The result was a Union victory, with Elizabeth City and its nearby waters in their possession, and the Confederate fleet captured, sunk, or dispersed.

At the outset of the American Civil War, the Union sought to implement its Anaconda Plan to isolate and defeat the Confederacy.

The crucial first step was to blockade the Confederate coast to prevent access to Europe; this was relatively easy, as the pre-war navy was almost entirely from the Union states.

[citation needed] Elizabeth City lies near the mouth of the Pasquotank River, where it flows into Albemarle Sound from the north.

To the east is the southern segment of the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal, separated from the Pasquotank River by only a narrow neck of land.

So long as the North Carolina Sounds remained in Confederate hands, Norfolk could be well supplied despite the blockading efforts of the Union Navy at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.

On that first day of the two-day battle, a force of 19 Union gunboats bombarded, rather inconclusively, four Rebel forts facing Croatan Sound and eight ships of the Confederate States Navy.

The Confederate vessels were drawn from a unit led by Flag Officer William F. Lynch, termed the Mosquito Fleet, intended to serve on Albemarle Sound and nearby waters.

The only significant casualty among the fleets was the loss of CSS Curlew, holed at the waterline and beached to avoid sinking; when Roanoke Island was surrendered the next day, she was burned in order to keep her out of Federal hands.

The last vessel, CSS Black Warrior, a schooner that had been pressed into service only four days before the battle, was armed with two 32-pounder guns.

Rowan's flagship Delaware, Hetzel, Isaac N. Seymour, John L. Lockwood, Ceres, and General Putnam[15] had all been sidewheel steamers before being acquired by the navy.

He took this position because he expected the Union to try to reduce the battery before proceeding, as they had done three days previously in the opening phase of the Battle of Roanoke Island.

His final instructions to his captains included the order not to let the ships fall into enemy hands; if all else failed, they should try to escape, or else destroy their vessels.

Because the battery was the strong point of his planned defense, he was constrained to order Lieutenant Commander William Harwar Parker, captain of CSS Beaufort, to come ashore with most of his crew to man the guns.

She was fired on by the entire attacking force as they passed the Cobb's Point battery, so her crew abandoned her and set her afire.

CSS Forrest, on the stocks to repair the damaged screw she had sustained on 8 February, was burned, along with an unnamed and uncompleted gunboat.

[22] Quarter Gunner John Davis was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions on board the Valley City during the engagement.

[23][24] When they learned of the destruction of their fleet and the surrender of the Cobb's Point battery, Confederate troops retreating from Roanoke Island set fires in Elizabeth City, acting under orders from Brigadier General Henry A.

It remained so for most of the rest of the war; the only significant challenge to Union dominance was the short-lived experiment of CSS Albemarle in the summer of 1864.