Beginning in the 1820s, canal fever swept the country as Americans built dozens of canals to improve transportation. Completed in 1859, the Albemarle & Chesapeake Canal was built in two cuts: an 8.5-mile Virginia section between the Elizabeth and North Landing Rivers and a 5.5-mile North Carolina cut joining Currituck Sound with the North River. The completed canal allowed vessels to travel from Norfolk to the Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds. During the Civil War, Confederate ships used the canal to transport supplies for the construction of Forts Hatteras and Clark on the Outer Banks, and between August 1861 and January 1862 more than 200 military vessels passed through it. After the February 1862 Battle of Elizabeth City, Confederates scuttled ships to block the North Carolina cut, while Federals also sent vessels towing ships to be sunk there to obstruct traffic, only to find the Confederates had already begun doing so. After the Union occupation of Norfolk in May 1862, southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina were largely in Federal hands, and the canal reopened to Union patrol and supply vessels. On February 9, 1864, Confederates attacked the mail boat Fawn near here, killed or wounded 7 people, captured 29 passengers including U.S. Congressman George W. Julian, burned the vessel, and soon released Julian, who continued to Roanoke Island. At dusk on May 16, 1863, 30 Confederate partisans leaped from the nearby Coinjock bridge onto the side-wheel steamer Arrow, captured its crew, then seized the steamer Emily and, still flying the Stars and Stripes, steamed past a Union gunboat up Albemarle Sound and the Chowan and Blackwater Rivers to Franklin, Va.