Markers of History

Cannonball Trail
The First Battle of Ironclad Ships, 1862

Location: West end of Town Point Park at the Elizabeth River, steps east of the Armed Forces Memorial and its marker, Norfolk, VA 23510

Visited: July 3, 2009, 2:30pm

Transcription of marker: On March 8, 1862 CSS Virginia steamed past this point (1) to a bat­tle which would for­ever change naval war­fare. This ship had pre­vi­ously been a Union steam frigate, USS Merrimack, which had been destroyed near the Gosport Navy Yard (2). Confederate forces found its hull to be sound and con­structed a super­struc­ture with iron plates to cre­ate a new kind of war­ship. The Virginia pro­ceeded out into Hampton Roads where she sank USS Cumberland and severely dam­aged USS Congress (3). The next day she returned to destroy the Union fleet and open the port. However, USS Monitor, another iron­clad, had slipped into Hampton Roads unde­tected by the Confederates (4). A major naval bat­tle ensued (5). Neither iron­clad did sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to the other. The Virginia tried to ram the Monitor but failed to sink her and opened a gash in her own hull. She returned to Gosport never to fight again. She was scut­tled and burned on May 11, 1862 to pre­vent her cap­ture by Union forces (6).

My impres­sions: I love the way this marker uses a map to help you under­stand the geog­ra­phy of the bat­tle, com­plete with a “YOU ARE HERE” indi­ca­tor. I’m not sure whether this is the best marker I’ve seen on the sub­ject of the Monitor and the Merrimack or whether I’m just get­ting famil­iar enough with this impor­tant event in local his­tory that my brain is able to fill in the details which would have con­fused me by their omis­sion (since a marker has lim­ited space, there are ALWAYS omissions!).

And I’m glad that, more than two and a half weeks after this trip to Norfolk, I have finally fin­ished blog­ging about the mark­ers I found that day (when I really hadn’t intended to make it a snar­fari). Tomorrow, we move on to July 4th (one day later) and an inten­tional snar­fari. We’ll start with a cou­ple of mark­ers from the drive to Yorktown and, some­time soon, I’ll have to fig­ure out how to post the mark­ers I found along the Colonial Parkway and at Historic Jamestowne. After all that, I have a few mark­ers and sites from around Virginia Beach, and after that, it will be snarfs from this week and the future. Thanks for read­ing, and feel free to leave a com­ment on any­thing you see here.