A Determination Worthy of a Better Cause : Naval Action at the Battle of Roanoke Island 7 February 1862

Abstract

The Battle of Roanoke Island, during the American Civil War, was one of the first major amphibious landing operations in U.S. military history. As the Union Army landed troops on the island, an accompanying Union Naval squadron engaged a squadron of Confederate gunboats and some small forts on the island. This was the first in a series of battles known as the Burnside Expedition, which established a Union presence in eastern North Carolina that would last until the end of the Civil War. While the battle is historically important in its own right, here it serves as a case study for the application of a revised theory of battlefield archaeology that has been developed expressly for the purpose of studying human behavior during conflict. Drawing from a number of established theories of battlefield archaeology, this study incorporates a theory of military forces as complex systems, which redirects the focus of those established theories more closely on the study of human behavior. Using historical, geospatial, and archaeological data, this study explores the motivations behind the decisions made by the Union and Confederate naval commanders during the battle. Additionally, a limited side-scan sonar survey was conducted in order to assess the current state of submerged cultural resources related to the battle.