Tag: New York Navy Yard (Brooklyn NY)

Wikipedia says: The Brooklyn Navy Yard (originally known as the New York Navy Yard) is a shipyard and industrial complex in northwest Brooklyn in New York City, New York, U.S. The Navy Yard is located on the East River in Wallabout Bay, a semicircular bend of the river across from Corlears Hook in Manhattan. It is bounded by Navy Street to the west, Flushing Avenue to the south, Kent Avenue to the east, and the East River on the north. The site, which covers 225.15 acres (91.11 ha), is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard was established in 1801. From the early 1810s through the 1960s, it was an active shipyard for the United States Navy, and was also known as the United States Naval Shipyard, Brooklyn and New York Naval Shipyard at various points in its history. The Brooklyn Navy Yard produced wooden ships for the U.S. Navy through the 1870s. The shipyard built the USS Monitor, the Navy’s first ironclad warship, in 1862, and it transitioned to producing iron vessels after the American Civil War in the mid-1860s.

Civil War

By 1860, just before the American Civil War, many European immigrants had moved to Brooklyn, which had become one of the largest cities in the United States (it was not part of New York City until 1898). The yard had expanded to employ thousand of skilled mechanics with men working around the clock. At the start of the war, in 1861, the Brooklyn Navy Yard had 3,700 workers. The navy yard station logs for January 17, 1863, reflected 3,933 workers on the payroll. The yard employed 6,200 men by the end of the war in 1865.

During the Civil War, the Brooklyn Navy Yard manufactured 14 large vessels and retrofitted another 416 commercial vessels to support the Union’s naval blockades against the Confederate Navy. Monticello was rumored to have been retrofitted within less than 24 hours. For three months following President Lincoln’s “75,000 volunteers” proclamation in April 1861, the Navy Yard was busy placing weapons and armaments on vessels, or refurbishing existing weapons and armaments. In an article published that July, The New York Times stated, “For several weeks hands have been kept at work incessantly, often at night and on the Sabbath.” The screw steam sloop Oneida, launched on November 20, 1861, was the first vessel built at the Navy Yard that was specifically intended for the American Civil War. She participated in the Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip in 1862, and in the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864. Another vessel that was outfitted at the Navy Yard was Monitor, built at the Continental Iron Works in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and commissioned at Brooklyn Navy Yard on February 25, 1862. Later that year she fought CSS Virginia (originally USS Merrimack) at the Battle of Hampton Roads. Other vessels built for the Union Navy during this time included Adirondack, Ticonderoga, Shamrock, Mackinaw, Peoria, Tullahoma, Maumee, Nyack, Wampanoag, and Miantonomoh.

Because of the Navy Yard’s role in creating ships for Union blockades of the Confederacy, it was a target for Confederate supporters, who would attempt to ignite the yard’s storage facilities. After the Union Navy quickly realized the plot, it mobilized sailors and Brooklyn metropolitan police to keep watch around the yard, and the Confederates never tried to mount a real attack.