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Davy Jones' Locker May Hold Civil War Artifacts

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Bianca
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« on: March 14, 2009, 06:38:57 pm »









                                        Davy Jones' locker may hold Civil War artifacts






By BRUCE SMITH
- Associated Press Writer
CHARLESTON, S.C.

-- In the city where the Civil War began and where its longest battle was fought, an archaeologist with a clutch of high-tech equipment went searching Friday for watery clues to the past.

James Spirek of the South Carolina Institute for Archaeology and Anthropology is making the first comprehensive historical map of the harbor bottom to record everything from fortifications to sunken ships.

Fort Sumter, where the war began in 1861, sits in the harbor. The fight over Charleston continued for four years and historians say the fort has been shelled more than any other site in the Western Hemisphere.

 The idea is the record the artifacts, but there will be no attempt to raise anything, Spirek said.

On a gray, windy morning, Spirek, worked from the same twin-outboard motorboat divers used to confirm the discovery of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley in 1995. He searched for frame torpedoes used by the Confederates to block the entrances to waterways feeding the harbor.

The torpedoes were mines attached to wooden frames sunken beneath the surface.

Spirek used a magnetometer that shows metal below, and side-scan sonar to provide an acoustic picture of the harbor bottom as he looked for anchoring rocks or mine remains.

Earlier this week, he searched for the Battery Wagner battleground. The battery was attacked in 1863 by the black 54th Massachusetts, an attack memorialized in the movie "Glory."

The battery washed to sea, and the location is now thought to be beneath the rocks of jetties built in the late 1800s.

But nearby "we found a lot of magnetic stuff," Spirek said. "We wanted to find the focal point of 54 days of intense bombardment."

There are thought to be about 45 wrecks in the harbor, ranging from ironclads to blockade runners and the so-called stone fleet, ships the Union sank to obstruct blockade runners.

After the jetties were built, the islands on the north side of the harbor have built up with sand, and wrecks of blockade runners are now thought to be beneath dry land. Spirek plans to return in May with ground-sensing equipment to look for those wrecks.

He also hopes to find the exact location of the failed April 7, 1863, attack on Fort Sumter by nine Union ships, including six monitors.

Union reports say the Yankees made it within 500 yards of Sumter but turned back because of obstructions in the water.

Confederate Gen. P.T.G. Beauregard, commanding in Charleston, disagreed.

"Beauregard took great offense at the Union claims," Spirek said. "He said at the time there were no obstructions and they never made it that close."

Beauregard said Confederate gunners were the difference and the ships made it to within only 1,200 yards of Sumter. The Confederates fired 2,000 rounds at the flotilla and about a third of the shots found their mark, Spirek said, adding the research may provide a more accurate history.

The study will also help preserve what remains.

"There are a lot of potential threats to these resources. Ships are getting bigger and at some point they may have to do some channel widening or change the channel," he said.

He said offshore sites are also used for sand to rebuild beaches.

"We need to know where these artifacts are so we can make decisions on where you get your sand and leave a buffer zone," he said.
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