Onslow Raid: The Gunboat Ellis

On November twenty-third, eighteen sixty-two, twenty-year-old Lieutenant William Cushing steered the gunboat Ellis up the New River with twenty-three men and a bold set of orders: capture the town of Jacksonville, seize the mail, and destroy the salt works supplying Confederate forces. Cushing pulled it off, raiding the post office and torching a salt works before Confederate cavalry and infantry converged. Retreating downriver the next morning under heavy fire, the Ellis ran hard aground.

Cushing held the ship with six volunteers to cover the escape of his crew, transferred prisoners and supplies to a captured schooner, then set his own vessel on fire rather than surrender her. He escaped by water as the Ellis burned. The Ellis could not be refloated, and her magazine exploded the next morning.