Civil War Anchor
The Waterways
This 7,900-pound anchor was manufactured in 1861 by the Naval Yard Foundry in Washington, D.C., and most likely belonged to the USS Hartford, a Union warship immortalized at the Battle of Mobile Bay on August 5, 1864, when Admiral David Glasgow Farragut cried out from her deck:
“Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”
The USS Hartford, commissioned in 1859, the same year the Albemarle & Chesapeake Canal opened for traffic, was dismantled at the Norfolk Navy Yard (formerly Gosport Shipyard) in the 1950s. Her remains were buried on vacant land along the Southern Branch of the Elizabeth River.
Larger Steam Vessels Needed Deeper and Wider Waterways
Although ships of the Hartford class were too large for the new waterway, her massive anchor symbolizes the transition of water transportation from the Age of Sail to the Age of Steam and a new technology that gave birth to this canal. Vessels the size of the Newberne, pictured above, transported more passengers and more goods in a safer and faster manner than ever before.
The granite blocks surrounding and supporting the anchor are pieces of the south granite wall of the Great Bridge Lock constructed between 1855 and 1859, transported here from a quarry in Port Deposit, Maryland, near the head of the Chesapeake Bay…another achievement made easier by the development of steam power.
Marker can be reached from the intersection of North Battlefield Boulevard (Business Virginia Route 168) and Locks Road, on the right when traveling south.
Courtesy hmdb.org
