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Fort Boykin
Fort Boykin is a historic site in Isle of Wight County, Virginia, located along the James River. The history of the site is believed to date back to 1623 when colonists were ordered to build a fort to protect them from attacking Native Americans or Spanish marauders. Today the remains of the fort, mostly from the American Civil War, are preserved in a public park. Colonial period The fort was built in 1623 by Captain Roger Smith, in the wake of the devastating Indian Attack of 1622. The attack claimed 347 people in the Virginia colony, a quarter of the population, including 52 in Warrosquyoake Shire (an early name for Isle of Wight County). Potential attacks by the Spanish were also a consideration. On May 21, 1623, the Governor's Council ordered Smith to build a fort on "the Worrosquoyacke shore, opposite to Tindall Shoals". The fort, originally christened "The Castle" due to its deep natural ditches, high elevation and steep embankment fronting the James River, was also known a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smithfield, Virginia
Smithfield is a town in Isle of Wight County, in the South Hampton Roads subregion of the Hampton Roads region of Virginia in the United States. The population was 8,089 at the 2010 census. The town is most famous for the curing and production of the Smithfield ham. The Virginia General Assembly passed a statute defining "Smithfield ham" by law in 1926, with one of the requirements that it be processed within the town limits. Smithfield Foods, a Chinese Fortune 500 company that owns Smithfield Packing Company and others, is the world's largest pork processor and hog producer. The company, based in Smithfield, raises 12 million hogs and processes 20 million pounds of them annually. History and industry Smithfield, first colonized in 1634, is located on the Pagan River, south of Jamestown and on the south side of the James River. The Native Americans knew this area as ''Warascoyak,'' also spelled ''Warrosquoyacke'', meaning "point of land." The Virginia colony officially formed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fort Huger
Fort Huger is a historic archaeological site located near Smithfield, Isle of Wight County, Virginia. The site is the location of an abandoned American Civil War fort on the south side of the James River across from Fort Eustis/Mulberry Point. It was named for Major General Benjamin Huger, commander of the Confederate States Army's Department of Norfolk at the time it was built. Fort Huger was an integral part of the Confederate Army's James River defenses in late summer 1861 through spring 1862. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008. History Fort Huger's site on Harden's Bluff (or Hardin's/Hardy's Point) was selected by Virginia's state engineer Colonel Andrew Talcott in August 1861 to supplement Fort Boykin, also on the south bank of the James, and the Mulberry Point battery on the north bank. The fort was also designed by him. Construction began immediately under Capt. E.T.D. Myers and Capt. John Clarke. The fort was completed in March 1862 with p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seacoast Defense In The United States
Seacoast defense was a major concern for the United States from its independence until World War II. Before Military aviation, airplanes, many of America's enemies could only reach it from the sea, making coastal forts an economical alternative to Standing army, standing armies or a large navy. After the 1940s, it was recognized that fixed fortifications were obsolete and ineffective against aircraft and missiles. However, in prior eras foreign fleets were a realistic threat, and substantial fortifications were built at key locations, especially protecting major harbors. The defenses heavily depended on fortifications but also included Submarine mines in United States harbor defense, submarine minefields, nets and boom (navigational barrier), booms, ships, and airplanes. Therefore, all of the armed forces participated in seacoast defense, but the United States Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers played the central role in constructing fixed defenses. Designs evo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Register Of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic value". A property listed in the National Register, or located within a National Register Historic District, may qualify for tax incentives derived from the total value of expenses incurred in preserving the property. The passage of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) in 1966 established the National Register and the process for adding properties to it. Of the more than one and a half million properties on the National Register, 95,000 are listed individually. The remainder are contributing resources within historic districts. For most of its history, the National Register has been administered by the National Park Service (NPS), an agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior. Its goals are to help property owners and inte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sidney Lanier
Sidney Clopton Lanier (February 3, 1842 – September 7, 1881) was an American musician, poet and author. He served in the Confederate States Army as a private, worked on a blockade-running ship for which he was imprisoned (resulting in his catching tuberculosis), taught, worked at a hotel where he gave musical performances, was a church organist, and worked as a lawyer. As a poet he sometimes used dialects. Many of his poems are written in heightened, but often archaic, American English. He became a flautist and sold poems to publications. He eventually became a professor of literature at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and is known for his adaptation of musical meter to poetry. Many schools, other structures and two lakes are named for him, and he became hailed in the South as the "poet of the Confederacy". A 1972 US postage stamp honored him as an "American poet". Biography Sidney Clopton Lanier was born February 3, 1842, in Macon, Georgia, to parents Robert Sampso ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fort Monroe
Fort Monroe, managed by partnership between the Fort Monroe Authority for the Commonwealth of Virginia, the National Park Service as the Fort Monroe National Monument, and the City of Hampton, is a former military installation in Hampton, Virginia, at Old Point Comfort, the southern tip of the Virginia Peninsula, United States. Along with Fort Wool, Fort Monroe originally guarded the navigation channel between the Chesapeake Bay and Hampton Roads—the natural roadstead at the confluence of the Elizabeth, the Nansemond and the James rivers. Union General George B. McClellan landed his forces at the fort during Peninsula campaign of 1862 during the American Civil War. Until disarmament in 1946, the areas protected by the fort were the entire Chesapeake Bay and Potomac River regions, including the water approaches to the cities of Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland, along with important shipyards and naval bases in the Hampton Roads area. Surrounded by a moat, the six-side ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
USS Port Royal (1862)
USS ''Port Royal'' was a double-ended gunboat built for the U.S. Navy during the American Civil War. The vessel was assigned to patrol the rivers and other waterways of the Confederate States of America and to enforce the Union blockade on the South. Service history ''Port Royal'', a wooden, double-ended, side-wheel gunboat, was launched at New York 17 January 1862 by Thomas Stack and commissioned at New York Navy Yard, 26 April 1862. Departing New York 4 May, ''Port Royal'' steamed to Hampton Roads, Virginia, to join the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron in supporting General George McClellan's drive up the peninsula toward Richmond, Virginia. She engaged Confederate batteries at Sewell's Point, Virginia, 8 May and a week later participated in the Battle of Drewry's Bluff, on the James River below the southern capital. After General Robert E. Lee's seven day campaign turned back McClellan's thrust, ''Port Royal'' shifted operations to the North Carolina Sounds. She was part ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
USS Aroostook (1861)
USS ''Aroostook'' was a built for the Union Navy during the American Civil War. ''Aroostook'' was used by the Navy to patrol navigable waterways of the Confederacy to prevent the South from trading with other countries. Construction and design ''Aroostook'' -- a wooden-hulled, steam-propelled, screw gunboat—was laid down by Nathaniel Lord Thompson sometime soon after 6 July 1861, at Kennebunk, Maine; launched on or around 19 October 1861; and commissioned at the Boston Navy Yard on 20 February 1862, Lt. John C. Beaumont in command. Civil War service Rescue of ''Vermont'' On 1 March 1862, toward the end of the gunboat's fitting out process, word reached the yard that, during a fierce storm, had lost her rudder, her bower anchors, all of her rigging, and four of her boats and was drifting helplessly amid raging seas some 95 miles south-southeast of Cape Cod Light. Capt. William L. Hudson, the commandant of the yard, ordered Beaumont to proceed in ''Aroostook'' to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
USS Galena (1862)
USS ''Galena'' was a wooden-hulled broadside ironclad built for the United States Navy during the American Civil War. The ship was initially assigned to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron and supported Union forces during the Peninsula Campaign in 1862. She was damaged during the Battle of Drewry's Bluff because her armor was too thin to prevent Confederate shots from penetrating. Widely regarded as a failure, ''Galena'' was reconstructed without most of her armor in 1863 and transferred to the West Gulf Blockading Squadron in 1864. The ship participated in the Battle of Mobile Bay and the subsequent Siege of Fort Morgan in August. She was briefly transferred to the East Gulf Blockading Squadron in September before she was sent to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for repairs in November. Repairs were completed in March 1865 and ''Galena'' rejoined the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron in Hampton Roads the following month. After the end of the war, the ship was decommissioned ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heated Shot
Heated shot or hot shot is round shot that is heated before firing from muzzle-loading cannons, for the purpose of setting fire to enemy warships, buildings, or equipment. The use of heated shot dates back centuries; it was a powerful weapon against wooden warships, where fire was always a hazard. However, it was rendered obsolete in the mid-19th century when vessels armored with iron replaced wooden warships in the world's navies. Also at around the same time, the replacement of solid-iron shot with exploding shells gave artillery a far more destructive projectile that could be fired immediately without preparation.Roberts, 1863, pg. 107 The use of heated shot was mainly confined to shore batteries and forts, due to the need for a special furnace to heat the shot, and their use from a ship was in fact against Royal Navy regulations because they were so dangerous, although the American ship USS ''Constitution'' had a shot furnace installed for hot shot to be fired from her carron ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smoothbore
A smoothbore weapon is one that has a barrel without rifling. Smoothbores range from handheld firearms to powerful tank guns and large artillery mortars. History Early firearms had smoothly bored barrels that fired projectiles without significant spin. To minimize inaccuracy-inducing tumbling during flight, their projectiles required an aerodynamically uniform shape, such as a sphere. However, surface imperfections on the projectile and/or the barrel will cause even a sphere to rotate randomly during flight, and the Magnus effect will curve it off the intended trajectory when spinning on any axis not parallel to the direction of travel. Rifling the bore surface with spiral grooves or polygonal valleys imparts a stabilizing gyroscopic spin to a projectile that prevents tumbling in flight. Not only does this more than counter Magnus-induced drift, but it allows a longer, more streamlined round with greater sectional density to be fired from the same caliber barrel, improvin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
