Navy Cove
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Pilot Town

Navy Cove, also, Pilot Town. . , Navy Cove. The Mobile Bay shoreline just inside Mobile Point, close to Fort Morgan, is known as Navy Cove. This was the site of Native American villages for over two thousand years. The name came after the British Navy anchored here when Fort Bowyer (now Fort Morgan) fell in 1815. This was the site of boat docks, wharfs, and warehouses before and after the Civil War. Federal General E.R.S. Canby landed the 16th U. S. Army Corps here to lay siege to Fort Morgan on August 9, 1864. After the Battle of Mobile Bay and the fort was taken by Federal Troops on August 23, 1864, the Union soldiers moved northward to camp at Fish River before marching on to capture Mobile. , Pilot Town. On the western shore of Andrews Bay (north of here), bar pilots established a community in the 1830s known as 'Pilot Town'. The pilots monitored the mouth of Mobile Bay while working on a large sand dune they named 'Workbench Hill'. They would rush out to sell their services to arriving ships Fort Morgan officers housed their families in the settlement and large socials were held, often entertaining international guests. The town grew into a Utopian community with a short railroad to Fort Morgan, a cemetery, and many homes but no property lines. The September 24, 1906 hurricane swept the community and all their homes into Mobile Bay and the town vanished. The only survivors were tied to oak trees on top of Workbench Hill. Property lines had not been established so homes were never rebuilt. In the 1960s, most of the cemetery stones were removed and subsequently lost when a boat launch was built here.