| Rocketts Landing | |
| Settlement Type: | Neighborhood of Richmond |
| Image Alt: | Water tower in Rocketts Landing |
| Subdivision Type: | Country |
| Subdivision Name: | United States |
| Subdivision Type1: | State |
| Subdivision Name1: | Virginia |
| Subdivision Type2: | City |
| Subdivision Name2: | Richmond |
| Coordinates: | 37.5153°N -77.4139°W |
| Established Date: | 2010 |
| Unit Pref: | US |
| Population Density Km2: | auto |
| Timezone1: | Eastern Daylight Time |
| Utc Offset1: | −04:00 |
| Timezone1 Dst: | Eastern Standard Time |
| Utc Offset1 Dst: | −05:00 |
| Postal Code Type: | ZIP code |
| Postal Code: | 23231 |
| Area Code: | 804 |
| Iso Code: | 1 |
Rockett's Landing (or simply Rocketts) is a new urbanist neighborhood in southeastern Richmond, Virginia on the border of Henrico County, Virginia and the north bank of the James River.[1] It was named after Baldwin Rockett, an 18th-century ship's captain born in April 1681 in Exeter, Devon, England.
The neighborhood was originally a factory and water tower and has been converted into mixed-use development with brick streets.[2] It is served by the GRTC Pulse Rocketts Landing station.
In the American Civil War, and still a suburban hamlet of Richmond at the time, the northern fringes of Rockett's Landing were chosen to become one of the two sites in the Richmond area to serve as a Confederate Navy shipyard as compensation for the loss of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in May 1862 (the other one having been William Armistead Graves' smaller "Graves's Yard" further upstream[3]), with yard installations eventually straddling both sides of the James River. During the remainder of the war, the yard, at the time simply known as the "Navy Yard", serviced and built vessels for the James River Squadron, most notably its casemate ironclads such as, and .[4] The yard ceased operations and was partially burnt by retreating Confederate troops when Richmond fell to Union troops the next day on April 3, 1865, though the hamlet itself was spared according to the contemporary map, featured on the left.
When President Abraham Lincoln started his tour of the fallen city the following day, he came ashore at Rockett's Landing.[2]
Confederate Ironclads and Steam Engineering in the American Civil War
. University of Alabama Press. 2018. Tuscaloosa. 280. 9780817319861., p. 131