Benjamin H. Gray, CSS Albemarle
Benjamin H. Gray enlisted at age twelve for service as a seaman in the Confederate Navy,
Wilmington Squadron. Wilmington was an important center of naval activity to defend the Cape Fear region, and where three ironclads were eventually built: CSS North Carolina, CSS Raleigh,
and the unfinished CSS Wilmington.
Gray was assigned in spring 1864 to the ironclad ram CSS Albemarle, constructed at Edwards Ferry, near Scotland Neck. Under the command of Captain John W. Cooke, he served as a powder boy carrying bags of gunpowder from the lower magazine to the gun deck.
While Gray was a combat veteran aboard the Albemarle, other black men like Edward Walsh of Bermuda served on the blockade runner Eugenie making trips between Bermuda and Wilmington; and later the runners Flora, Index, Elsie, Constance and Annie. By the end of the war Walsh had run the blockade 16 times, had two ships sunk under him, and two more captured by Northern blockaders.
Gray was following a tradition of black crewman aboard Confederate fighting vessels. Launched at Charleston in August 1862, the CSS Chicora’s crew included three enlisted free Negroes. Dr. Edward Smith, dean of
American Studies at American University, estimated that by February, 1865, 1150 black seamen were in service in the Confederate Navy which amounted to about 20% of total naval personnel.
In June 1917, while a resident of Bertie County NC, Gray applied for a Confederate Pension from North Carolina. It was approved the following month. After his death in 1924, his widow, Margaret was granted a pension based upon his service.
Sources:
Rogues & Runners, Bermuda and the American Civil War, Catherine Deichmann
Charleston at War, 1860-1865, Jack Thomson
Cape Fear Historical Institute, Black Soldiers in Grey, Blue and Red. www.cfhi.net
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