This Civil War-Era Luke Skywalker Destroyed an Ironclad Death Star

History Unplugged Podcast · Dec 24, 2020 · 33m

One of America’s greatest but little-remembered Civil War heroes was Commander William Barker Cushing, who sank the Confederate ironclad Albemarle in a spectacular mission in 1864.

Regarded as erratic and insubordinate, Midshipman Cushing was drummed out of the Naval Academy in March 1861. But with the outbreak of war, the Union needed every trained officer it could find— and whatever his flaws, Cushing was an extremely talented naval officer. Ferocious, uncompromising, courageous, and loyal, he became a U.S. Navy commando and at the age of twenty-one was sent to destroy the South’s ultimate…