A FORMIDABLE WARSHIP WAS BUILT UNDER REMARKABLE CONDITIONS TO ENABLE THE CONFEDERATES TO REGAIN CONTROL OF THE INLAND WATERS OF NORTH CAROLINA--VERY SUCCESSFUL AT FIRST, BUT SHE WAS LAID UP TO AWAIT THE BUILDING OF ANOTHER ONE, AND THEN CAME CUSHING WITH HIS LITTLE TORPEDO BOAT, AND THE CONFEDERATE HOPES WERE DESTROYED WITH THEIR SHIP. THE loss of the control of the North Carolina sounds, as already told, proved more damaging to the Confederate forces than they realized at first, but they very soon began making efforts to establish themselves there once more, and the oftener they were defeated in their hopes the more determined they became. To tell the complete story of the skirmishes that took place between the Dismal Swamp and Newbern would be to give a hundred instances of the courage, enterprise, and persistence of the men on both sides. There was the case of John Taylor Wood, who, with a party of Confederates, boarded and destroyed the Union gunboat _Underwriter_ under the eyes of the Union forces afloat and ashore. As another instance, there is also the story of Cushing’s trip up the New River Inlet with the _Ellis_, where he got into the wrong channel and had to destroy her, and then row in an open boat for a mile and a half under fire of the Confederates to escape. They were all brilliant, but none of them was decisive in any way. Eventually it became apparent that no dashing exploit could restore Confederate supremacy there, and their hope was dying, when two flatboat-builders living at Edward’s Ferry, on the Roanoke River, offered to build an ironclad, somewhat on the plan of the _Merrimac_, that should be able to navigate the shoal waters of the Sound and yet be invulnerable to the shot of the Union gunboats. Because the water at Hatteras Inlet was too shoal for any of the Union ironclads to pass, it was reasonable to suppose a well-built craft could clear the Union wooden gunboats from the waters of North Carolina. The chief contractor for the boat that was, in accordance with these ideas, laid down at Edward’s Ferry, was Mr. Gilbert Elliott. Naval Constructor John L. Porter, who had rebuilt the _Merrimac_, was sent to work out the plans, and Commander J. W. Cooke was appointed to gather the outfit and supervise the construction. Work began on her in January, 1863. Her keels (she was flat-bottomed) were laid in a cornfield. A common country blacksmith shop was the only “machine shop.” Her engines were put together from the scrap heaps of the iron works at Richmond and Wilmington. The timbers were from good pine logs, and her armor was like that of the _Merrimac_, but the ship, as a whole, excited the amusement even of many of the Confederates until she was afloat.