YouTube Live Event:Capture of Gosport Navy Yard with John V. Quarstein

View map

Time & Place

  • YouTube Live Event:Capture of Gosport Navy Yard with John V. Quarstein
    • The Mariners' Museum and Park

      April 17, 2020, 2 p.m.

      100 Museum Drive
      Newport News, VA 23606
    • Phone: 757-596-2222
      Highway Exit: 258A from I-64
      Website: Click here to visit us online

Description

Join The Mariners’ Museum and Park on Friday, April 17 at 2 p.m. for a YouTube Live event with author and historian John V. Quarstein! Quarstein will give a 15-minute presentation live from his home in Hampton, Virginia on the Capture of Gosport Navy Yard. Viewers are welcome to send Quarstein any comments or questions during the presentation, and he will answer them following his talk.

When Virginia left the Union on April 17, 1861, the Gosport Navy Yard, across from the Elizabeth River from Norfolk, was located in Portsmouth, Virginia. It became a prize of immense importance to both the North and the South. The yard held 14 US Navy warships, a giant granite dry dock, and an arsenal of more than 1,200 cannon and 250,000 pounds of gunpowder.  The yard was a valued resource, much sought after by Southern supporters. Gosport Navy Yard was burned by the fleeing Federals on April 21, 1861. The very next day, the Confederates now possessed the largest naval shipyard in the former United States. Gosport Navy Yard was where the Confederates utilized the leftover foundries and machinery to raise the sunken and burned USS Merrimack, transforming it into the powerful ironclad ram CSS Virginia.