BGuthrie Photos: VA -- Richmond Natl Battlefield Park -- Drewry's Bluff/Fort Darling

VA -- Richmond Natl Battlefield Park -- Drewry's Bluff/Fort Darling:

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. FTDREW_970907_01.JPG: Richmond; Drewry's Bluff
2. FTDREW_970907_02.JPG: Richmond; Drewry's Bluff
3. FTDREW_970907_03.JPG: Richmond; Drewry's Bluff
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Wikipedia Description: Battle of Drewry's Bluff
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Battle of Drewry’s Bluff, also known as the Battle of Fort Darling or Fort Drewry, took place on May 15, 1862, in Chesterfield County, Virginia, as part of the Peninsula Campaign of the American Civil War. Five U.S. Navy gunboats, including the ironclads USS Monitor and USS Galena, steamed up the James River to test the defenses of Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital. They encountered submerged obstacles and deadly accurate fire from the batteries at Drewry's Bluff, which inflicted severe damage on Galena. The Federal Navy was turned back.

Background:

In the spring of 1862, Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan launched an amphibious operation against Richmond by landing troops at Fort Monroe and then marching northwest up the Virginia Peninsula. After the fall of Yorktown and the withdrawal of General Joseph E. Johnston's army up the Peninsula, only the Confederate Navy ironclad CSS Virginia prevented Union occupation of the lower James River and Norfolk. When the Confederate garrison at Norfolk was evacuated by Maj. Gen. Benjamin Huger on May 10, 1862, Flag Officer Josiah Tattnall knew that he could not navigate Virginia through the shallow stretches of the James River toward Richmond, so she was scuttled on May 11 off Craney Island to prevent her capture. This opened the James River at Hampton Roads to Federal gunboats.

The only obstacle that protected Richmond from a river approach was Fort Darling on Drewry's Bluff, overlooking a sharp bend on the river 7 miles down river from the city. The Confederate defenders, including marines, sailors, and soldiers, were supervised by Navy Cmdr. Ebenezer Farrand and by Army Captain Augustus H. Drewry (the owner of the property that bore his name) of the Southside Heavy Artillery. The eight cannons in the fort, including field artillery pieces and five naval guns, some salvaged from the Virginia, commanded the river for miles in both direc ...More...
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Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (VA -- Richmond Natl Battlefield Park -- Drewry's Bluff/Fort Darling) directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]:
- 2012_VA_Ft_Drewry: VA -- Richmond Natl Battlefield Park -- Drewry's Bluff/Fort Darling (57 photos from 2012)
- 2005_VA_Ft_Drewry: VA -- Richmond Natl Battlefield Park -- Drewry's Bluff/Fort Darling (5 photos from 2005)
- 1998_VA_Ft_Drewry: VA -- Richmond Natl Battlefield Park -- Drewry's Bluff/Fort Darling (18 photos from 1998)
- 1865_VA_Ft_Drewry_Hist: VA -- Richmond Natl Battlefield Park -- Drewry's Bluff/Fort Darling -- Historical Images (1 photo from 1865)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [(NPS) Richmond Natl Battlefield Park] [Display ALL (NPS) Richmond Natl Battlefield Park photos] [Civil War] [Park (National Park Service)]
1997 photos: Since 1984, I've lived in Silver Spring, Maryland. From 1981 to 2002, photos were taken using a Pentax ME Super camera. From 1989 to 2002, I was doing all pictures as prints (instead of slides which I had grown up on). In 1997, at the age of 40, my photo obsession began and I started taking thousands of photos per year. In September, 2002, I switched to digital cameras and the number of photos exploded. Image quality is going to be variable because these are scans of slides and/or prints. The images shown here were scanned in two phases. In the early years of the website, I rescanned a selection of pre-digital images, all at fairly low quality settings. During the COVID pandemic, I launched the Great Rescanning Effort, rescanning ALL of my pre-digital images from various media (prints, slides, negatives, etc) at higher resolution and quality settings. Mutilple versions of images -- some from the initial scannning phase, some from prints, some from slides/negatives -- were posted so there are frequently duplicate images on the same page. At some point, I hope to have time to do a final review and get rid of the duplicates but that'll have to wait until all of the pre-digital images are finally posted. Trips this year: North Carolina (Dad), Florida (Mom), using a time share in Arkansas to visit Civil War sites in Missouri, Georgia, Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee. The Civil War became my excuse to see places I'd never been to in my life and it was a great motivator for 20 years or so.
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