Marcus Garvey believed in the power of ships and transportation to change the lives of Black people all over the world.

Paintings can offer a unique glimpse into history - but what happens when the artwork’s identifying elements are unclear? Solving these mysteries often takes extensive detective work, as with a painting of a 17th-century family that has confounded curators for 90 years! Has one of our curators finally cracked the case?

Major General John Bankhead Magruder arrived in Texas in late October 1862 and immediately sought to regain the laurels he had earned on the Virginia Peninsula.

CSS Atlanta was an ironclad transformation effort which used the iron-hull and Scottish-built engines of SS Fingal to fashion one of the Confederacy’s most powerful warships. The ironclad; however, had a deep draft which limited its operational area below Savannah

Having outside experts use our collection to research their own projects is a great thing because even though it’s sometimes inconvenient and frequently time consuming it ALWAYS yields some new information about an object or image in our collection. This was especially the case in November when two researchers, Kevin Foster and Emir Yener, showed up to research Civil War era blockade runners and nineteenth century warships.

The discovery of a river boat in 1990 spurred a period of research into the Shenandoah Valley’s elusive single use boat, but 30 years later we find ourselves questioning the boat's identity… with Science!

There was no formal naval intelligence system established during the American Civil War. While a few examples exist of Northern sympathizers, free Blacks, like Mary Louvestre of Portsmouth, sent messages to various Union commanders about the Confederate ironclad construction effort.