BY JONAS BEALS

David Howe guided his boat in tight circles at the mouth of Aquia Creek, repeatedly running over the same point. His GPS mapped a red pinwheel--the path of his boat--on a computer screen.

In the mud at the bottom of the river, 15 to 20 feet below the surface of the murky, turbulent water, there could be proof of a naval battle that took place 150 years ago. Howe, of the Institute of Maritime History, wants to find it.

He hopes that the sonar images he captures will shed more light on a little-known clash between Confederate and Union forces: the Battle of Aquia Creek.

Civil War history rightly focuses on dry land in the Fredericksburg area, but the earliest regional conflict between the blue and gray may have happened on the water off Stafford County.

On May 29, 1861--less than two months after Confederates fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina and nearly two months before the First Battle of Manassas--Union ships in the Potomac River fired on a Confederate battery protecting the port of Aquia Landing.

Cmdr. Rowan of the Union ship USS Pawnee filed a June 1, 1861, action report detailing the volleys exchanged between his ship and the cannons at Aquia. He said the Pawnee was struck nine times during the bombardment. None of his sailors was hurt.

"The only scratch was one that I received on the face from a small splinter," he wrote.

On the Confederate side, Capt. Lynch wrote that Union forces fired 599 shots at Aquia Landing that day.

Over two days, five Federal Potomac Flotilla gunboats exchanged fire with two Confederate positions at the junction of Aquia Creek and the Potomac River.

While there were no casualties, the battle highlighted the strategic importance of both the Potomac River and Aquia Landing, now a Stafford County park, east of Brooke.

The Potomac was the lifeline of Washington. Early in the war, Union ships scouted the river for Confederate cannons and tried to keep the river open for shipments to the capital city.

Confederate forces effectively blockaded the Potomac for about six months in 1861 and 1862. Their main batteries were near Quantico.