THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 5, 1996 TAG: 9601030140
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Olde Towne Journal
SOURCE: Alan Flanders
LENGTH: Long : 129 lines
MENTION PORTSMOUTH, ENGLAND, to British naval history buffs and their thoughts turn immediately to their nation's most famous shipyard and home of the Royal Navy. The same goes for this side of the Atlantic.
When you talk about Portsmouth, England's sister city, Portsmouth, Virginia, and naval history, the connection and similarities are strong.
The story begins when Scottish merchant, Andrew Sprowle, first settled in the Colonial town of Norfolk in 1746. Sprowle was no doubt a close associate of fellow merchantman William Crawford, who in 1752 received permission from the General Assembly to sell 65 acres of his plantation on the Elizabeth River and begin the town of Portsmouth.
Crawford, as shrewd a businessman as Sprowle, named the area Portsmouth after the great English naval base and shipyard whose establishment went back to the year 1212 when King John ordered a protective wall built ``for the preservation of our Ships and Galleys . . . in which our Ships tackle may be safely kept. . . .''
From 1200 to 1550, Portsmouth, England, became the assembly point for attacks on France, and the town naturally prospered by supporting the Royal Navy. The world's first drydock was built there in 1495, starting shipbuilding on a large scale. One of the most famous ships to be built in Portsmouth, England, was the Mary Rose, flagship for King Henry VIII. The keel was laid in 1509.
With the official creation of the Royal Navy in 1670, growth in Portsmouth, England, accelerated with the completion of The Great Stone Dock and The Great Basin; building slips, wharfs and ranges of storehouses by 1750. The yard, by then one of the finest in the world, became home for such legendary ships as Lord Horatio Nelson's Victory and the first British ironclad, HMS Warrior in 1860.
No doubt, Sprowle was very familiar with the growth of the English port city into the world's premier ship construction and drydock facility and immediately jumped at the opportunity to purchase a large tract of waterfront property from Crawford's estate in 1767. Calling the site Gosport was a natural for Sprowle as he knew the Royal Navy would immediately identify his ``new'' Gosport with the original Gosport across the harbor from Portsmouth, England, and the site of another large naval facility. With the right marketing concepts in place, the General Assembly recognized the potential of Portsmouth and Gosport, Virginia, as a ``second Portsmouth, England.'' Meanwhile, Sprowle wasted no time building on the English blueprint.
Just what Sprowle's shipyard looked like before it was destroyed in the American Revolution is sketchy, but there are some early descriptions that offer proof that Portsmouth, Virginia, was taking an early lead in Colonial American shipyards.
According to the executor of Sprowle's estate, Gosport shipyard by 1772 was ``situated on the south branch of the Elizabeth River, in the County of Norfolk, and separated from the town of Portsmouth by a small creek, from which it extends, in front, along the river, about half a mile, in all which space, the river near the shore, is deep and being well sheltered from winds, forms on the whole, a most excellent harbour for ships of great burthen, either for careening, sheathing, repairing, or loading.''
Sprowle's shipyard also included ``a large warehouse built with stone, 91 feet in length, and 41 feet wide, 5 stories high, 3 of stone and 2 of wood; the doors and windows, with broad stairs of hewn stone, most brought from Britain at great expense; the whole of very substantial materials and strong work, and cost upwards of 1,000 pounds Sterling . . . three other large warehouses, a counting house, a smiths shop, a dwelling house with kitchen and a large iron crane with brass sheaves.''
Shortly after Crawford's death in 1762, Sprowle became the official British Naval Agent in the area and one of the most prosperous merchants in Virginia at that time. That led to his close friendship with Royal Governor Lord Dunmore. After Dunmore fled Williamsburg, he established his headquarters at Gosport in October 1775.
Apparently, Sprowle's home and dockyard were suitable to sustain the governor, his large convoy of warships and Royal troops for several months. However, things soured after Dunmore issued an ``emancipation'' of all local slaves while his forces pillaged nearby farms.
After Royal troops from Gosport were badly defeated by Colonial militia at the Battle of Great Bridge, Dunmore turned his ships' guns on the Norfolk waterfront. Dunmore's shelling of the town of Norfolk Jan. 1, 1776, and the subsequent burning by Royal and Colonial forces, marked the beginning of the end of his stay at Gosport and the end of Sprowle's dream for a second Portsmouth.
Sprowle joined dozens of other Portsmouth Tories when Dunmore sailed that May from the Elizabeth River to Gwynn's Island (Mathews County). Shortly after his departure, Sprowle died and was buried with others in an unmarked grave. But his death did not mark the end of Gosport.
The yard changed hands several times during the Revolution. British Navy Commodore Sir George Collier, during his raid on Portsmouth in May 1779, referred to it as ``the most considerable in America.'' Before he ordered Gosport burned, Collier noted that the harbor contained 137 vessels all carrying various supplies and equipment from Gosport, while the yard contained ``five thousand loads of fine seasoned oak-knees for shipbuilding, and infinite quantity of masts, cordage, and numbers of beautiful ships of war on the stocks.'' However, for all practical purposes Sprowle's original buildings were by now destroyed and for the remainder of the war, Gosport was little more than an anchorage.
After the creation of the United States Navy Department in 1801, a survey for future shipyards was conducted and once again Gosport was chosen for its deep harbor and easy access to the Atlantic.
The deed transferring 16 acres of the original Gosport tract to the United States government for $12,000 bears the signature of Virginia Governor James Monroe. Shortly after the purchase, Gosport was abuzz with the sound of ship adzes, broad axes and caulking hammers used to finished construction on the Chesapeake, one of the Navy's original six frigates.
During the next half-century, Gosport grew with an astounding list of improvements to the waterfront and addition of new shops. With the construction of the nation's first stone drydock, a naval hospital, blacksmith shop, brick masthouse, cooper shop, rigger loft, mould loft, joiner's shop, ropewalk, powder magazine, marine barracks, sheds for tar and pitch, saw pits and a saw-house, boat-shop and boat-house, wet slips, buildingways, floating drydock, paint-shop, steam-engine and coal houses, foundry, and even a school for midshipmen and a commandant's home (Quarters ``A''), the yard was the most complete facility of its kind in the United States.
Construction projects - the building of the 74-gun ships-of-the-line Delaware and New York and later steamships like the Union and the steam-frigate Powhatan and conversion of the Merrimack into the ironclad CSS Virginia - served notice that Gosport had arrived as a full-fledged ship construction facility able to serve any ship in the U.S. Navy.
Andrew Sprowle's legacy had been fulfilled. The only other shipyard in the world that could compete with the Gosport Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia, was in Portsmouth, England. This proud and historic association continues to this day. ILLUSTRATION: The Gosport waterfront just before the start of the Civil War.
The careening of the frigate Thetis at Gosport in 1797.
by CNB