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Civil war union navy3/2/2024 ![]() ![]() Montgomery, Mobile, Selma, and, briefly, the Oven Bluff shipyard on the Tombigbee River hosted innovative shipbuilding and repair facilities for the Confederate Navy. In addition, the Civil War sparked a revolution in naval warfare and ship design, and Alabama was at the heart of this revolution. Many Alabamians served as sailors and officers in the Confederate Navy, and the state provided much material to the war effort. Confederate leaders understood that naval power was crucial to the success of the southern war effort, but the government was never able to fund the department sufficiently, given the enormous coastline and river systems it was required to defend. Senator from Florida and member of the Committee on Naval Affairs, as secretary of the Navy. ![]() One week later, on February 20, the Confederate Congress created the Department of the Navy and appointed Stephen Mallory, a former U.S. ![]() Navy, and prepare coastal defenses of the South’s five principal ports: New Orleans, Mobile, Pensacola, Savannah, and Charleston. ![]() On February 13, 1861, soon after the creation of the Confederate States of America, the Confederate Committee on Naval Affairs met in Montgomery and began to organize the Confederate Navy, recruit southern naval officers leaving the U.S. Raiders and blockade runners used Alabama’s waterways to great effect during the war as they slipped through to the Mississippi River to skirt the Union blockade. Thereafter, the Alabama coast became the domain of smugglers, blockade runners, and focused efforts to bolster the naval defenses of Mobile Bay from Union attack. The Alabama militia seized the Port of Mobile after the state seceded on January 11, 1861. Alabama‘s great rivers (including the Alabama, Tennessee, and Tombigbee) and its coastline were the site of fierce contests during the Civil War, including the Battle of Mobile Bay. Mobile was second only to New Orleans as a transit point for cotton, which was a major source of revenue for the Confederate government, as well as its principal diplomatic tool. Alabama played a key role in Confederate naval operations because of the state’s strategic and economic importance and its role in the defense of the Gulf Coast. ![]()
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