Sunday 24 July 2016

American Adventure day eleven: Independence at Yorktown !

The main reason I had gone south from Richmond was to visit Yorktown as from my brief bit of research Virginia didn't see that much AWI fighting it being focused further south or further north. Yorktown is part of a wider park covering Jamestown as well but I really only had time to visit the main battlefield. Strangely this is the only park I had to pay to enter ? It saw some Civil War fighting as well but this wasn't really covered either at the visitor centre or my guide book.
 
A captured cannon on display in the visitor centre. They also have various field tents but you can't really photo these.
 
One of the main French gun batteries.
 
Scene of the capture of Redoubts 9 and 10 which led to the end of the battle.
 
Redoubt 9
Following the driving tour you get to the surrender field where there is a fantastic display of captured cannons, each engraved as below πŸ˜€
 
I then headed north and stopped in at North Anna battlefield, this was an important battle in the 1864 Grant campaign but it just goes to show that not all the battlefields are visited that much. Some well preserved trenches but the whole battlefield is heavily wooded so it is very hard to get a clear picture of what happened.
 
There are some good noticed boards to tell the story
 
Some of the earth works in the woods !

In passing I stopped off at the house where Stonewall Jackson died, it is beautifully well preserved and was very quiet when I visited.
 
It contains various original items including the bed and the clock.
 


6 comments:

  1. The surrendered cannons are seriously impressive.

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    1. ......and not really advertised so it was almost by mistake that I got out of the carπŸ˜€ I am glad I did.

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  2. Replies
    1. Thanks for loyally following just one more day......😒

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  3. Having just watched the crossing about Washington crossing the Delaware this was really interesting

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    1. The whole area Williamsburg and Yorktown very much based on that period of American history. Although I couldn't get a shot of them the campaign tents were really interesting.

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