Virginia - Day 9 - Newport News

[Sometimes I get writer's block and find the events of a day are hard to write about.  It has nothing to do with whether I'm interested in the things I did or where I went, but it's more to do with the complexity of those things.  This was one of those days, which is why it's taken me so long to post this.]

Newport News Park Campground
Saturday, 9 March 2019

today's route

There are 2 roads, both with highway numbers, plus an interstate, all running through the town of Newport News, which is long and skinny, and runs down the whole bottom half of the Lower Peninsula.  I drove the length through the town of both roads: VA Rt. 143, aka Jefferson Ave., and US Rt. 60, aka Warwick Blvd.

I stopped at a Target for contact lens solution, then at a Camping World for propane, then I went down to The Mariners' Museum, that includes the USS Monitor Center.  This museum is really quite elaborate, has many more things to see than I had time to see them, and costs $1.  Major bargain.

The Mariners' Museum

Although the South is generally supposed to have had no industry to speak of by the 1860s, in fact Richmond had the largest iron works in the country, and Atlanta had the largest train building capacity.  What they didn't have, though, and needed badly is a navy.

By the time of the Civil War, Gosport Navy Yard at Hampton was the best dry dock in the country.  When the Union had to abandon it after Virginia seceded, the Federals burned all the ships that were being repaired and all the stores in the yard.  The Confederates salvaged as much as they could, including raising some of the destroyed ships.

One of these ships was the USS Merrimack, a wooden ship.  The Southerners found the hull and machinery were still intact and decided to convert it to an ironclad ship.  (According to the museum, the US Navy insists the correct spelling of the ship's name is "Merrimack," with a k, because it was named after the Merrimack River in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.  "Merrimac," without a k, is the name of towns in Massachusetts and Wisconsin.  The things you learn when you look around.)

In the early 1800s, all warships were made of wood and powered by sails, with simple artillery.  While more and more commercial boats were latching onto steam power, the hide-bound US Navy continued to build wooden sailing ships.  The last truly old-style warship, the USS Congress, was launched in 1842.  The French and the British disagreed and began to develop what they called "floating batteries" and iron-hulled warships.  (It should be noted, though, that in the late 1500s, Korea used a fleet of iron-clad "tortoise ships" to repel the Japanese.)

During the war, Pres. Lincoln heard that the South was creating an ironclad in Hampton Roads and became convinced the aim was to take it up the Potomac and attack Washington, DC.  If that had happened, the Civil War may well have had a different outcome.  Lincoln was told a man named John Ericsson had designed an ironclad that had a shallow draft, a low profile, and a revolving gun turret.  (Lincoln's reputed to have said, "All I have to say is what the girl said when she stuck her foot into the stocking.  It strikes me there's something in it.")

Lincoln overrode the Navy's opposition, and the ship was built in a Brooklyn shipyard in 100 days.  Ericsson said, "The iron-clad intruder will prove a severe monitor [to check the Southern ironclads]", which is where we got the name USS Monitor.

Despite the South's headstart on the Merrimack, rechristened the CSS Virginia, the Monitor was finished first: the South kept running into delays due to design changes and material shortages.

Meanwhile, Gen. Winfield Scott proposed what he called the Anaconda Plan: a naval blockade of the South, covering 3,500 miles of coastline and up the Mississippi River.  He knew the effects would take time and saw it as a slow-motion squeeze.  In the beginning only about 10% of Confederate vessels were caught in the blockade, but by 1865, 1 in every 3 vessels got caught, destroying the Confederate economy.

But Scott's plan was only beginning by March of 1862 and, though the blockade was a nuisance to the South, it hadn't made them desperate.  On March 8th, the CSS Virginia set out into Hampton Roads to challenge the US's blockade squadron and destroyed 2 of the Union's best warships, almost turning the tide of the war.  One of those sunk was the USS Congress (see above).  The Confederates expected to have more success the next day, but by then the USS Monitor, which had been delayed offshore by bad weather, made it in to Hampton Roads.

(This picture and the one above came off the internet.)  The boat in the foreground of the picture on the right is the USS Monitor, and the boat straight ahead of it that looks like a big tent on deck is the CSS Virginia, formerly the Merrimack.

On March 9, 1862, the battle between the two lasted 4 hours and ended only because they both ran out of ammunition.  Both ships were dented but were otherwise undamaged.  The battle is generally considered a draw and the 2 boats never faced each other again.  Though at the time both sides claimed victory, what was clear to all was that iron-clad ships had beaten the wooden sailing ships.

A couple of months after their battle, the Union retook Norfolk so the CSS Virginia couldn't go back there; ebbing tides pinned the deep-draft boat into a vulnerable position and the Confederates stripped, burned and abandoned it.

The Monitor lasted only 6 months longer and was sunk by bad weather off Cape Hatteras, "Graveyard of the Atlantic."  The wreck was discovered in 1973 and painstaking restoration work is still ongoing.  The museum has, for instance, the Monitor's engine room clock, the lantern from its gun turret, and similar artifacts that are being restored.  I don't think most of these weapons were found with the ship, but a few of them may have been.

1852 Presentation US Navy officer swords

1837 US Navy cutlass pistol

Did you know armies used hot air balloons for surveillance back then?  They loaded them onto ships and towed them out near the area they wanted surveilled, so they wouldn't have so far to fly.

This photo shows what the iron-clads were missing - beauty and grandeur.

I happened to be visiting on March 9th, and the museum was celebrating Battle of Hampton Roads Day, with reenactors and lectures and open house in the conservation center and, in the evening, "a food-tasting event of historic proportions!"  But even ordinarily, the museum had much much more than I had time or energy for, all very well presented.

That included a full-scale replica of the USS Monitor, including a cannon that the staff boomed every so often.  And it was really loud.  I happened to be walking the dogs when we first heard it and Gracie and I both about jumped out of our skins.  It took her quite a while to calm back down.  And apparently they let this thing off every half hour or so - I heard it boom while I was inside the museum, and then again just as I was coming out the front door.  I'd really hate to live in the neighborhood.

Hampton Roads
When I was doing research on Virginia long before I came here, I kept running across this "Hampton Roads" name, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it referred to.  It didn't seem to be a town or a highway or a building or anything - except I kept seeing the name sitting on top of the waterway where the James River meets the Atlantic.

I've spent what seemed like ages trying to figure it out, and I think I've got it.  "Hampton Roads" does in fact refer to this body of water.  The town of Hampton was named in 1610, but the designation "roads" comes from the ancient nautical terms "road" and "roadstead" meaning an area of water deep enough for safe passage.  The term "Hampton Roads" is mentioned in a 1755 act of the General Assembly, and an 1807 map of Virginia shows the channel designated "Hampton Roads." 

The term's in daily use in this area and people seem to be using it to refer not just to the waterway, but also to the land masses that surround it - including the towns of Virginia Beach and Norfolk and Portsmouth and Hampton and Newport News.  A chunk of highway that seems to loop around Portsmouth from the I-664 Monitor-Merrimac (no "k") Bridge-Tunnel to the I-64 Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel is designated the Hampton Roads Beltway.

Weird how things stick once they're started.

Newport News Shipbuilding

This isn't my photo only because I couldn't get a good angle on it, but this is what I saw, including the beautiful weather.

Newport News Shipbuilding is the US Navy's only designer and builder of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.  It was big news around here a couple of days ago when the government announced they were going to phase out the USS Harry S. Truman and not renew its nuclear power when its rods were spent.  The news story was that the money would be used for drones and things, not made here in Newport News

My completely unbiased thought (since I don't know anybody working for the shipyard) is that a drone and an aircraft carrier are not interchangeable, and I wondered just how thoroughly they thought this one through.

And along the same lines as the name Hampton Roads, I found several wildly different explanations for where the name "Newport News" comes from.  If you care, here are the links.   info.lizmoore.com/blog  answers.yahoo.com/question

I took this photo at Victory Landing Park where I stopped to walk the dogs.  It's right next to the Virginia Advanced Shipbuilding and Carrier Integration Center (in case anyone wondered if shipbuilding really mattered in this town).

This is just down the way from Newport News Shipbuilding.



And other stuff
I found a Piggly Wiggly (though they apparently no longer capitalize their name), where I haven't shopped since I was growing up in Waco (about 60 years ago).

I passed through someplace called Hilton Village, est. 1918, which was so charming I looked it up.  This photo is (obviously) off the internet but looks just like what I saw (except I saw it in color).  It was planned as an English-style village for use as wartime housing for Newport News shipbuilding workers.  1918 would make it WWI.

A truck passed me with the license plate FO X FO.  I spent quite a while puzzling over this and have finally decided it's Southern-speak for "four by four."  Which I think the truck was.

Several places around here, including The Mariners' Museum, have spaces fenced off with 3' high fences and signs saying "oyster shells only."  The one at the museum finally also had a sign explaining it, which is that the Chesapeake Bay is losing oyster habitat and the shells are being recycled into building more oyster reefs.  There's a whole organization devoted to this effort that's working with several government agencies on it.  Who knew?

On the radio I heard music by The Cactus Blossoms, a fairly new duo of brothers from Minnesota that, to me, sound just like the Everly Brothers.  It's great music.