Tag: Pensacola Navy Yard (Pensacola FL)

Wikipedia says: Realizing the advantages of the Pensacola harbor and the large timber reserves nearby for shipbuilding, in 1825 President John Quincy Adams and Secretary of the Navy Samuel Southard made arrangements to build a Navy Yard on the southern tip of Escambia County, where the air station is today. Navy captains William Bainbridge, Lewis Warrington, and James Biddle selected the site on Pensacola Bay.

Civilian employment began in April 1826, with the construction of the first buildings at the Pensacola Navy Yard, also known as the Warrington Navy Yard. Pensacola would later become one of the best equipped naval stations in the country but the early navy yard was beset with recruitment and labor problems. Skilled workers were simply unavailable locally, housing limited and living conditions in Pensacola rough. At first skilled tradesmen were recruited from Boston and other northern naval bases. Many of these new civilians employees were dissatisfied with local conditions and especially their wages and hours. As a result, on 14 March 1827 was the first labor strike. Captain Melancthon Taylor Woolsey was able to make sufficient adjustments to the workday that the men returned to work after a couple of days.

One factor that inhibited both military and civilian workers from remaining in Pensacola was the lack of an adequate hospital. On 3 November 1828, naval surgeon Isaac Hulse, physician in charge of the Naval Hospital in Barrancas Florida wrote Commodore Melanchthon Taylor Woolsey a status report. His account covers the period of March to November 1828 and details the 66 sailors and marines admitted, their names and rank, diagnosis or the nature of their injury, and the date of their discharge or death. Mortality at Pensacola would remain high due to the prevalence of Yellow Fever and Malaria. Many naval officers and men considered the Navy Yard an unhealthy and potentially lethal assignment. For example, Naval Constructor Samuel Keep writing to his brother in July 1826 stated emphatically, “I shall not remain here unless I am obliged to do so.” Despite heroic efforts by the medical community yellow fever would revisit the navy yard intermittently e.g. 1835, 1874, 1882, etc., the disease only coming under control with the work of Major Walter Reed in 1901.

From its foundation until the Civil War enslaved labor was extensively utilized at Pensacola Navy Yard In May 1829 the monthly Pensacola Navy Yard list of mechanics and labors enumerates a total of 87 employees, of which 37 were enslaved laborers. Pensacola Navy Yard was built with enslaved labor. Captain Lewis Warrington the first commandant of the Pensacola Navy Yard complained to the Board of Navy Commissioners “neither laborers nor mechanics are to be obtained here.” As early as April 1826 Warrington had requested and received permission to hire enslaved labor, ” for I would recommend the employment of black laborers in preference to white, as they suit this climate better, are less liable to change, more easily controlled, more temperate, and more will actually do more work.” Even after Warrington was finally able to get skilled white journeymen mechanics from Norfolk, he asked for and received permission to continue utilizing enslaved labor since due to the unhealthy conditions and poor pay white laborers simply would not remain at the new naval station. As a consequence Pensacola Navy agent Samuel R. Overton advertised for 38 enslaved workers promising local slaveholders “17 dollars per month with common Navy Rations.” The bondsman’s names are found on the May 1829 list of navy yard employees. To allay slaveholder concerns, Commandant William Compton Bolton advertised that enslaved workers would have the benefit of medical attention at no charge at the shipyard hospital. Pensacola was not the first to use enslaved labor, Washington Navy Yard established 1799 and soon after at Gosport Navy Yard in Virginia both employed enslaved labor. The enslaved quickly “constituted a majority of the employees at the shipyard. They performed nearly every task required including ship construction and repair, carpentry, blacksmithing, bricklaying and general labor.” While not explicitly stated in Pensacola Navy Yard log entries, enslaved black workers were listed as “laborers” while white workers were categorized as belonging to “the ordinary.” The payrolls of Pensacola Navy Yard reflect that enslaved laborers were leased from prominent members of local Pensacola society.

Slavery remained integral to the Pensacola Navy Yard workforce throughout the antebellum period. As late as June 1855, the navy yard payroll listed 155 slaves. Scholar Ernest Dibble concludes his study of the military presence in Pensacola with this coda “In Pensacola the military was not just the most important single force creating the local economy, but also the most important single influence to the spread of the slaveocracy in Pensacola.” The civilian payrolls of Pensacola reveal the navy yard leased slaves from prominent members of Pensacola society. Enslaved labor continued on at the Pensacola Navy Yard until the American Civil War.

On 13 August 1859, Commandant James K. McIntosh wrote to the secretary of the Navy Isaac Toucey”I have the honor to report that the steam sloop of war USS Pensacola was successfully launched …” with this “launching the Pensacola naval facility became a true navy yard.” This was followed by the sloop USS Seminole that same year.

In its early years, the garrison of the West Indies Squadron dealt mainly with the suppression of the African slave trade and piracy in the Gulf and Caribbean. The US and Great Britain had outlawed the international slave trade effective 1808, but smuggling continued for decades, especially as Cuba and certain South American nations continued with slavery.

On 12 January 1861, just prior to the commencement of the Civil War, the Warrington Navy Yard surrendered to secessionists. When Union forces captured New Orleans in 1862, Confederate troops, fearing attack from the west, retreated from the Navy Yard and reduced most of the facilities to rubble. At the time, they also abandoned Fort Barrancas and Fort McRee.

After the war, the ruins at the yard were cleared away and work was begun to rebuild the base.