Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/95

Rh retired from ill health. After the destruction of the Albemarle the town of Plymouth fell again into the enemy's hands.

On the night of May 6, 1864, the ironclad Raleigh, Capt J. Pembroke Jones, bearing the flag of Commodore Lynch, C. S. N., steamed out of New inlet, Cape Fear river, N. C., to attack the United States vessels blockading the port of Wilmington, N. C. After exchanging a few shots, the Raleigh, at daylight, returned up the river. As she attempted to cross the bar, she stuck, and the weight of her armor "broke her back." The Raleigh was the worst constructed of all the Confederate gunboats. What she went out for has never been ascertained. She accomplished nothing. No blame was, or could have been, attached to her gallant captain, as a court of inquiry afterward decided.