A destroyer is a menacing man-of-war, not something you would like to encounter on the oceans on a dark eerie night.
The USS Cushing, which visited Mumbai last week, traces its name to one such night in 1864.
America was in the midst of the civil war between Abraham Lincoln's Union and rival Confederate forces. CSS Albemarle, a warship that used metal plates as armour, prevented Union troops from blocking ports on the North Carolina coast.
At that time, self-propelled torpedoes were yet to be designed. So, destroying a ship usually involved firing cannons or setting off explosives at vulnerable spots on the ship.
In a daring operation, William Barker Cushing, an alumnus of the US Naval Academy class of 1861, and some volunteers got close to the well-guarded Albemarle and caused irreparable damage using explosives.
Text: Dhiraj Shetty
Photograph: Rediff.com
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