After Union Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside captured Roanoke Island on February 8, 1862, he sent Commander Stephen C. Rowan to destroy the Confederate Mosquito Fleet, a group of small, shallow-draft tugs and intracoastal trading steamers converted to gunboats that had been harassing U.S. naval vessels. Commodore William F. Lynch placed Appomattox, Beaufort, Black Warrior, Ellis, Fanny, and Seabird a mile east of here, with Black Warrior in Chantilly Bay and the others stretched across the Pasquotank River to Cobb’s Point, where a four-gun artillery position stood. On February 10, Rowan moved upriver with ships including USS Ceres and Commodore Perry. Lynch found that the men at Cobb’s Point had fled and asked Capt. William H. Parker of CSS Beaufort to serve the guns, but after one volley Parker discovered the cannons could not swivel upstream, and once the Federal ships passed they were useless, so he spiked them and withdrew. Rowan then ordered his vessels to dash at the enemy. His force shelled Cobb’s Point and quickly sank or disabled the Mosquito Fleet: Commodore Perry rammed and sank Seabird, Ceres captured Ellis, Appomattox, Black Warrior, and Fanny were battered and scuttled or abandoned, and Beaufort alone escaped to Norfolk. Rowan then occupied Elizabeth City, and for the rest of the war North Carolina’s coastal rivers, except for the Cape Fear River, remained in Union hands.