Union General Benjamin Butler made a momentous decision when he refused to return them to the slaveowners, and instead declared the three men "contraband of war" to be retained within Union lines. At the start of the Civil War, he fled with two other enslaved men to Fort Monroe. One of the enslaved men who worked on the island was Shepard Mallory. Stone walls with embrasures (openings) for cannon were completed only the northern side, facing the deep channel which enemy ships might use. The island kept sinking, and the plans for a three-story fort were altered. Source: Library of Congress, Birds eye view of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia 2įort Monroe and Rip Raps (site of Fort Calhoun, renamed Fort Wool) in 1861 It dropped an additional six inches by 1831. The military engineers quickly recognized that adding additional weight for that fort's granite walls increased the sinking of the artificial island. After six years of adding stone, the army gave the site a year to settle before beginning construction of Fort Calhoun on the man-made island. The heavy stones sank into the soft sediments. In this situation they are in contact with the slope of the mole, subject to constant attrition and thumping against the sharp edges of the rocks, occasioned by the swell and agitation of the sea, and thereby exposed to increased wear and injury. ![]() The contractor is compelled to graduate the mole seven feet above the water, in the formation of which his vessels are obliged to be secured between two anchors, in such manner as to be enabled to land their cargoes by means of stages from the decks of the vessels to the top of the deposite. It is also proper to state that the mole, being erected in the open sea, and in eighteen feet water, very considerable expense attends the delivery of stone for the formation thereof. An 1822 Department of War report noted: 1 ![]() Cost of delivering the stone was high, in part because offloading it was risky. Rock after rock was dumped onto the silty Rip-Raps shoal to create a foundation, or "mole" rising above the waterline. Massachusetts granite quarries provided rock needed later for the drydock at Portsmouth Naval Yard. When it was found to be unsuitable, rock was obtained from quarries excavating the hard metamorphic rock near Georgetown on the Potomac River. A contract was signed for "limestone" to be delivered from the York River. Rock hard enough to establish a foundation was available at quarries on the James, York, Potomac, and Susquehanna rivers. Source: Library of Congress, Preliminary chart of the Atlantic coast : from the entrance of Chesapeake Bay to Ocracoke Inlet (1862) Rock was dumped for decades on the Rip Raps shoal, before Fort Calhoun was finished and cannon could block ships from sailing up the James River Rip-Raps got its name from the rippling of the water, as the Chesapeake Bay encountered a shallow deposit of silt, sand and clay off the Peninsula. ![]() Starting in 1818, the Americans sought to fortify the natural shoal called Rip-Raps (Willoughby Shoal) about halfway between Hampton and Norfolk. The solution was to manufacture a new island in the middle of Hampton Roads. ![]() Even if the gunpowder had been more powerful, the iron used for cannon barrels could not have contained and channeled the strong explosions. Enemy ships could navigate upstream while out of range of forts on either shoreline. Through the Civil War, gunpowder lacked the "oomph" to push cannonballs all the way across the river. In Hampton Roads, an enemy ship could sail near Willoughby Spit and be out of range from the artillery at Fort Monroe on the Peninsula. Until the Civil War, forts at Hampton Roads were unable to block enemy ships from sailing into the Chesapeake Bay or up the James River because cannon at shore batteries were not powerful enough to hit a ship in the channel. Source: Library of Congress, Atlas of the War of the Rebellion, Yorktown to Williamsburg, Va. Fort Wool (originally named Fort Calhoun) was renamed in 1862 to honor General John Wool, the Union Army officer who captured Norfolk
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |