Confederate States Naval Academy
"[2] The naval college was housed on board the CSS Patrick Henry, a seagoing sidewheel steamer with a walking-beam engine and brigantine rigged,[3] armed with ten guns, and a veteran of the Battle of Hampton Roads.
Anchored seven miles south of Richmond, Virginia at Drewry's Bluff, near the Confederate States Marine Corps Camp Beall, "she had now become the most realistic war college that ever existed.
The CSS Patrick Henry could only accommodate 52 midshipmen, 20 officers, professors and crew, which limited and helped dictate the size of the naval college.
Steamers under flags of truce would stop at the Patrick Henry to get their permit to continue downriver, and then return and discharge liberated former Confederate States prisoners.
Two class rooms made of pine boards were mounted amidships on the gun deck between the paddlewheel boxes, and an oversized fully rigged mast was placed forward for sail handling and training.
[6] Toward the end of the war the demand for midshipmen to assist with shoreside combat duty greatly increased, requiring the students to be housed in huts built inside the Drewry's Bluff batteries.
The covers of both ranks of midshipman were also steel gray and contained only a horizontal gold officers band with a fouled anchor, and a black leather visor.
[13] Typically a meal was a lump of fat pork (salt-junk) or fresh meat shaving, a piece of hardtack, and a tin cup of coffee made from either chicory or burned corn.
[15] The daily life of a midshipman was centered around three activities: academic recitations and drills, work and maintenance of the school ship, and occasional help and support to actual combat operations with onshore batteries.
[16] The daily schedule was composed of: On top of the recitation classrooms signalmen were posted who would relay wig-wag messages to the local batteries onshore.
[20] Academic subjects included seamanship, gunnery, mathematics, steam engineering, navigation, English studies, French, drawing and drafting.
"[25] Secretary Mallory, overwhelmed with the duties of standing up the CS Navy in the midst of a war, finally responded to the dictate from Congress in a letter to President Davis on February 27, 1862, in which he recommended the creation and establishment of a naval academy as the best form and means of educating midshipmen.
[28] The CSS Patrick Henry, a 1,300 ton sidewheel steamer, partially and lightly ironclad amidships, was pulled into Rockets Navy Yard in Richmond for refitting as a school ship, and then stationed near Drewry's Bluff where cabins were constructed ashore for the mishipmen, when they were needed to man the naval batteries there.
CDR Brooke had responsibility for supervision of the school, and on July 23, 1863 the final organizational proposals and regulations that he and LT Parker had put together were approved by Secretary Mallory and the Naval Academy officially went into operation.
[30] Throughout the spring of 1863 materials, supplies and textbooks had been purchased and obtained for the school, including arithmetic, algebra, grammar, English and astronomy texts, and various special equipments such as azimuth compasses.
During October, instruction and classes began for 52 midshipmen at the Confederate States Naval Academy on board CSS Patrick Henry in the James River.
In the spring of 1865, as the fall of Richmond became inevitable, Secretary Mallory made a decision to relocate the school further into the interior of the Condederate States, in some location possibly in North or South Carolina or Georgia.
[35] On the afternoon of April 2, 1865 as Richmond was being evacuated, LT Parker received the order to have the midshipman and faculty assembled at the Danville Depot by 6pm and to report to the Quartermaster General of the CS Army.
LT Parker and the CSNA midshipmen were now in a dangerous situation guarding the Confederate treasury as the countryside was filled with bummers and looters tailing along behind Major General William T. Sherman's army.
LT Parker declined to disband the midshipman guarding the treasury, and so removed it out of the vaults and returned to Washington, Georgia while searching for President Davis, finally arriving back in Abbeville, South Carolina by the 29th of April.
