Old Point Comfort

Old Point Comfort is a point of land located in the independent city of Hampton at the extreme tip of the Virginia Peninsula at the mouth of Hampton Roads in the United States.

According to a combination of old records and legend, the name derived from an incident when the Jamestown settlers first arrived. Captain Christopher Newport's flagship, Susan Constant, anchored near by on 28 April 1607. Members of the crew "rowed to a point where they found a channel which put them in good comfort." They named the adjacent land Cape Comfort, now known as Old Point Comfort to differentiate it from New Point Comfort 21 miles (34 km) up the Chesapeake Bay.

For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, Old Point Comfort was a summer and winter resort in the town of Phoebus in Elizabeth City County until the citizens of both the town and county voted to be consolidated with the independent city of Hampton in 1952. Old Point Comfort is the location of historic Fort Monroe, the Chamberlin Hotel, and the Old Point Comfort Light.

Old Point Comfort was the site where Southern Baptists and Northern Baptists inaugurated negotiations toward a comity agreement in 1909.

It was near Old Point Comfort that the USS Missouri (BB-63), then the only U.S. battleship in commission, was proceeding seaward on a training mission from Hampton Roads early on 17 January 1950 when she ran aground 1.6 miles (3.0 km) from Thimble Shoal Light (near Old Point Comfort). She hit shoal water a distance of three ship-lengths from the main channel. Lifted some seven feet above waterline, she stuck hard and fast. With the aid of tugboats, pontoons, and an incoming tide, she was refloated on 1 February 1950 and repaired.

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

External links

• Old Point Comfort lighthouse at LighthouseFriends.com

This City of Hampton, Virginia state location article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v • d • e