The Confederate bastion at Drewry’s Bluff helped channel most Civil War action around Richmond to the north side of the James River. Strong earthen fortifications and river obstructions, erected in 1862, effectively closed the river as a route of Union invasion, and in the war’s later years the Confederates added entrenchments guarding the overland approaches from the north, south, and east. Two Union expeditions tested these defenses. On May 15, 1862, a five-ship flotilla came up the river, but heavy resistance from the fort blocked the attempt. Two years later, the Union Army of the James under General Benjamin F. Butler landed at Bermuda Hundred south of here and threatened Richmond by land. Severe infantry fighting throughout May 1864 showed the strength of the fortifications: Union infantry advanced 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 as a dependable link in Richmond’s extended defenses.