
DATE: Friday, September 26, 1997            TAG: 9709240167

SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS     PAGE: 06   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: COVER STORY 

SOURCE: BY JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE, CORRESPONDENT 

                                            LENGTH:  122 lines

HAMPTON ROADS NAVAL MUSEUM PORTSMOUTH HISTORY CAN BE FOUND JUST ACROSS THE RIVER

A RESIDENT of Nauticus' second floor, the Hampton Roads Naval Museum boasts a collection of items representing more than 200 years of local naval history.

Portsmouth, home to America's oldest naval yard, is prominently featured at the museum in photographs, relics and handsome models of historic ships built and moored there.

Visitors can trace the origins of the yard, founded by the British along the Elizabeth River after the 1767 purchase of the land in Gosport. The yard eventually served under four flags - British, Virginia, United States and Confederate.

Admission is free.

Museum curator Joseph M. Judge showed a collection of Portsmouth artifacts from the years before and after the federal government purchased the Gosport Yard after tangling on the high seas with France and the Barbary States.

Judge pointed out models of the frigate Chesapeake, one of the first ships built by the U.S. following the Revolution.

She was launched in 1799, one of six in her class, and had a series of unsuccessful scraps with the British before her defeat by HMS Shannon in 1813.

Also displayed was the Delaware, which in 1833 became the first ship to enter an American drydock.

This drydock, which is still in service, was an especially vital asset for a young U.S. Navy built from wood, sails and men.

``In the Civil War, it was one of the most important installations in the nation,'' the curator said of the shipyard.

As he explained while moving from exhibit to exhibit, it was certainly the most sought after. The North and South juggled for control of Hampton Roads throughout the War Between the States.

Few examples of the yard as a resource would prove more iron-clad than one from the Civil War era.

``We do follow the shipyard from its very beginnings up to at least World War II,'' Judge said. ``But if there's one thing the yard is the most famous for, that would be the CSS Virginia.''

Flames licked the night above the Gosport Navy Yard on April 20, 1861. The United States was abandoning its prized installation after this commonwealth's secession. The Union did not want the ``Rebs'' to take it.

So they set it ablaze.

Buildings burned. Stores were destroyed. But it was not quite a textbook pillaging.

``They actually did a pretty poor job,'' Judge said. ``They tried to blow up the dry dock and failed.''

Among the ships gutted, burned or given to the waters of the Elizabeth River was the Merrimack, a 40-gun steam frigate burned from her three masts to waterline. She sank.

``I . . . commenced scuttling the Germantown, Plymouth, Dolphin and Merrimack, destroying the engine and machinery of the latter,'' Gosport Navy Yard commandant C.S. McCauley reported to the Secretary of the Navy following the loss of the yard.

He sailed off aboard the lone ship to escape: the Cumberland, a 22-gun sloop which would meet its fate months later at the hands of a former sister ship reborn to serve the Confederate States.

On July 1, the blue, orange and white of the Confederate flag were raised above the what had been America's oldest yard. Virginia had finally joined the other southern states, and the Confederacy gained the yard, a graveyard of ships and, perhaps most importantly, the dry dock.

According to the writings of shipyard historian Marshall W. Butt, the dock had been added to the yard from 1827-34, built ``of huge blocks of Massachusetts granite and cost $974,365.65.''

The Confederates raised the waterlogged Monitor from the Elizabeth River and, in that man-made cradle from 1861-62, the dead ship was resurected with a skin of armor.

Unable to keep up with Northern shipbuilding, the South erected battlements along the Elizabeth to protect their shipyard and their work on the Merrimack.

Completed, the Merrimack became the Virginia, the first metal-hulled ship to do battle.

Butt wrote that her ``battles in Hampton Roads . . . with the wooden squadrons and the armored Monitor made obsolete the world's wooden navies.''

In battle, she would ram and sink the frigate Cumberland and set fire to the frigate Congress, driving her aground.

Artifacts from the Cumberland recovered from the James River are contained in the museum.

The Congress exploded March 9. Later that day, as the Virginia returned to finish off the grounded Minnesota, the Monitor intercepted her and they traded fire and maneuvers. It was a stalemate.

The Virginia was trapped when the Union recovered Norfolk and Portsmouth, and held her captive in the Elizabeth River using a blockade including the Monitor. The Virginia's draft was too deep to allow escape up the James River to Richmond.

On May 11, 1862, the Confederates ran aground and destroyed the Virginia. The rebels, too, set fire to the yard.

The shipyard, now permanently in the hands of the U.S., rebuilt.

T he years since the Civil War are also represented at the museum, Judge said.

It features displays of the Texas, the Navy's first battleship, which was built at the yard in 1889-92, and the carrier Langley, converted at the yard from the collier Jupiter.

Stories of these ships populate the museum, as do tales from around Hampton Roads, from every era and time of war.

``When you're talking Portsmouth,'' Judge said, ``you're not only talking about the yard, but the ships built there.''

And those repaired, and the harbor itself.

The yard's access to the Chesapeake Bay makes it a vital national resource - one that can build bits of history such as the Delaware and the Chesapeake. Even the CSS Virginia.

Bibliography:

History of the United States Navy-Yard at Gosport, Virginia (Near Norfolk) by Edward P. Lull, Government Printing Office.

Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth, Virginia: A Brief History by Marshall W. Butt, Public Information Office of Portsmouth.

Portsmouth: A Pictorial History by Alf J. and Ramona H. Mapp, The Donning Company. ILLUSTRATION: Hampton Roads Naval Museum photos

The USS Shangri-La is christened at the Norfolk Naval Yard. Below

is an artist's rendition of the Gosport Naval Yard. Portsmouth's

rich naval history can be rediscovered just across the river at

Norfolk's Nauticus.

The launch of the United States Steam Corvette ``Richmond.'' The

Hampton Roads Naval museum offers a detailed look back at more than

200 years of the area's naval history.