Catesby ap Roger Jones (
April
15,
1821 -
June 20,
1877) was an officer in the
U.S. Navy who became a
commander in the
Confederate Navy during the
American Civil War.
Biography
Jones was
born in Fairfield, Virginia
, son of
Major General Roger Jones and Mary Ann Mason Page.
(The "ap"
in his name is a Welsh patronymic meaning "son of".) His mother was a
lineal descendant of William Byrd of
Westover
and Robert "King"
Carter. This also made her a cousin of General
Robert E. Lee.
[104937] Appointed a
Midshipman in 1836, he served extensively at sea,
receiving promotion to the rank of
Lieutenant in 1849. During the 1850s, Jones was
involved in development work on
Navy weapons and served as ordnance
officer on the new steam
frigate Merrimack when she began
active service in 1856.
When
Virginia left the
Union in April 1861,
Lieutenant Jones resigned his U.S. Navy commission, joining
the
Virginia State Navy soon
thereafter and becoming a
Confederate Navy Lieutenant in June. In 1861-62, he was employed
in converting the steam frigate
USS
Merrimack into an
ironclad and was the ship's
Executive Officer when she was
commissioned as the
Virginia.
During the
Battle of Hampton
Roads, when her
Commanding
Officer,
Captain Franklin Buchanan, was wounded in the
March 8,
1862 attack on
USS Cumberland and
Congress, Jones
temporarily took command, leading the ship during her historic
engagement with
USS Monitor on
the following day.
Later in 1862, he commanded a shore battery at Drewry’s Bluff, on the James River, and the gunboat Chattahoochee while she was under
construction at Columbus,
Georgia
.
For his "gallant and meritorious conduct" during the battles of
Hampton Roads and Drewry's Bluff, Jones was promoted to the rank of
Commander on
April
29,
1863.
Jones was sent to Selma, Alabama
, to take charge of the Ordnance Works there.
For the rest of the Civil War, he supervised the manufacture of
badly-needed heavy guns for the
Confederate armed forces. With
the end of the conflict in May 1865, Jones went into private
business.
After working in South America, he made his residence in
Selma,
Alabama where he was shot on June
20, 1877 and killed by another man as a
result of a feud between his son and another man's
son.
Notes
See also
References
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