[3] Lea was serving aboard the Hartford, flagship of the East India Squadron, when the Civil War broke out in 1861.

[5] When Confederate forces retook Galveston on 1 January 1863, Lea, serving as the first officer (XO) of Harriet Lane, was wounded in the abdomen and side.

[6] He subsequently succumbed to his wounds in the arms of his father, who was serving as a major of artillery in the Confederate Army, and who had witnessed the capture of the Harriet Lane by the gunboat CS Bayou City from shore, and had rushed to the ship to find his son dying.

After the war Wainwright was re-interred at the Naval Academy Cemetery in Annapolis, but when a relative suggested that Lea's remains be reburied next to his mother in the Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, Albert Lea refused, stating that his son would have preferred to remain where he had fallen in battle.

[1] The destroyer USS Lea (DD-118) was named for him,[7] as is Camp #2 of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War in Houston.