PAST PRESIDENTS OF THE U. S. NAVAL INSTITUTE ADMIRAL DAVID D. PORTER, U. S. Navy, 1873 REAR ADMIRAL JOHN L. WORDEN, U. S. Navy, 1874 REAR ADMIRAL C. R. P. RODGERS, U. S. Navy, Jan. 1875-Jan. 1878 Rear Admiral EDWARD SIMPSON, U. S. Navy, Oct. 1885-OCT. 1887 NAVAL OPERATIONS ON THE VIRGINIA RIVERS IN THE CIVIL WAR By JULIUS W. PRATT, Instructor U. S. Naval Academy In his treatise, "The Influence of Sea Power Upon History," Admiral Mahan makes a passing reference to the significance to the Southern Confederacy of her numerous inland waterways— the rivers penetrating the heart of her territory and the numberless sounds and inlets that fringed her coasts. These bodies of water, he remarks, which, had the South comprised a seafaring people, naturally disposed to naval activity, would have constituted an element of inestimable strength-for easy transportation, for the concealment and protection of vessels of war, and for secret concentrations against the enemy fleets-these same waterways in reality served as so many gateways through which the dominant naval power of the Federal Government, bringing armies of invasion in its train, entered for her paralysis and eventual overthrow. The importance of the naval control of the Mississippi and its tributaries in facilitating the land operations in the West has been always and widely recognized; and the work of the Union squadrons in the North Carolina sounds has-largely because of Cushing's sensational feat in torpedoing the ironclad ram Albemarle-received considerable notoriety in the histories of the war. But there is one little-noted group of naval operations, performed quietly and for the most part without incidents of a striking |