Federal forces making their way up the Virginia peninsula have taken control of the important port of Norfolk, Virginia, noteworthy not only for its construction yards and commercial and military ship-yards, but mainly because it was home to the most important ship in the Confederate navy, the CSS Virginia, the Confederacy’s first and only full-fledged ironclad.

Norfolk was taken over soon after Virginia seceded.  Its US commander, Charles Stewart McCauley, had ordered the shipyard be burned before it was abandoned, but a quick thinking civilian railroad builder named William Mahone, who was president of the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad, ran a train into the town several times to make it look to the shipyard workers like an army was being brought in.  The ruse worked, and the shipyard was abandoned intact without a shot fired.

The conquest of the shipyard brought in a tremendous amount of war material, including nearly 1,200 heavy guns, which were placed in forts and on Confederate ships.

The best discovery of all, however, was the capture of the hull from the USS Merrimack, which had been in port.  The men who had abandoned that shipyard had set it ablaze, but in their haste, had not completed the job, and the incoming Confederate engineers were able to utilize the burned out hulk to rebuild it into a secret weapon of their own; an ironclad they named the Virginia, which set sail on February 3^rd of this year.

The Virginia was the scourge of the sea, sinking two Union warships and grounding three more.  It would have done more the following day, but the Union ironclad Monitor arrived, and the two blasted away at each other in the now famous Battle of Hampton Roads, after which the CSS Virginia returned to Norfolk to repair and wait for a more opportune time to strike when it could maximize its damage.

As the US sent out more and stronger ships armed with solid shot that could penetrate Virginia’s hull, the Virginia remained hidden, waiting for the right moment.  That moment never came.  Virginia’s one effect was that it kept US transport vessels from sending units up the James River to flank the Confederate forces at Yorktown.

As those Confederate forces retreat toward Richmond, Norfolk remained undefended, and the garrison holding it destroyed what they could to keep it from being useful to the Yankees, and retreated westward with the army two days ago.  The US army occupied Norfolk yesterday.

This left CSS Virginia vulnerable, so it left the shipyard as well.  She was a steam-powered battery and could not handle the ocean, so it had to remain in the rivers, or at least close to land.  Her captain, flag officer Josiah Tattnall, therefore, determined to sail westward, toward Richmond.  It only made it a little way before it began running aground, its 22 foot draft too much for the shrinking river.  The crew tried to reduce this by throwing supplies and coal overboard, even going so far as to expose its unarmored hull to try to make it lighter.  Nothing worked.

At last, with nowhere to go, Flag Officer Tattnall ordered she be scuttled.  The crew removed all the guns to the Confederate Marine Corps base and fortifications at Drewy’s Bluff.  Lieutenant Jones, the last man to leave the Virginia, was given the task of destroying her so that it would not fall into the hands of the enemy.

Early this morning, just off Craney Island, the trail of gunpowder leading to its magazine of ammunition was lit, and the ship exploded in a giant fireball.  One piece was saved for posterity, the thirteen-star Stars and Bars battle ensign, which someone took off the ship before it was destroyed.