Markers of History

State Historical Marker
Virginia K-265
Fort Nelson

Location: Crawford Pkwy, west of Court Street, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 1:50pm

Transcription of marker: On the site of Portsmouth’s Naval Hospital stood Fort Nelson. There, Virginia’s Revolutionary gov­ern­ment late in 1776 con­structed the fort of tim­ber and rammed earth. Three years later, the British fleet com­manded by Admiral Sir George Collier con­fis­cated its artillery and sup­plies and destroyed most of the para­pet. In 1779 – 1781, Lord Cornwallis and General Benedict Arnold occu­pied the fort. It was recon­structed in 1799 of earth lined with brick, fol­low­ing a design by archi­tect B. Henry Latrobe, and aban­doned after the War of 1812. The Confederate gov­ern­ment strength­ened Fort Nelson, but on 10 May 1862 the Union army occu­pied Norfolk and Fort Nelson.

Department of Historic Resources, 1997

My impres­sions: It is some­times inter­est­ing to think about forts that do this, pass­ing from one set of hands to another mul­ti­ple times. It seems that if it wasn’t good enough to pro­tect the other side, why would you want it to save yours? Or is it just the invin­ci­ble assump­tion of the vic­tors that they are supe­rior to the van­quished? Or is a fort only as strong as the peo­ple who defend it?

Markeroni sta­tus: Logged.

State Historical Markers
Virginia Q-8-Q
Arnold’s British Defenses, 1781

Location: Crawford Pkwy, west of Court Street, Portsmouth, VA 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 1:45pm

Transcription of marker: A brick wind­mill near here was close to the south­ern limit of a line of British redoubts erected in March 1781 by order of Brigadier General Benedict Arnold, who under Major General William Phillips, com­manded British troops occu­py­ing Portsmouth. This line of for­ti­fi­ca­tions extended north in an arc along Washington Street to the water­front near Court Street.

Virginia State Library, 1962

My impres­sions: I’m a lit­tle con­fused when I take this marker together with marker num­ber Q-8-P, also titled Arnold’s British Defenses, 1781, which I blogged about on Thursday. I am fairly cer­tain that at least one of these mark­ers is no longer in the loca­tion the marker text assumed, because there is very lit­tle north-south dif­fer­ence between their loca­tions, only the width of Crawford Parkway.

They may both be moved from their orig­i­nal loca­tions, because Q-8-P seems fur­ther east than the arc described in this marker, and the cur­rent marker [Q-8-Q] seems to be too far north, given Q-8-P’s ref­er­ence to Dinwiddie Street.

The other thing that strikes me about this marker is that the low­er­case q in the marker num­ber seems “off” to me. It doesn’t look like a q should look in that type. It looks like some­body was impro­vised with a back­wards p. But that could just be my eyes.

Markeroni sta­tus: Logged.

We’re in a bit of a con­fus­ing land right now, because there are appar­ently three state his­tor­i­cal mark­ers, each titled Arnold’s British Defenses, 1781. So far, I’ve seen two of them. So this one is from the bend in Crawford Pkwy, right near the Civil War Trails marker I wrote about yes­ter­day, next to the Elizabeth River and its marker (which I’ll write about next).

State Historical Marker
Virginia Q-8P
Arnold’s British Defenses, 1781

Location: Crawford Pkwy, Portsmouth, VA, 23704

Visited: June 23, 2009, 1:30pm

Transcription of marker: This marks the north­ern limit of a line of British redoubts erected in March 1781 by order of Brigadier General Benedict Arnold who, under Major General William Phillips, com­manded British troops occu­py­ing Portsmouth. This line of for­ti­fi­ca­tions extended in an arc south along Dinwiddie and Washington Streets to Gosport Creek and defended Portsmouth from American attack from the west.

Virginia State Library, 1962

My impres­sions: I had to look up what a redoubt actu­ally was. And when I did, one of the Flickr results that came up for me was of one in Kingston, Ontario, just a few blocks from where I lived my sec­ond year of uni­ver­sity there. I guess I’ll have to make sure to get back there, next time I’m in town. (Whenever that is!) I never man­aged to make it to that museum while I lived there. Always meant to…

Markeroni sta­tus: Logged.

I have to admit to a certain…uncertainty about what to feel when I come across his­tory of the American Revolution. I come from a coun­try which was peace­fully granted its gov­er­nance grad­u­ally and peace­fully. Canada doesn’t really have any sto­ries of war­ring with those who gov­erned us (those same Brits). In fact, Canada still looks to the Queen as our head of state, though the posi­tion is almost exclu­sively cer­e­mo­nial today. But when in Rome and all that…

Unknown his­tor­i­cal marker
Revolutionary War at Portsmouth

Note: This marker is of a sim­i­lar form to the Virginia state his­tor­i­cal mark­ers, but is not num­bered and does not appear to list a depart­ment and year, as do all state mark­ers I have seen to date. I hope to inves­ti­gate this side of things fur­ther. Hopefully, if it’s a state marker, it will be listed in my copy of A Guidebook to Virginia’s Historical Markers, cur­rently on its way from Amazon. Otherwise, I may try some of my own research into the place­ment of this marker.

Location: In front of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum, High St & Water St, Portsmouth VA 23704

Visited: June 1, 2009, 1:20pm

Transcription of Marker: In October 1775, Virginia’s last royal gov­er­nor, the Earl of Dunmore, made his head­quar­ters at Gosport, one mile south of here. After his defeat at Great Bridge and the destruc­tion of Norfolk, he entrenched at Hospital Point, one mile north, but was again dri­ven out in May 1776. Portsmouth was again invaded by the British: Sir George Collier in 1779, General Leslie in 1780, the trai­tor Benedict Arnold and General Phillips in 1781. Here, on this Portsmouth water­front in August 1781. Lord Cornwallis embarked his 7000 troops and sailed to Yorktown where he sur­ren­dered to the vic­to­ri­ous American and French forces, 19 October 1781.

My impres­sions: I think that this is one of those that I’m not qual­i­fied to say a whole lot about right now. I know far too lit­tle about the American Revolution and thus lack the frame­work to hang these names and dates on. It doesn’t do much to inspire me to want to learn about it, but I won­der if my reac­tion would be dif­fer­ent if I’d learned about some of this stuff in his­tory class when I was in school.

Markeroni sta­tus: This has not yet been sub­mit­ted to Markeroni, await­ing more infor­ma­tion on the source of the marker (if I can find it) as well as a low­er­ing of the “whelm” level.