When only a few feet from the _Albemarle_, Lieutenant Flusser, standing directly behind a gun of the _Miami_, let fly with a heavy shell, which, striking the armor of the _Albemarle_, was shivered into a thousand fragments, most of which rebounding, instantly killed the officer and wounded a dozen men.

The _Miami_ retreated, and the next day Plymouth surrendered to the Confederates.
In May, the _Albemarle_ steamed down into the Sound and attacked the Union gunboats, which made a heroic defence.

The monster received broadside after broadside and was repeatedly rammed, but suffered no material damage, while she killed 4, wounded 25 and caused the scalding of 13, through piercing the boiler of one of her assailants.
It will be seen that this ironclad had become a formidable menace to the Union arms, not only in the immediate neighborhood, but further north.
It was the intention of her commander to clear out the fleets at the mouth of the river, and then make an excursion up the coast, somewhat like that which Secretary Stanton once believed the _Merrimac_ was about to undertake.

General Grant was pressing his final campaign against Richmond, and the _Albemarle_ threatened to interfere with his plans, for if she made the diversion of which she was capable, she was likely to postpone indefinitely the wind up of the war.
Ah, if some daring scheme could be perfected for destroying the _Albemarle_! What a feat it would be and how vast the good it would accomplish! There was one young officer in the American navy who believed the thing could be done, and he volunteered to undertake it.
Well aware that the Unionists would neglect no means of blowing up the _Albemarle_, the Confederates used every possible precaution.

At the wharf in Plymouth, where she was moored, a thousand soldiers were on guard, and her crew, consisting of sixty men, were alert and vigilant.
To prevent the approach of a torpedo boat, the ram was surrounded by a boom of cypress logs, placed a considerable distance from the hull, and a double line of sentries was stationed along the river.