Norfolk Naval Shipyard

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Norfolk Naval Shipyard (NNSY) is the oldest continuously operated U.S. Navy owned industrial shipyard, located in Portsmouth, Virginia within the Hampton Roads metropolitan area. It is a core specialized facility focused on the overhaul, modernization, and heavy maintenance of nuclear-powered U.S. Navy aircraft carriers, fast attack submarines, and large surface combatants, and ranks among the largest public shipyards in the United States.

Key moments

1767Founded originally as the Gosport Navy Yard, decades before the formal establishment of the U.S. Navy
1862Renamed Norfolk Navy Yard after coming under full Union control during the U.S. Civil War, later formally designated as Norfolk Naval Shipyard
1940sMassively scaled operations to repair and construct hundreds of warships as a critical Atlantic theater industrial asset during World War II
November 2024Completed the Planned Incremental Availability maintenance for USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) ahead of the scheduled deadline, returning the carrier to active fleet duty
April 24, 2026Finished sea trials and delivered USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) early after its scheduled maintenance, marking the second consecutive on-time early carrier delivery milestone for the shipyard

Irreplaceable Strategic Security Value

As one of only four U.S. naval shipyards certified to perform full maintenance and modernization work on nuclear-powered supercarriers, NNSY directly underpins the U.S. Navy's global forward deployment capabilities. Its location in Hampton Roads places it minutes away from the homeport of the majority of the Atlantic Fleet's carrier and surface combatant fleet, cutting transit time for vessels scheduled for heavy overhaul and reducing total operational downtime for high-priority national security assets.

Notable Recent Operational Turnaround

For many years prior to 2024, U.S. public naval shipyards including NNSY faced widespread criticism for persistent multi-month delays and cost overruns on scheduled carrier maintenance projects. The two consecutive early carrier completions between 2024 and 2026 reflect successful coordinated workflow improvements across the shipyard's 4000+ daily project personnel, including civilian skilled trades teams, Navy oversight staff, and partner contractors, delivered even while a large-scale multi-year infrastructure upgrade program was underway at the facility.

Deep Long-Term Regional Economic Footprint

NNSY is one of the largest civilian industrial employers in the Commonwealth of Virginia, with a permanent full-time workforce numbering well over 10,000 skilled workers, engineers, and administrative staff. Its guaranteed decades-long pipeline of Navy maintenance contracts generates unmatched long-term economic stability for the entire Hampton Roads region, driving steady spillover demand for local support industries, residential housing, and public services.

Overview

Norfolk Naval Shipyard

location	Portsmouth, Virginia
type	Shipyard
controlledby	United States Navy
built	1767 as Gosport Shipyard (Royal Navy) current name since 1862 (U.S. Navy)
used	1767–present
current commander	Rear Admiral Kavon "Hak" Hakimzadeh (August 2025–present)

The Norfolk Naval Shipyard, often called the Norfolk Navy Yard and abbreviated as NNSY, is a U.S. Navy

History

British control

The Gosport Shipyard was founded on November 1, 1767, by Andrew Sprowle on the western shore of the Elizabeth River in Norfolk County in the Virginia colony.[2] This shipyard became a prosperous naval and merchant facility for the British Crown. In 1775, at the beginning of the American Revolution, Sprowle stayed loyal to the Crown which confiscated all of his properties, including the shipyard. Following Governor Dunmore's retreat from Portsmouth in May 1776, Sprowle was exiled along with other Royalists to Gwynn's Island (now Mathews County, Virginia), where he died 29 May 1776 and was buried in an unmarked grave.[3][4] In 1779, while the newly formed Commonwealth of Virginia was operating the shipyard, it was burned by British forces during the Chesapeake raid.[5]

American control

In 1794, United States Congress passed "An Act to Provide a Naval Armament," allowing the Federal Government to lease the Gosport Shipyard from Virginia. In 1799 the keel of USS Chesapeake (1799), one of the first six frigates authorized by Congress, was laid, making her the first ship built in Gosport for the U.S. Navy.

The federal government purchased the shipyard from Virginia in 1801 for $12,000. This tract of land measured 16 acre and now makes up the northeastern corner of the current shipyard. In 1827, construction began on the first of what would be the first two dry docks in the United States. The first one was completed three weeks ahead of similar projects in both Boston and South America, making it the first functional dry dock in the Americas. Dry Dock One, as it is referred to today, is still operational and is listed as historical landmark in Portsmouth, Virginia. Officer's Quarters A, B, and C were built about 1837. Additional land on the eastern side of the Elizabeth River was purchased in 1845.

The shipyard and neighboring towns suffered from a severe yellow fever epidemic in 1855, which killed about a quarter of the population, including James Chisholm, whose account was published shortly after his death in the epidemic.[6]

Enslaved labor

Enslaved labor was extensively utilized in the Norfolk Navy Yard from its foundation until the Civil War. An example of such use is found in Norfolk Navy Yard Commandant, Commodore John Cassin's letter to the Secretary of the Navy, Benjamin W. Crowninshield. Cassin began his letter, by stating as justification "Finding it absolutely impossible to do the labor required in this Yard, without taking in some black men in consequence of the white men sporting with their time in the manner they do, leaving the yard, since the month of April come in, there has Sixty four men, laborers left the yard, some gone to Old Point to work where greater wages is given and others gone to sea... I have therefore taken in twenty four blacks for the purpose of discharging & loading such vessels as may be ordered and cleaning the frigate Constitution's hold."[7] Some idea of the human scale can be found in this excerpt from a letter of Commodore Lewis Warrington dated 12 October 1831 to the Board of Navy Commissioners (BNC).[8] Warrington's letter to the BNC was in response to various petitions by white workers to curtail or end enslaved labor on the Dry Dock. His letter attempts both to reassure the BNC in light of Nat Turner's Rebellion which occurred on 22 August 1831 and to serve as a reply to the Dry Dock's stonemasons who had quit their positions and accused the project chief engineer, Loammi Baldwin Jr., of the unfair hiring of enslaved labor in their stead.[9]

American Civil War

In 1861, Virginia joined the Confederate States of America. Fearing that the Confederacy would take control of the facility, the shipyard commander Charles Stewart McCauley ordered the burning of the shipyard on 21 April 1861.[18] The Confederate forces did, in fact, take over the shipyard, and did so without armed conflict through an elaborate ruse orchestrated by civilian railroad builder William Mahone (then President of the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad and soon to become a famous Confederate officer). He bluffed the Federal troops into abandoning the shipyard in Portsmouth by running a single passenger train into Norfolk with great noise and whistle-blowing, then much more quietly, sending it back west, and then returning the same train again, creating the illusion of large numbers of arriving troops to the Federals listening in Portsmouth across the Elizabeth River (and just barely out of sight). The capture of the shipyard allowed a tremendous amount of war material to fall into Confederate hands.[19] 1,195 heavy guns were taken for the defense of the Confederacy, and employed in many areas from Hampton Roads all the way to Fort Donelson Tennessee, Port Hudson, and Fort DeRussy, Louisiana. The Union forces withdrew to Fort Monroe across Hampton Roads, which was the only land in the area which remained under Union control.[20]

Modern shipyard

From the Reconstruction Era until 1917, the shipyard was used both for ship repair and construction and for ship stationing. The current major naval base for the region, Naval Station Norfolk, did not yet exist. As such, the then Norfolk Navy Yard served as the official Homeport for ships stationed in the Hampton Roads region.

No major expansion occurred at the facility until World War I when it was expanded to accommodate 11,000 employees and their families. The shipyard was again expanded during World War II, doubling its physical size and greatly expanding its productive capacity. During its peak from 1940 to 1945, 43,000 personnel were employed and 6,850 vessels were repaired.[21]

After World War II, the shipyard shifted from being a ship construction facility to an overhaul and repair facility. Work on the Iowa-class battleship, USS Kentucky (BB-66) was suspended in 1950. Its last two ships, USS Bold (AM-424) and her sister ship, USS Bulwark (AM-425), wooden minesweepers, were christened on March 28, 1953, during the Korean War.

Currently, the shipyard is composed of several noncontiguous areas, totaling 1,275 acre. From 1992 to 1993, the Norfolk Naval Shipyard had an issue with pollution, stemming from discharges from the dry dock. This pollution resulted in a Consent Special Order by the State of Virginia demanding it to achieve compliance.

References

Brett Hansen. Sustaining the Fleet: The Charlestown And Gosport Dry Docks Civil Engineering, March 2007^

Sharp, John G.M., Andrew Sprowle, 1710–1776, "Lord of Gosport", http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/portsmouth/shipyard/sharptoc/asprowle.html^

Naval Documents of the American Revolution, American Theatre volume 5, editor, William James Morgan (Government Printing Office, Washington D.C.), 9, https://www.history.navy.mil/content/dam/nhhc/research/publications/naval-documents-of-the-american-revolution/NDARVolume5.pdf p566^

Sharp, John G.M., Andrew Sprowle, 1710–1776, "Lord of Gosport", http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/portsmouth/shipyard/sharptoc/asprowle.htm^

Robert Nobles. NNSY History NAVSEA, retrieved 11 November 2012^

The United States Navy's Response to the 1855 Yellow Fever Epidemic, National Museum of the United States Navy, https://www.history.navy.mil/content/dam/museums/nmusn/Pamphlets/usn-response-1855-flu-epidemic/United%20States%20Navy%20Response%20to%20the%201855%20Yellow%20Fever.pdf^

John Cassin to the Secretary of the Navy, 29 April 1818, Letters Received by the Secretary of the Navy (Captains Letters) 1805–1861, Volume 58, Letter 36, Roll 0058, Record Group 260, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington D.C.^

Sharp, John G., Commodore Lewis Warrington to the Board of Navy Commissioners re: employment of enslaved workers in the construction of the Dry Docks 12 October 1831, http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/portsmouth/shipyard/sharptoc/nnysharp13.html^

Tomlins, Christopher L. In Nat Turner’s Shadow Reflections on the Norfolk Dry Dock Affair 1830-1831, Labor History, Vol 33, Fall 1992, Number 4, p.498., accessed 19 September 2020, http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/portsmouth/shipyard/nnytomlins.pdf^

Tomlins, Christopher, In the Matter of Nat Turner A Speculative History,(Princeton University Press:Princeton,2020), p.161.^

Tomlins, 2020, p.164.^

Sharp, John G.M., A Norfolk Navy Yard Slaveholders Petition to the Secretary of the Navy, June 21, 1839 Norfolk Navy Yard 2019, http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/portsmouth/shipyard/sharptoc/nnysharp6.html^

Sharp, John G.,List of Gosport Navy Yard Employees Military and Civilian, 1846 http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/portsmouth/shipyard/sharptoc/nnysharp13.html, retrieved 7 October 2021^

God Made Man, Man Made the Slave: The Autobiography of George Teamoh editors F.N. Boney, Richard L. Hume and Rafia Zafar Mercer University Press: Macon 1990, p.83.^

Starobin, Robert S. Industrial Slavery in the Old South, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975 p.32.^

Sharp, John G.M., Station Log Entries for U.S. Naval Station Gosport 1850, http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/portsmouth/shipyard/sharptoc/gosportlog.html^

BURNING OF GOSPORT NAVY-YARD; Eleven Vessels Scuttled and Burned, The Steam Tug Yankee Tows the Cumberland to Sea, Norfolk Not on Fire. The New York Times, 24 April 1861, retrieved 2 August 2022^

Thomas E. Nank. Ready for War? The Union Navy in 1861 www.battlefields.org, American Battlefield Trust, 23 August 2021, retrieved 18 August 2022^

Dave Page. Ships Versus Shore, Civil War Engagements along Southern Shores and Rivers Rutledge Hill Press, 1994^

NNSY Roots NAVSEA, retrieved 22 September 2025^

Philip M. Host. Drydock Water Pollution Control Efforts at Norfolk Naval Shipyard Naval Engineers Journal, 1996^

AIRCRAFT CARRIERS HII, retrieved 2024-02-14^

Drydocking Facilities Characteristics^

Norfolk Naval Shipyard Dedicates Submarine Maintenance Facility Naval Sea Systems Command, retrieved 2023-07-21^

Service to the Fleet Service to the Fleet, Norfolk Naval Shipyard, March 2014, retrieved 23 February 2026^

Frederick Gardiner Fassett. The Shipbuilding Business in the United States of America Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, 1948^

Norfolk Naval Shipyard

WorldBrand briefing

Irreplaceable Strategic Security Value

Notable Recent Operational Turnaround

Deep Long-Term Regional Economic Footprint

History

British control

American control

Enslaved labor

American Civil War

Modern shipyard

Dry docks and slipways

Notable ships

Museum

See also

Bibliography

External links

References