First Lieutenant Walter Raleigh Butt, CSN [Confederate States Navy]

United States Navy Commander D.M. Wood and United States Naval History and Heritage Command (USNHHC)

Photograph containing Nansemond County and/or Suffolk, Virginia items of interest. "In Confederate Navy uniform, with sword. Courtesy of Commander D.M. Wood, 1938. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph." "Walter Raleigh Butt, a native of Virginia, was appointed to the U.S. Naval Academy in 1855. After graduation in 1859, he served for just over two years before being being dismissed from the U.S. Navy in October 1861. He was subsequently imprisoned at Fort Warren, Massachusetts, until paroled in late December 1861. Exchanged in January 1862, he received a Confederate Navy commission as a First Lieutenant and was assigned to the ironclad Virginia. He served in her during her historic actions in March-May 1862, then was an officer in the shore batteries along the James River. After service abroad in 1863-64, Lt. Butt returned to the James to command the gunboat Nansemond until the fall of Richmond in April 1865. He moved to California at some point after the end of the Civil War and died there in 1885."