Divers and military salvage crews will spend the next nine months raising what's left of an armored Confederate warship that's been rotting at the bottom of the Savannah River for 150 years.
After years of planning, the Army Corps of Engineers announced Thursday that work has begun to recover the remains of the ironclad CSS Georgia. The ship was scuttled by its own Confederate crew to prevent its capture by Gen. William T. Sherman when his Union army took Savannah in December 1864.
The shipwreck lies in pieces beneath 30 feet of water where the river winds east of downtown Savannah. Only two big pieces of its armored siding remain intact, the largest being about 64-by-24 feet. Otherwise the riverbed is scattered with artifacts and debris — railroad ties that formed the ship's iron armor, four cannons, pieces of the ship's steam engine, unexploded cannonballs and small fasteners — that will eventually be raised to the surface.
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Sad. Would have preferred seeing it sailing up the Hudson.
ReplyDeleteYes with guns blazing away! :)
DeleteMaybe while their at it, they can pull up those nuclear bombs which were
ReplyDeletedropped by accident in the Savannah River.
Hey! With those we can win the next War of Yankee Aggression.........:)
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