Harry Hill was the sole Albemarle sailor who enlisted for one year and thus did not serve until the end of the war.ĭue to his rank and time of enlistment, Alexander Caine was most likely a free man * however the legal status of the other five Albemarle sailors remain unknown, as the U.S. Unfortunately, Joseph Brown’s naval muster records do not extend past Maand thus without additional records his fate remains unknown. Caine, Edwards, Linton and Murray all served until the summer of 1865, when their ships were decommissioned. Furthermore, with the exception of Harry Hill who served as a Captain’s Cook, our Albemarle sailors were given the entering rank of landsman, the second lowest rank in the Union Navy. In fact, Brown, Edwards, Linton, and Murray all enlisted at Skipwiths Landing, Mississippi, between the fall of 1863 and the spring of 1864. With the exception of Alexander Caine, who enlisted in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in January 1862, the other Albemarle sailors enlisted after the fall of 1863.
Our six Albemarle-born sailors were Joseph Brown (aged 18 at time of enlistment), Alexander Caine (21), John Edwards (19), Harry Hill (29), David Linton (33), and Henry Murray (19). Black sailors greatly aided the Union war effort because they provided much needed labor on ships that helped defeat the Confederacy. Through the use of naval service records, accessed through the National Park Service’s Soldiers and Sailors Database, and secondary sources on the wartime navy and black sailors, we have produced a preliminary reconstruction of the wartime experiences of our Albemarle sailors. While most of the men in our Black Virginians in Blue project were soldiers in the USCT, six served as sailors aboard five Union vessels. Out of the approximately 18,000 African American sailors who served in the Union navy during the Civil War, over 2,800 were born in Virginia, the most from any state.
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