above Albemarle sound explode with fireworks That have been sent up by the fleet in his honor So that's my story with my that's will's story He goes on he you know he He becomes the toast of the country. He's a national hero. He's on the cover of harpers weekly. He's You know It gets the key of the city from new york and philadelphia. He gets parade in his hometown Gets $50,000 in prize money, which unlike today that was worth something Uh And And gets promoted to lieutenant commander at that point. He was the youngest lieutenant commander in the navy um And then a month later he's back in action. He has more exploits. He fights at fort fishery has more exploits in the cape fear river And then the war ends and He Stays in the navy As john told you he dies at the preposterously young age of 32 from rheumatism of the hip Which we don't know what that is now could have been cancer. It could have been some affection that he caught could have been some after effect of the explosion but He was at that time a commander He was the youngest commander in the navy at the time Um So, you know, it's not ridiculous to think that it would have been admiral cushing at manila bay or admiral cushing in the great white fleet You know for Union generals became president including a couple that were non-entities. I mean would that have been so out of the question? Uh Certainly, you know, he he would have had a a full life of some kind of adventure, but instead he You know, he died at 32 in in washington dc and is buried at the naval academy So that's the story Thank you He did marry he married a young lady from uh, uh, fredonia the daughter of a merchant No, you're usually a very romantic lady in the audience asked that question, but it was not the girl with the lotta It was not the it was not the girl with the locket, but It was interesting because this was after he had been sort of the toast of Philadelphia and new york and had visited san francisco where all the bells were interested in him and talk about somebody who would have been quite the catch Uh, and instead he went home and he married flower fredonia And uh before they could marry he was sent on a two-year cruise to the far east and um It's fun to read their letters because they torture one another She writes oh, I went to this ball and I went to that ball and bill was there and tom was there and they My dance card was full and I barely have time to write to you And he writes back and he says oh the dark eyed the lilas of rio are so beautiful And did you know that in tokyo the men and women swim naked together and basically just um They tortured one of them, but I guess that's what kept the attraction Going I guess Anyway, other question. Yes No, he and his wife had two daughters who um Both became school teachers, but neither of whom married and um In fact when they had to decide to give a lanzo the medal of honor Some months before they actually did but they had a very hard time finding relatives Alive to accept the thing finally they found some people who were very distant cushing relations uh looted out in california but uh They That their will was one of five The the his father had six children By his first marriage and of those 11 children Only the last the daughter lived past the age of 50 So it was you know war disease bad luck one of them Sons from the first marriage was the law partner of sam and chase who went on to become uh Secretary of treasury and supreme court justice. So he's obviously someone of some aptitude So it's uh a bad Found with bad luck The spark technique used often afterward I don't know how much it was. I know you know the uh, I was told by uh A guest at one of the lectures that the confederates used the similar thing with their submarine the humbling um So, um, I don't know the much about the history of that I really don't know How did you get involved in this particular? Pursuit I'd always been interested in the civil war. I grew up in baltimore at the time of the centennial and my parents Took us to gettysburg and antetum and harpers ferry and all the places around and I'd always been interested in it And I and my interest in cushing states dates from that time In uh, january 1961 issue of life magazine. They did a six-part series For the centennial of the civil war and in that first issue It was the highlight was a dozen paintings and illustrations that they commissioned of great moments of the civil war And across the two page Uh, you know, it was a two page illustration of will sinking the album moral and I you know, I was absorbed by that Remembered it in a few years ago um I was doing a lot of writing about the civil war at the time of the sesquicentennial and Looking for some larger project to work on And no one I talked to and had any idea this guy They never heard of the last biography that had been written of about him was in 1957 And it was a good book. Uh, but it was just was I could um It was much more formal in tone and and use of language and presentation and It was just not the way people Write anymore or or like to read things anymore. And I knew I could Reach people and I'm glad that w. W. Norton gave me a shot Yes No, he received the thanks of congress, which was a more prestigious award that's not given anymore During the civil war only about 30 men received the thanks of congress And only two of them were not senior officers So cushion was only one of two junior officers to receive it and you got, you know You you listed sesquicent you get the thanks of congress for capturing vicksburg You know david farragut you get the thanks of congress for you know capturing new orleans. I mean, it's that kind of You know, uh, it's that level of, uh Magnificence attached to it really it's a huge accomplishment that generally goes To senior officers and but will got it So he did not get the medal longer. Yes Did you ever look in further or why he was kicked out of naval academy? Yes, he was um, it was uh It was a poor match of temperaments. I would think uh, and yes, he was it was It was this uh failure to pass this exam that was the proximate cause Was then was the cause that the immediate cause of him getting booted failure to pass this test To do with his brothers and all of us that wasn't a job. No, no, they were no no It was interesting. I mean I I claim to be more of a storyteller than a historian But I was able to find the documents in the national archives related to this expulsion because previously they would just say That it makes no sense. We don't understand why it happened But I was able to find the actual correspondence from uh, lieutenant commander porter in which he says uses the phrase tally for buffoonery and and so forth No, it was a different one and um And it was very exciting to me to be able to find this I went to one archive and what I found was a letter From 1953 written by an admiral To uh, just a some man of virginia. I don't know who it was, but he says we have 11 documents related To the expulsion of will cushing and he enumerated the 11 documents But they had none of the documents there So I went to like three other archives and I found a total of six of the 11 There and uh, there's still five that we have not been able to locate but um Well, I think we found the ones that really illuminate why he was actually kicked out Nobody felt guilty enough to uh, give him a degree I always thought they should you know, I mean the naval academy I must say, uh has um Really done a lot to keep his memory alive He's buried in a pride of place there on uh overlooking the Severin river And there's a huge painting of him in the could the midshipman's dining hall Um Not so handsome as this one, but much bigger Uh And so I think they you know the people there there are kind of acquainted with his stature Yes, how did the letters come to be in your possession Well, you know, you it's just I mean, uh, they were they were in the files and so I had a research assistant in washington working with me and Uh, see they say that these things are in the national archives is what you look in the records But in fact, there's the navy library is the national archives and the library Uh, anapolis is in the national archives and then there's the you know They have four or five different depositories and these things were spread out over all of them So you had to go to each place and say give me your cushing file And and then you see what they happen to have so And it was you know spread out over all of them Yeah, how big were these hooks and what was the mechanism of using? The hooks the spar torpedo thing No, no, no, you said that they would use hooks to Oh the beam of the ram on the front of the almorrow. I'm sorry. I'm not really remembering that. I said hooks, but I must have but uh The claw the big the big was huge it was um um, it would reach from me to you and and You know just made of iron and the CSS Virginia also had one that it that it used when it came down into Hampton roads and Beat up the union fleet They would just run right at them There's no maneuver. I mean it was It was uh ugly direct You know smash them up warfare Really just an extension of the valve Yeah Yeah Yes, is a wreck of the alamon still there. No, they dug it up and then they uh turned into scrap within a few years of uh Who made that decision Some some ironmonger They haven't they have a replica of the albomoral there that they built a five eighth scale And I always wonder why'd you build five eighths? I mean it seems like an odd fraction, but it's there. It's interesting to see and I don't know Good question good question We know they met two men on the way down the river who died Those were the only two men who were killed in the assault on either side One other man made it down river Showed up about a week after cushioning did And the rest of his men were captured And they must have been shell shocked because most of them were just sitting in the boat or hanging on the log boom And uh the attack as I mentioned happened at the end of october of 1864 They spent five hard months as pow's and then were uh paroled in March of 1865 before Before the war ended and Each of there were two ensigns all the uh, they did not receive any kind of decoration All the other men received the Medal of Honor the custom Whatever reason you weren't giving officers the Medal of Honor So cushioning got the thanks of congress the enlisted seamen got Metals of honor of these two other officers ensigns got no decoration whatsoever but they all got a big share of the prize money and um and the Each I forget the amounts precisely, but the lowest each man got was ten thousand dollars Which was a good piece of change The federal government Yes Yes, no the the practice was you would get it And they discontinued the practice, but basically they would estimate the value of the ship that was captured or sunk And give it to you. Yes, ma'am Is there any possibility we might see it as a movie or see it as a We'll talk afterwards if you want to be the producer I'll sell you the rights today. Uh I would have thought so but uh You know I had an agent look around and they said, you know costume stories don't do well They're looking for stories that um Can be international stories and us history stories don't really Do that well I don't know might end up on tv god. I hope so, but um But um But we'll talk you and I we'll make it work. I don't know He stopped me we can go home now The picture of cushion was picked up Uh an auction by part of the collection from uh ambassador middendorf the stuff we have over in uh, mihandro tanda This is one of his pieces It looks very contemporary I wanted to mention I wanted to mention that um when I was at uh Speaking down at anapolis. They had just been donated a picture a small photograph of cushing for some reason They have not made it public yet, but it's taken about a month after He sunk the album moral and he's on the ship uh that uh, he's on the Monticello What's he's the captain of and he is There and he looks man. He looks like james dean. He just looks so cool He's got his head tilted back. He's leaning back and in the corner. You can see Uh Admiral david dixon porter scowling at him But what are you going to say to the hero right? Don't pre stop preening Um, but it's it's just it is such a cool picture. If I had had it. I would have put it on the cover of the book Anyway a couple other connections if uh Superintendent the naval academy when he was pitched out with a fellow by name of blake who was up here when they brought the naval academy up here He's the one that actually tried to keep the naval academy in newport following And uh the other fellow you said porter, but it was uh rogers rogers. Thank you. I misspoke It was christopher perry's daughter So that would have been olver hazard perry's sister and matthew perry's So that's how they they started that route But anyway, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much