Looking Back | Looking Back Archive

Gosport shipyard launched Hampton Roads shipbuilding

by Paul Levengood
for Virginia Business
June 2006

In 1767 Scottish-born Andrew Sprowle established a shipyard on the Elizabeth River, a half-mile from the village of Portsmouth. He named it Gosport after an English port town. The Commonwealth of Virginia seized the yard in 1776 when Sprowle remained loyal to the crown.

After the Revolution, Gosport was leased by the U.S. War Department to build one of the first vessels of the new U.S. Navy. The USS Chesapeake was launched in 1799. Further needs led the federal government to purchase the facility in 1801. The Gosport Navy Yard was expanded throughout the early 19th century, including the construction of the nation’s first dry dock in 1834. Despite attempts made by evacuating federal forces in April 1861 to destroy Gosport, the yard went on to serve the Confederacy and was the site of the conversion of the USS Merrimack to the ironclad CSS Virginia.

After the Civil War, the renamed Norfolk Navy Yard played an important role in America’s rise as a naval power. It produced the navy’s first battleship and seven of the 16 battleships of 1907’s Great White Fleet, which steamed around the world as a demonstration of U.S. might. In 1922 it created the Langley, America’s first aircraft carrier. But it was during World War II that the Norfolk Navy Yard reached its heights of production, employing more than 42,000 workers and turning out 30 major vessels and many smaller ones. Now called the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, it continues as one of the Navy’s most important repair and maintenance facilities.

If Tidewater had been home to only the Norfolk Naval Shipyard it would have ranked among the top tier of U.S. shipbuilding centers. But across Hampton Roads another yard emerged to link the region more completely to shipbuilding. In 1886, Collis P. Huntington, whose Chesapeake & Ohio Railway had built its eastern terminus at Newport News, established the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co. In 1894 the yard received contracts to build three naval gunboats. This marked the beginning of a long and profitable existence as one of the U.S. Navy’s prime contractors.

Again, World War II was a watershed event. Employing as many as 31,000 people, Newport News Shipbuilding produced many of the warships that made victory possible in the Pacific. From Newport News steamed 11 aircraft carriers, including many whose names still resonate today: Yorktown, Intrepid, Hornet.

The Cold War era was another period of great prosperity for Newport News Shipbuilding. It became the only yard to build nuclear aircraft carriers, from the Enterprise to the soon-to-be-launched George H.W. Bush. And it has been an important producer of nuclear submarines as well. Not confining itself to military work, Newport News Shipbuilding has long been a major supplier of oil tankers and cruise ships. After going public in 1940, Newport News Shipbuilding merged with Tenneco in 1968, was spun off and then merged again (in 2001) with defense giant Northrop Grumman in 2001.

Beginning with the small Gosport yard, Tidewater Virginia became one of the great shipbuilding centers in the world. The two shipyards — one government-owned, the other private — made Tidewater so central to the navy’s operations that it established dozens of facilities there. Taken together, they make up the largest naval base in the world. Shipbuilding and the military presence largely prompted by it continue to be the driving force in the region’s economy, demonstrating just how powerful military and defense-related spending can be.

Shipbuilding in Tidewater is just one of many stories in Virginia business history. The Virginia Historical Society has established the Reynolds Center for Business History to ensure that the stories of Virginia business, commerce and enterprise are preserved. To learn more, please visit www.vahistorical.org.

Paul Levengood is managing editor of the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography at the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond. He also serves as the program coordinator of the Reynolds Business History Center, opening this summer as part of the VHS 175th-anniversary celebrations.