Combat· American Civil War
Gosport Navy Yard reinforcement and evacuation
The hurried destruction of the South's principal navy yard at the outbreak of war.
As Virginia moved toward secession, the government tried to strengthen the Gosport yard at Norfolk, sending a relief expedition aboard the chartered steamer Pawnee with a hundred Marines. But with Virginia mobilizing and the yard indefensible, Captain Hiram Paulding could do little but destroy it. The Marines and sailors of the Norfolk detachment and the relief force spiked the guns, scuttled the ships, including the steam frigate Merrimack, and set the yard and the Marine barracks ablaze before withdrawing to the waiting vessels. The loss of Gosport was a heavy early blow, for it handed the Confederacy a wrecked but rich prize: the scuttled Merrimack would be raised and rebuilt as the ironclad CSS Virginia. No fighting attended the evacuation, which was a demolition under pressure rather than a defense.
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Record no. 397