Tag: Norfolk Navy Yard (Norfolk VA)

Wikipedia says: The Norfolk Naval Shipyard, often called the Norfolk Navy Yard and abbreviated as NNSY, is a U.S. Navy facility in Portsmouth, Virginia, for building, remodeling and repairing the Navy’s ships. It is the oldest and largest industrial facility that belongs to the U.S. Navy as well as the most comprehensive. Located on the Elizabeth River, the yard is just a short distance upriver from its mouth at Hampton Roads.

It was established as Gosport Shipyard in 1767. Destroyed during the American Revolutionary War, it was rebuilt and became home to the first operational drydock in the United States in the 1830s. Changing hands during the American Civil War, it served the Confederate States Navy until it was again destroyed in 1862, when it was given its current name. The shipyard was again rebuilt, and has continued operation through the present day.

American Civil War

In 1861, Virginia joined the Confederate States of America. Fearing that the Confederacy would take control of the facility, the shipyard commander Charles Stewart McCauley ordered the burning of the shipyard on 21 April 1861. The Confederate forces did, in fact, take over the shipyard, and did so without armed conflict through an elaborate ruse orchestrated by civilian railroad builder William Mahone (then President of the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad and soon to become a famous Confederate officer). He bluffed the Federal troops into abandoning the shipyard in Portsmouth by running a single passenger train into Norfolk with great noise and whistle-blowing, then much more quietly, sending it back west, and then returning the same train again, creating the illusion of large numbers of arriving troops to the Federals listening in Portsmouth across the Elizabeth River (and just barely out of sight). The capture of the shipyard allowed a tremendous amount of war material to fall into Confederate hands. 1,195 heavy guns were taken for the defense of the Confederacy, and employed in many areas from Hampton Roads all the way to Fort Donelson Tennessee, Port Hudson, and Fort de Russy, Louisiana. The Union forces withdrew to Fort Monroe across Hampton Roads, which was the only land in the area which remained under Union control.

In early 1862, the Confederate ironclad warship CSS Virginia was rebuilt using the burned-out hulk of USS Merrimack. In the haste to abandon the shipyard, Merrimack had only been destroyed above the waterline, and an innovative armored superstructure was built upon the remaining portion. Virginia, which was still called Merrimack by Union forces and in many historical accounts, sank USS Cumberland, USS Congress, and engaged the Union ironclad USS Monitor in the famous Battle of Hampton Roads during the Union blockade of Hampton Roads. The Confederates burned the shipyard again when they left in May 1862.

Following its recapture of Norfolk and Portsmouth (and the shipyard) by the Union forces, the name of the shipyard was changed to Norfolk after the county in which it was located, outside the city limits of Portsmouth at the time. This choice of name was probably to minimize any confusion with the pre-existing Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine near Portsmouth, New Hampshire.