Battery Dantzler

In 1862, Confederate authorities considered placing the main defensive battery on the James River here to block the Union navy’s approach to Richmond, but chose Drewry’s Bluff instead because they feared Union forces could bypass this position by cutting a canal through the river bend at Dutch Gap. After Union Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler’s Army of the James landed at Bermuda Hundred in May 1864, this fortification was built and named Battery Dantzler in honor of Col. Olin Miller Dantzler of the 22nd South Carolina Infantry, who was killed in action nearby. Battery Dantzler anchored the northern end of the Howlett Line of earthworks across the Bermuda Hundred peninsula from the James River south to the Appomattox River. It mounted two 20-pounder Parrott guns, two 7-inch Brooke rifles, two 8-inch smoothbore Columbiads, and two 10-inch coastal mortars, and it dueled daily with Union gunboats and land batteries until April 2, 1865, when its garrison abandoned it to march westward with Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, a march that ended a week later at Appomattox Court House. Construction began on May 18, 1864, and two 20-pounder Parrott guns captured on May 16 at the Battle of Drewry’s Bluff were among the first artillery placed here. Union infantry occupied the battery on June 15 after Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard’s forces withdrew from Bermuda Hundred to defend Petersburg against the first Federal threats. The guns were dismounted and buried and remained hidden until Confederates retook the position the following day. Quickly remounted, the guns exchanged fire with a Union vessel in Trent’s Reach on June 21, and the Union ironclad Tecumseh dismounted one 7-inch cannon with its last shot.

Virginia · United States