Drewry’s Bluff

Drewry’s Bluff. Richmond Battlefield. The presence of the Confederate bastion here at Drewry’s Bluff was one reason that most of the Civil War action around Richmond occurred north of the James River. Strong earthen fortifications and river obstructions, erected in 1862, effectively closed the river as a route of Union invasion. In the war’s later years, the Confederates built entrenchments protecting the overland approaches from the north, south, and east., The Battles of Drewry’s Bluff , Two Union expeditions tested the Drewry’s Bluff defenses. A five-ship flotilla came up the river on May 15, 1862, but stiff resistance from the fort here blocked that effort. Two years later, the Union Army of the James under General Benjamin F. Butler landed south of here at Bermuda Hundred and threatened Richmond by land. Severe infantry battles all through May 1864 proved the worth of the fortifications. Union infantry penetrated to within sight of Fort Drewry, but failed to reach the riverside redoubt. Drewry’s Bluff remained in Confederate hands until the end of the war, having stood as a dependable link in the extended chain of Richmond’s defenses., [Right Marker]: Drewry’s Bluff , “Nothing could have been more beautiful than the neatness and precision of the movement with which Rodgers placed the Galena, as if at target-practice, directly under the enemy’s fire. In the words of [one] officer …. ‘It was one of the most masterly pieces of seamanship of the whole war.’” , - Prof. James Russell Soley, U.S.N.