Model Shipwright

Once you enter Hampton Roads, the town began to emerge. It is sprawling, muscular and-water, at least, somewhat forbidding: a pool of commercial fishing, a big yard, a stack of open-pit coal, a reserve fleet of aging on the docks. Somewhere ahh-there-between gray giants, are some office buildings downtown, a park close and barely visible at the top of a triumphal arch.

But do not be discouraged. Newport News are accessible marinas, a few nice spots to anchor, inviting beaches, a vibrant fishing industry, a performing arts center superb and one of the best museums in the maritime world. And it's all accessible by water, with a little more effort right, maybe a lot.

The story is here, as deep as the water just off shore, and it starts with a name. It may well be, as some claim, that the Newport News Point-the point of land that marks the end of Hampton Roads and the beginning of the James River, named after the good news that Captain Christopher Newport, Chief Jamestown expedition, had returned with supplies. But I prefer a more probable theory, which is newca William, an Irish knight, arrived shortly after the settlement in 1607 and established a port that would be known as New Port newca.

It was right next to the headland, two and a half century later, that two warships ugly battleship, the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia (formerly USS Merrimack) fought to a draw on a fog shrouded morning March 1862, marking the beginning of the end of wooden fighting ships. Every time I pass that way I think of this battle, and how many ships of war, "battleships" all are now built just over there on the coast, close, almost within earshot, and also not far from here, perhaps the flight distance of a cannon ball, are the eternal abode of the screen itself, resting in a world-class museum.

I'm traveling by sailboat, my Tartan 30, Ode to Joy on my tie-Lafayette River in Norfolk, hoping to take a closer which makes Newport News convincing, especially by water . Newport News, a linear city with at least 20 miles long, but only two to four miles wide for most of this length, passes slowly I'm taking a little breeze from the north, set in the Middle brightfield back , slide across the Monitor-Merrimac Bridge-Tunnel and into the James. To my dismay, there is no ideal place for a sea cruise to attach, not in the small boat harbor that houses a commercial fishing fleet (more on that later), not downtown and not along the beach, and certainly not along the Waterfront Industrial. I feel that I'm going to continue to go to Williamsburg or Jamestown. But I will not give up yet, there is a way to see this city. I keep moving.

At the coal pier, the vessel Energy Enterprise of New Orleans, a barge and Baltimore are about to take under a portico on the black coal that is stacked in piles on the uplands (regularly sprayed with water to keep the soot). Not too invited here. dominant feature of the city, stretching miles along the waterfront, is the giant Northrop Grumman Newport News shipyard. It was founded by railroad baron Collis Huntington over a hundred years ago in the service of ships unloaded at the dock.

Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Co., as it was then called, began to turn the military vessels by the score during the war years, becoming the largest shipyard individual ownership in America, until Northrop Grumman bought not long ago. At one of the pillars, which dominates 20 stories above the water and looking around the size of a reclining Empire State Building, The all new clutches aircraft carrier George HW Bush, under maintenance post-shakedown and repair.

Security is tight as a tick here. You do not even want to think about mooring or lose his way. Nice dog. Do not worry. I'm just p.