When the Commonwealth of Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, one of the important US military bases threatened was Gosport Navy Yard (now Norfolk Naval Shipyard) in Portsmouth, Virginia. To prevent the facility and its resources from falling into Confederate hands, orders were sent to destroy the base. This decision set in motion the chain of events that would lead to the creation of CSS Virginia, as the U.S. Navy sought to deny the Confederacy access to valuable military assets.
On the afternoon of 17 April 1861, the day Virginia seceded, Engineer in Chief B. F. Isherwood managed to get the frigate USS Merrimack's engines lit in preparation for departure. However, secessionists had sunk light boats between Craney Island and Sewell's Point the previous night, blocking the channel and preventing escape. On 20 April, before evacuating the Navy Yard, the U.S. Navy burned Merrimack to the waterline and sank her to prevent her capture. The destruction was intended to be complete and permanent.
The scuttled USS Merrimack would not remain destroyed for long. The Confederates subsequently raised the vessel and reconstructed her as CSS Virginia, the first steam-powered ironclad warship built by the Confederate States Navy during the first year of the American Civil War. Virginia was constructed as a casemate ironclad using the razéed (cut down) original lower hull and engines of the former frigate. The ship later became one of the most historically significant vessels of the Civil War, participating in the Battle of Hampton Roads in March 1862, where she opposed the Union's USS Monitor in what is chiefly significant in naval history as the first battle between ironclads.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
Union: 0; Confederate: vessel destroyed
Content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in the US, drawing on NRHP records, battlefield archives, census history and geological data to tell the full story of a place.