The cache is not here, please don't visit this spot, unless you'd like a spot in Davy Jones' locker or a cot and three squares at the county jail. Read the text below, glean the info needed for the final, and make your way to a scenic spot in this historic area.
After the Battle of First Manassas, the Confederate army began to fortify most of Northern Virginia in preparations for another Union army advance. They decided areas along the Potomac River were crucial for them to control and fortify. Their objective was to limit routes and make life as difficult as possible in Washington D.C.
In October 1861, the Confederates constructed batteries at Evansport (now downtown Quantico), a field battery located at the mouth of Chopawamsic Creek where it empties to the Potomac (now the Marine Corps Air Facility), Shipping Point (now Hospital Point on Quantico), Freestone Point (on the shore of the Potomac River, now within Leesylvania State Park), and Cockpit Point (near the current asphalt plant). Cockpit Point contained six guns (one heavy gun) in four batteries, a powder magazine, and rear rifle pits, on top of a 75 foot high cliff known as Possum Nose. By mid-December, the Confederates had 37 heavy guns in position along the river.
Many considered the Confederate gun battery at Cockpit Point to be the most dangerous threat to northern shipping (the gun batteries are actually on Possum Nose, as the point was a lower geographical feature near the batteries, though Cockpit Point was used by both sides to name the battery position). The Confederates built the battery in secret leaving all the trees in front of the battery standing. The designer of the batteries was the irascible Isaac Trimble, who oversaw construction of most of the batteries along the river in Prince William County. By October 18th, the battery was completed and the trees were quickly cut down to open fire on a passing ship convoy
Once the fortifications were completed, naval traffic along the Potomac River quickly declined.
On November 14, 1861, a sailing schooner loaded with firewood tried to slip past Cockpit Point. The batteries fired on it and three rounds found their mark. The sailors dropped anchor and then swam for the Maryland shore. A dozen Confederates rowed out and set the schooner afire, but soon afterward a group of Massachusetts soldiers extinguished the blaze and towed the ship to safety. The Confederate guns then dueled Union cannons on the Maryland shore, killing only a pig and a mule.
USS Yankee
On January 3, 1862 two Union gunboats, the USS Anacostia and USS Yankee, shelled Cockpit Point to drive the Confederates out and attempt to open up the river to Washington D.C. After a few hours of shelling, both gunboats steamed away without success and Cockpit Point was still in Confederate hands.
When the Confederate army evacuated Northern Virginia in March 1862, the forts fell under the control of the Union army. Union soldiers found CSS Page blown up. The Confederates, in keeping with their general tactic of withdrawal from the sea coast and coastal islands, had abandoned their works and retired closer to Richmond, after effectively sealing off the Potomac River for nearly five months.
Though the Confederate blockade of the Potomac River would continue until March 1862, the batteries at Cockpit Point saw little action. Shells were occasionally fired into Maryland and at passing commercial ships but the battery’s reputation was more damaging than its actual ability to inflict harm. Though Lincoln pushed to have the blockade lifted, the Navy could not do it alone and McClellan refused to make the effort, finding it of little consequence to the overall strategy of the war. Soon the Confederates lifted the blockade themselves as Johnston ordered all the Confederates in northern Virginia to evacuate and move towards Fredericksburg on March 8, 1862.
The Potomac Blockade stands as one of the few times the Confederates were able to directly impact the economic and military situation in Washington, D.C. It also proved to be an international embarrassment for Lincoln and sowed the seeds of discontent between McClellan and the President.
A great article with even more detail can be found here
The cache can be found at 38 33.ABC, -077 16.XYZ
A is the number of batteries at Cockpit Point
B is the date in January 1862 that the USS Anacostia and USS Yankee fired upon Cockpit Point, to little avail.
C is the number of livestock killed in the November 1861 skirmish here.
X is the number of soldiers killed in all battles at Cockpit Point.
Y is the month that the rebels abandoned Cockpit Point and the Union took control, reopening the river
Z is the letters in the last name of the “irascible” designer of the battery at Cockpit Point