James River search for Virginia Navy fleet sunk by
Benedict Arnold during Revolutionary war, 1781, and the
Civil War ships, Drewry, Commodore Jones, and Greyhound.
June, 1985.
On April 27, 1781, a force of British soldiers covertly
positioned themselves on a rise overlooking a bend in
the James River and attacked a fleet of Virginia Navy
ships. They were led by Benedict Arnold after he deserted
the American cause and threw his lot with the English.
The attack was a complete surprise and all nine American
warships were either captured or burned.
Engaging the services once again of the guys from Underwater
Archaeological Joint Ventures, and leaning heavily on
the research of Bob Fleming and Martha McCartney of
Williamsburg, Virginia, I arrived at the site along
accompanied with my business partner, Bob Esbenson,
and Bill Shea, who drove down from Boston.
Instrumentation consisted of a new magnetometer recently
purchased by UAJV and NUMA's old EGG&G side scan
sonar.
Using as a basis a map drawn of the 1781 action by
a British engineer, John Simcoe, we overlaid his sketch
of the river with a matching scaled map of the present
course. By this method we could pin down the location
of the British guns and the approximate positions of
the Virginia warships.
Simcoe's landmarks easily corresponded on a current
Geological survey chart, especially a rise resembling
a pair of women's boobs along the shoreline. The main
difference in geology between 1781 and 1985 seems to
be the river cuts more sharply north than it did 200
years ago than now. This particular reach is also no
longer part of the main course of the James River. During
the Civil War Grant's army dug a cut between the north
and south bends, calling it Dutch Gap. And though the
old channel still runs into the main flow to the south,
its northern reach ends at the tailing pond of an electrical
generating plant.
During the search, everyone on the boat, chartered
from a big bear of a guy who insisted on being called
Critter, nearly died from the oppressive heat. The air
temperature was 102 F. and the humidity was 97%. Still,
I couldn't figure why my sunglasses steamed up every
time I leaned over the boat. Then I found out when I
lifted the sonar sensor up from the water. It damned
near burned my palms off. It seems the water coming
out of the generating plant was only slightly cooler
than steam and raised the temperature in the old channel
to 108 F. Talk about miserable.
We found no trace of the Virginia Navy shipwrecks.
No targets of any consequence turned up on the side
scan sonar or magnetometer.
My own hunch is that the river has moved west in the
past 200 years and if the colonials did not raise the
wrecks after the war, their remains lie buried in the
marsh northeast and under the land of Farrar Island.
We moved down the channel about a mile and conducted
a mag search for the Drewry, a Confederate gunboat that
was lost in action on January 24, 1865, and searched
a section of the old river known as Trent's Reach.
A local resident, Ray Grubbs, who generously allowed
us to use his property for a staging area and who recovered
a piece of a brass hatch from the Drewy when he was
a boy, pointed out the general area where she now lies
buried under the silt of a tidal wash. We found her
with the magnetometer after only an hour's search.
Our next target was the U.S.S.Commodore Jones, an armed
side wheel ferry carrying six guns that patrolled the
James River. She was destroyed by a Confederate electric
mine in an explosion that claimed some 40 lives. She
was lost at an army crossing of the James just opposite
Four Mile Creek. The contemporary diagram showing the
mine operation and her location at the time of the explosion
is for the most part accurate. We found her mag mass
about fifty feet closer to the southern shore of the
bend and slightly up river of the drawing.
The water was only about six feet so we used eighteen
foot steel rod probes, but had difficulty penetrating
a thick layer of clay that we encountered at twelve
feet and could not quite reach the remains.
Our final goal was to find the remains of the Greyhound,
a very fast side wheel steamer that burned on November
27, 1864. She was built in the Keyport shipyards, New
Jersey, and soon chartered to the Army quartermaster.
She was later assigned to General Butler as his headquarters
on the James River. On her last run she carried Butler
and Admiral Porter and their entire staffs. She departed
Bermuda Hundred and after proceeding a few miles a violent
boiler explosion set her afire. She was run aground
on Hog Island, or so the report went, where Butler,
Porter and their officers and crew made it to shore.
There has been a bit of mystery about the Greyhound.
Some historians have confused her with the much larger
British-built Confederate blockade runner of the same
name that was captured in May of 1864. They were definitely
two different ships. There is a painting of her by James
Bard and a photograph may be found in the Mariners Museum
at Newport News.
The mention of Hog Island is also an enigma. Hog Island
is far down the river just a few miles above Hampton
Roads. Actually, the true report states the ship was
run ashore at Hog Point. In looking over most records
there is no such location, but thanks to the diligence
of Martha McCartney, a point four miles down river from
Bermuda Hundred was once known as Hogs Point for obvious
reasons. A landowner kept his pigs penned up in a marshy
area here. The point, was later known and marked on
the charts as Jordans Point.
There was also a Union army Hogs Point signal station
about a mile and a half south. We did a mag survey around
the signal station area and found nothing. Then for
some odd reason which I can't for the life of me explain,
I ordered everyone to pack up and shove off without
ever running grids in the prime location. In retrospect,
I guess the Greyhound lies buried in the sands on the
western side of Jordan's Point. That's only speculation
as we didn't find a trace of her.
The team spent the next couple of days fishing for
targets in the York River off of Yorktown, but accomplished
very little. I had originally intended to so some hunting
in the Hampton Roads and Norfolk area, but stupidly
got sidetracked. Which goes to show that you should
always follow your intended game plan before you screw
around.
C.C.S. DREWRY
Buried under the silt in upper reach of old channel
tidal flat about two hundred yards from south shore.
U.S.S. COMMODORE JONES
Buried nearly 20 to 30 feet deep in hard clay slightly
west Four mile creek and 200 feet from the present southern
bank.
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