Benjamin Franklin Sands

Sands, Benjamin Franklin (1812-83) Union naval officer. The Maryland native went to sea at sixteen. From 1844 to 1847 he worked at the Bureau of Charts and Instruments at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.; he saw limited action in the Mexican War (1846-48). In 1858 he was named to head the Naval Bureau of Construction. When the Civil War broke out, he participated in the evacuation of Union forces from the Norfolk Navy Yard, in 1861; the next year he was senior officer of the blockade of Cape Fear River and Wilmington, North Carolina. Despite the difficulty of maintaining the blockade against small, fast blockade runners, Sands captured fifty-three enemy ships. After the war, from 1867 until his retirement in 1874, he headed the Naval Observatory in Washington.

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