Every Civil War Traveler has a bucket list of Civil War sites they have yet to visit and after a recent visit to Fort Monroe I decided to add Bucket List as a category to the website. Fort Monroe is often called the “Freedom Fort” because many slaves escaped to freedom here. We have covered the first three (Frank Baker, James Townsend, and Shepard Mallory) to escape from Sewell’s Point in Norfolk to freedom in a previous post- The First “Contrabands of War” and Their Escape from Slavery (link), and the exhibit at the Fort Monroe Visitor Center. However, Fort Monroe was not the only “Freedom Fort” at Hampton Roads. Described in the October 20, 1861, issue of the New York Herald was another escape to freedom from Sewell’s Point.

At two o’clock this morning the sentinels at the Rip Raps (Fort Wool) discovered a boat pulling out from Sewell’s Point, and thought possibly it was a party reconnoitering; but the boat pulled directly for the fort. A guard was mustered, and in proper time they were hailed, when it was found that the frail boat contained eleven colored persons emigrating to Union land, and to take upon them the applications of “contrabands.” They are all from that vicinity with the exception of one who comes from North Carolina. They report that the Rebels have built a battery of fourteen guns in the woods facing this way. These contrabands have been working on the fortifications until the past ten days, when they were no longer permitted to visit the fortified place. They say there are about four hundred men at Sewell’s Point, but in the vicinity of Willoughby’s Bay there are two companies of artillery and two of cavalry. But little can be gained from them, with the exception of the account of the new battery.

Fort Wool was originally called Fort Calhoun and was renamed Fort Wool on March 18, 1862, in honor of Major General John Wool. During the Civil War Forts Wool and Monroe both defended Hampton Roads from naval attacks. In addition, Fort Wool was: often visited by President Andrew Jackson; involved in the famous “Battle of the Ironclads”; home to the experimental long-range Sawyer gun; and President Lincoln visited the fort in 1862 to get a closer look at the fortifications on Sewell’s Point.

Fort Wool, which is owned by the state of Virginia, was converted to a temporary bird sanctuary in 2020 for several species of seasonal migratory birds displaced from South Island by construction on the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel Expansion Project. The island was closed to visitation by the general public. Tour boats are no longer allowed go there, and private boats are not allowed to dock. Historic markers were removed, and the fort’s interior covered with sand. The plan is to replace this temporary sanctuary with a man made structure in another close-by location that would last for at least 50 years. Hopefully, once this is completed the public will once again be able to visit the second “Freedom Forts” that guarded Hampton Roads. This area, Old Point Comfort, is where slavery began in America. The bravery and sacrifice of the eleven “contrabands” that risked their lives to escape slavery should be honored there, in a Fort Wool that is once again accessible to the general public. In this picture I took if you look carefully to the right and slightly below the letter S in Africans on the sign below, showing where slavery began in the United States, you will see Fort Wool across the water, where 252 years earlier 11 slaves rowed to freedom.

Pictures below were taken from the seawall near the wharf on Old Point Comfort outside the walls of Fort Monroe. You can see the bird colony on the island in many of the pictures.

Links to the status of the relocation-

Below are links that I could find on the current status of the creation of a more permanent solution for relocating the bird colony. The statements below come directly from the links and sources and are not my own. I could not find anything from 2024.

Can natural history and national history co-exist from Virginia Public Radio August 16, 2022 (link). The state is working with the Army Corps of Engineers on relocating the birds. The project completion date is the end of 2025.

Seabird colony at Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel to get its own island May 16, 2023 (link). The link states that Federal and state officials are working on a $10 million plan to build a permanent island for the birds. South Island was paved over when the new bridge-tunnel project began. At the time 25,000 migratory birds visited it each year. Fort Wool isn’t big enough for the bird colony. Three barges off the island are being used for overflow for the bird colony costing Virginia taxpayers over $3 million per year. Fort Wool is ten times smaller than the island that the Army Corps of Engineers plans to build. They hope to have a draft plan by the end of 2022 and start construction in 2025. The birds begin to arrive in April and leave in the fall.

Army Corps of Engineers proposal in 2023 for building the new island.

From the Virginian-Pilot on September 12, 2023- Becky Gwynn, executive deputy director of the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources is reported to have said- Since 2020, the Department of Wildlife Resources has been working on alternatives (locations) with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. What they settled on is the construction an artificial 10-acre island dedicated for the colony of birds. “There’s not any existing location that is going to meet the needs of these birds and allow the colony to thrive and so, the current working plan is to develop an island west of the Hampton flats area.” She said the new island would be near the bend in the Newport News shoreline, near the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel. She stressed the island would be for the birds and they do not want “a public beach destination” for people. The island must be close to the original South Island so that the birds can be successfully relocated. The final design, engineering, and construction costs in 2021 were projected to be about $12.7 million, which the federal government and the DWR will share, according to Gwynn. She noted the cost could change as design work is updated. She said the hope is for preliminary planning to wrap up early next year and construction to begin in 2025. Since construction would take 3-6 months, she said the birds may not be able to utilize the new island until the 2026 nesting season.