The Battle of Mathias Point, Virginia was an engagement between the Union gunboats USS Thomas Freeborn and USS Reliance, together with a landing party of about 36 Union sailors or marines, and Confederate States Army defenders at Mathias Point on the Potomac River in King George County, Virginia, near Maryland's Popes Creek. The action occurred on June 27, 1861, in the third month of the American Civil War, before significant battles, other than the Battle of Fort Sumter, had taken place. The Confederates repulsed the Union attack and killed the commander of the Union Potomac Flotilla, Commander James H. Ward. Ward was the first Union Navy officer killed during the Civil War. The battle at Mathias Point was an early action in connection with the blockade by the Union Navy of the Southern states in general and the Chesapeake Bay in particular and the corresponding effort by Confederate forces to deny the use of rivers in Virginia, including the Potomac River, to Union military and commercial traffic. The Confederates completed placement of an artillery battery at this location immediately after the battle and maintained their position until the Confederate withdrawal from Manassas on March 9, 1862, at the beginning of the Union Army buildup for the Peninsula Campaign.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle of Mathias Point