The Norfolk Naval Shipyard, often called the Norfolk Navy Yard and abbreviated as NNSY, is a U.S. Navy facility in Portsmouth, Virginia. It was created for building, remodeling and repairing the United States 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. Though it was 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 to operate through the present day.
History
British control The Gosport Shipyard was founded on November 1, 1767, by Andrew Sprowle on the western shore of the Elizabeth River in Norfolk County in the Virginia colony.Sharp, John G.M., Andrew Sprowle, 1710–1776, "Lord of Gosport", http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/portsmouth/shipyard/sharptoc/asprowle.html This shipyard became a prosperous naval and merchant facility for the British Crown. In 1775, at the beginning of the American Revolution, Sprowle stayed loyal to the Crown which confiscated all of his properties, including the shipyard. Following Governor Dunmore's retreat from Portsmouth in May 1776, Sprowle was exiled along with other Royalists to Gwynn's Island (now Mathews County, Virginia), where he died 29 May 1776 and was buried in an unmarked grave.Naval Documents of the American Revolution, American Theatre volume 5, editor, William James Morgan (Government Printing Office, Washington D.C.), 9, https://www.history.navy.mil/content/dam/nhhc/research/publications/naval-documents-of-the-american-revolution/NDARVolume5.pdf p566Sharp, John G.M., Andrew Sprowle, 1710–1776, "Lord of Gosport", http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/portsmouth/shipyard/sharptoc/asprowle.htm In 1779, while the newly formed Commonwealth of Virginia was operating the shipyard, it was burned by British forces during the Chesapeake raid.
American control In 1794, United States Congress passed "An Act to Provide a Naval Armament," allowing the Federal Government to lease the Gosport Shipyard from Virginia. In 1799 the keel of , one of the first six frigates authorized by Congress, was laid, making her the first ship built in Gosport for the U.S. Navy.
The federal government purchased the shipyard from Virginia in 1801 for $12,000. This tract of land measured and now makes up the northeastern corner of the current shipyard. In 1827, construction began on the first of what would be the first two dry docks in the United States. The first one was completed three weeks ahead of similar projects in both Boston and South America, making it the first functional dry dock in the Americas. Dry Dock One, as it is referred to today, is still operational and is listed as historical landmark in Portsmouth, Virginia. Officer's Quarters A, B, and C were built about 1837. Additional land on the eastern side of the Elizabeth River was purchased in 1845.
The shipyard and neighboring towns suffered from a severe yellow fever epidemic in 1855, which killed about a quarter of the population, including James Chisholm, whose account was published shortly after his death in the epidemic.The United States Navy's Response to the 1855 Yellow Fever Epidemic, National Museum of the United States Navy, https://www.history.navy.mil/content/dam/museums/nmusn/Pamphlets/usn-response-1855-flu-epidemic/United%20States%20Navy%20Response%20to%20the%201855%20Yellow%20Fever.pdf
Enslaved labor Enslaved labor was extensively utilized in the Norfolk Navy Yard from its foundation until the Civil War. An example of such use is found in Norfolk Navy Yard Commandant, Commodore John Cassin's letter to the Secretary of the Navy, Benjamin W. Crowninshield. Cassin began his letter, by stating as justification "Finding it absolutely impossible to do the labor required in this Yard, without taking in some black men in consequence of the white men sporting with their time in the manner they do, leaving the yard, since the month of April come in, there has Sixty four men, laborers left the yard, some gone to Old Point to work where greater wages is given and others gone to sea... I have therefore taken in twenty four blacks for the purpose of discharging & loading such vessels as may be ordered and cleaning the frigate Constitution's hold."John Cassin to the Secretary of the Navy, 29 April 1818, Letters Received by the Secretary of the Navy (Captains Letters) 1805–1861, Volume 58, Letter 36, Roll 0058, Record Group 260, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington D.C. Some idea of the human scale can be found in this excerpt from a letter of Commodore Lewis Warrington dated 12 October 1831 to the Board of Navy Commissioners (BNC).Sharp, John G., Commodore Lewis Warrington to the Board of Navy Commissioners re: employment of enslaved workers in the construction of the Dry Docks 12 October 1831, http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/portsmouth/shipyard/sharptoc/nnysharp13.html Warrington's letter to the BNC was in response to various petitions by white workers to curtail or end enslaved labor on the Dry Dock. His letter attempts both to reassure the BNC in light of Nat Turner's Rebellion which occurred on 22 August 1831 and to serve as a reply to the Dry Dock's stonemasons who had quit their positions and accused the project chief engineer, Loammi Baldwin Jr., of the unfair hiring of enslaved labor in their stead.Tomlins, Christopher L. In Nat Turner’s Shadow Reflections on the Norfolk Dry Dock Affair 1830-1831, Labor History, Vol 33, Fall 1992, Number 4, p.498., accessed 19 September 2020, http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/portsmouth/shipyard/nnytomlins.pdfTomlins, Christopher, In the Matter of Nat Turner A Speculative History,(Princeton University Press:Princeton,2020), p.161.
There are about two hundred and forty six blacks employed in the Yard and Dock altogether; of whom one hundred and thirty six are in the former and one hundred ten in the latter – We shall in the Course of this day or tomorrow discharge twenty which will leave but one hundred and twenty six on our roll – The evil of employing blacks, if it be one, is in a fair and rapid course of diminution, as our whole number, after the timber now in the water is stowed, will not exceed sixty; and those employed at the Dock will be discharged from time to time, as their services can be dispensed with – when it is finished, there will be no occasion for the employment of any.
Sharp, John G., Commodore Lewis Warrington to the Board of Navy Commissioners re: employment of enslaved workers in the construction of the Dry Docks 12 October 1831, http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/portsmouth/shipyard/sharptoc/nnysharp.html accessed 7 October 2021 Despite such promises, enslaved labor continued, and, as of October 1832, Baldwin reported of the 261 men employed on the Dry Dock, 78 of whom, were enslaved black laborers or 30% of the Dry Dock workforce.Tomlins, 2020, p.164. Opposition to enslaved labor was never able to effectively challenge the status quo and suggestions or recommendations to end the practice met fierce resistance. One such effort in 1839, was countered by a petition signed by 34 shipyard slaveholders, pleading with the Secretary of the Navy to continue it less they suffer economic harm. Their successful petition was endorsed by Commodore Lewis Warrington. Warrington noted: "I beg leave to state, that no slave employed in this yard, is owned by a commissioned officer, but that many are owned by the Master Mechanicks & workmen of the yard". He added; “I beg leave to state, that no slave is allowed to perform any mechanical work in the yard, all such being necessarily reserved for the whites; this keeping up the proper distinction between the white men & slave”.Sharp, John G.M., A Norfolk Navy Yard Slaveholders Petition to the Secretary of the Navy, June 21, 1839 Norfolk Navy Yard 2019, http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/portsmouth/shipyard/sharptoc/nnysharp6.html In 1846 Commodore Jesse Wilkerson felt the need to confirm the continuation of slave hiring to the Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft, “that a majority of them [blacks] are negro slaves, and that a large portion of those employed in the Ordinary for many years, have been of that description, but by what authority I am unable to say as nothing can be found in the records of my office on the subject – These men have been examined by the Surgeon of the Yard and regularly Shipped [enlisted] for twelve months" Sharp, John G.,List of Gosport Navy Yard Employees Military and Civilian, 1846 http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/portsmouth/shipyard/sharptoc/nnysharp13.html, retrieved 7 October 2021
George Teamoh (1818–1883) as a young enslaved laborer and ship caulker worked at Norfolk Navy Yard in the 1830s and 1840s and later wrote of this unrequited toil: "The government had patronized, and given encouragement to slavery to a greater extent than the great majority of the country has been aware. It had in its service hundreds if not thousands of slaves employed on government works."God Made Man, Man Made the Slave: The Autobiography of George Teamoh editors F.N. Boney, Richard L. Hume and Rafia Zafar Mercer University Press: Macon 1990, p.83. As late "as 1848 almost one third of the 300 workers at the Gosport (Norfolk) Navy Yard were hired slaves."Starobin, Robert S. Industrial Slavery in the Old South, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975 p.32.Sharp, John G.M., Station Log Entries for U.S. Naval Station Gosport 1850, http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/portsmouth/shipyard/sharptoc/gosportlog.html
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 DeRussy, 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 was rebuilt using the burned-out hulk of . 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 , , and engaged the Union ironclad 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.