Exclusive Tour of the CSS Neuse gunboat: North Carolina Video Tour!

hey everybody gary adam with american battlefield trust i'm so glad you're with us today and i can't believe i've never been here before i'll tell you in a second but we are on our swing through petersburg virginia and throughout north carolina uh somehow yesterday we managed to make it from the battle of alamance over to guilford courthouse near greensboro and up to petersburg a three-hour drive in about 10 minutes to post another video and somehow now we're back in north carolina if you believe that's what we're doing i have some land to sell you in a far away place at an inflated price um but we are here today at the css news civil war interpretive center and we're about to meet the site director uh you know and let's just do it right now here is matt young um he's the site director here uh at the css news civil war and interpretive center what's the news and why are we here hi gary thanks man glad you guys could be here today so the css news is the only remaining commissioned confederate iron clad above water uh in order to view the rest of the confederate you're going to have to have scuba gear and a scuba license and also be willing to dig in mud so what we have in front of us here is a model of how the ship appeared when she was completed you're looking at the model in the front that's the bow the center area there is the casemate and we've cut away the casemate so you can see the two cannons that would have been inside two 6.4 inch brook rifled guns double banded on top of the casemate would have been two layers of two inch iron armored plate so it would have been armored and protected from incoming enemy fire as you get towards the stern that's when you get the officers cabins and you also get shell and powder storage this ship began her life in october of 1862 about 15 miles from here in kinston at a place called seven what is now seven springs at the time it was called whitehall it came under attack in december of 1862 by foster's raid out of new bern and it delayed its construction for about six weeks but in early 1863 they got back to building this ship uh they put it into the river in the spring of 1863 and then they took it down river kind of an unfinished shell they brought it here to kinston they built a cofferdam and that's when they outfitted her for war they brought in uh the armor plating to put on the outside they brought in the guns they brought in the engines they brought in the coal and like almost all confederate iron clads she was vastly underpowered even though she had two engines and let me ask i mean because and by the way welcome i see all sorts of people the civil war uh round table of southwest michigan good to see you we already have more than 100 people watching um at once um i see a beautiful wooden deck is that typical for confederate ironclad it is for this class and they there was two things one scarcity of iron plating they could barely get what they had to cover the vertical surfaces of the ship and secondly they weren't really worried about plunging fire they were much more worried about direct fire coming from enemy cannons not so much like an enemy mortar so they also didn't you can see the bottom of the ship is flat it's a flat bottom keel so they didn't want so much weight on the top it was going to press it down even more as it is the css news had a draft of about eight feet that's a lot when you're talking about a smaller north carolina river okay good and i know what people want to see here they want to see what you actually have but before we leave the model anything else they need to know matt um the very front of the ship it's called it was called an ironclad ram for a reason it had an uh wooden ram with iron on the top and as the virginia proved if it didn't shoot you with its guns it could ram into you and put a hole in the side of your ship so that was a lesson they could learn from ancient greece um good okay so here we are i know you all know y'all know what you're looking at here this is unbelievable i've never seen anything like it actually before about 10 minutes ago when we arrived here so matt how did they find it who found it where'd they find it sure so in 1865 the ship was given a mission during the battle of wise fork to go and just uh harass the enemy bring the ship back to kinston and scuttle it to prevent it from being captured and that's exactly what the crew did so what we have left is about 105 tons worth of long leaf pine she was recovered in the early 1960s out of the noose river uh unfortunately uh as ed bars used to say if you want to see how not to recover an iron clad go see the noose and let's by the way tell us how he did on his edvard's accent uh probably let us know you know out of a scale from one to ten he was a great guy he loved interacting with ed uh he's definitely gonna be missed um so this was an example of how not to recover an iron clad because they destroyed half the ship getting it up out of the river in the 1960s because the people who were doing it saw it as an economic opportunity more than a historical salvage operation when they pulled up they chainsawed it in three pieces it sat outside for a number of years they built a shelter over it uh it was moved once to a different shelter they almost lost it during a hurricane but finally in 2012 this facility was built they moved it about three road miles they backed it in here we built the wall and now it's in a climate controlled humidity controlled facility and it's not deteriorating anymore all 105 tons of her all right this is super cool you're with the american battlefield trust we are at the css news uh uh civil war uh interp civil war interpretive center and we're here with matt young the site director and we're gonna do something special people don't get to do normally so go ahead gary i'm going to invite you to do this with me all right cool all right come on come on underneath yes don't do this at home well you can't do it at home but now this is an original confederate ironclad how's that unbelievable yeah yeah you can see the spikes and the nails that were still driven in in the 1860s and it's just you can almost picture the people working on the ship as you stand here i don't let every just anybody do that thanks matt and you know this is something about you know the the real thing battlefields themselves uh the accounts that we have and the stuff this is why we like to go to museums and interpretive centers because the stuff of history is is an important part of the story tangible things you can see and hear yeah there's nothing around it so absolutely so from what i understand when you also found the ship you found thousands of artifacts is that right matt almost ten thousand artifacts were recovered off the ship over here we kind of have a sampling of some of the items that were used to actually build the ship an axe head an auger we have spikes and nails trunnels or tree nails and then as you get over here one of the one of the coolest things that i think that we have uh is the swage block right here and i don't know if you want to ask your folks if anybody knows what a swage block is for okay you all heard it so first of all the first rating i've seen so far of matt's ed bars impression was a seven out of ten hey i'll take a seven pretty good i've seen people from frankfurt kentucky we've got californians we've got someone from wales united kingdom so we are all over the place right now and i think it's great uh as we're here with the american battlefield trust do you know what a swage block is let's keep moving okay so here's the swage block and if you hadn't guessed the swage block these holes are for where you actually do the molds for the nails and the spikes that go in the ship super cool okay so we're not going to be able to check out some of the 10 000 all the 10 000 artifacts but some what do you like to show i like to show you this yeah if you go straight this is the keel of the ship if you go straight down the keel it makes for an awesome shot something else that was really important during the civil war navy times was the ship's bell because the ship's bell not only told you the time it told you the watches when it was time for you to go to work super cool and by the way update he's gotten two more sevens and two tens on his ed bars impression uh i think ed would be proud and thank you i hope so let's check it out so one of the coolest things that we have as far as original items that were recovered off the ship is the original ship's bell so that's the belt that would have been rang to um let you know what time your watch was to let you know what time it was on board ship and then of course it wouldn't be an ironclad without iron plating this is an original piece of iron off of the ship and this is one of the reasons you have to come here i mean it's it's i'm glad we can bring this to you you know on camera but there's something you know you hear about what two inches of iron plating is actually touching it is a totally different ball game and you could imagine the noise um i'm sorry the noise of everything bouncing off of this during the battle uh you know please come here and how can people find out more about the museum matt we are located in kinston north carolina which is kind of in the center of eastern north carolina uh the best thing to do is go to our facebook page which is facebook.com css news that's n-e-u-s-e css news you sound like you've said that before once or twice okay good anything here where are we going next we're gonna i'm gonna show you an original piece of the casemate now the casemate is that upper section of ship the cannons were behind so this is what had been on the raised portion of the ship and you can see the wood kind of is interlocking here almost like a weave like a basket and that's in order to gain more strength when you have shells that are incoming from enemy ships all right and somebody said you got a spinal tap impersonation of 11. and um somebody's asking uh matt whether or not uh you know you have anything belonging to the crew if so we can keep that if there's any artifacts out belonging to the crew let us know we uh i'll tell you in just a few minutes because we actually do have a few things that were crew related okay good i see there's also another piece of iron plating here yes this is actually off the knuckle of the of the iron clad this one piece of plate it's only two inches thick it weighs over 700 pounds wow yeah and there you go chris is getting a good view that's chris white behind the camera and he has all his tech toys ready you might have seen him turning on his light we don't get to use this stuff that that often so thanks again for having us matt sure maybe one more view i mean i just can't get enough of it now you'll notice this you'll notice there's not as much here on the port side as there was on the starboard do you know why gary uh the crane that picked it up no this is where the gun powder was placed when they scuttled the ship this is where the explosion happened when the ship was scuttled in march of 1865 under the orders of general braxton bragg braxton bragg everybody's favorite not really i agree okay i like that you have some interpretive exhibits for kids or some interactive yes a knot tying exhibit we have um a ship's wheel that you can steer but one of the coolest things that i think we did is we built a mock-up of the ship from the river line up so important for you to talk to the king so what you see right here is a mock-up of the ship from the river line up you'll see it's wooden on the deck iron plate on the angled surfaces going up and one of the rifles projecting through the front of the gunport super cool we've got somebody at uh stonewall jackson's uh you know boyhood home uh or our birthplace uh we've got someone from valpo yes i know what that is so i can pronounce it properly and it's good to have you all here you're with the american battlefield trust we are at the css news uh civil war interpretive center and man we're looking at an original confederate ironclad and we're looking at a replica over here so hold tight we'll show you more of the iron clad as well one of the greatest things you pick up in a museum setting is the ability to walk backwards and talk at the same time what you see here is another piece of original iron plate but it's in situ so what you have is two layers of vertical iron two layers of horizontal iron four inches of oak then another layer of pine and another layer of pine to give you 26 inches of protection between the exterior of the casemate and the interior of the casemate where the sailors would be housed at and this is just really cool what you've done here because it's one thing to have the remnant of the ship but people inherently want to see what was it like how can i understand it um and i don't know did you talk about the guns yet before the brook rifles that are here just very briefly two she had two 6.4 inch guns uh they could fire a 100 close to 100 pound shells about a 95 pound brook bolt shell a distance of almost three miles it's about two and a half mile distance what i just can't believe is that a big ship like this large ship like this has only two guns but it could go to uh one of any number of different places in order to shoot uh let's show you here so you can see the tracks once you step chris white so right now it's pointing out the center but it can also using these tracks that chris is showing right here shoot out of this gun well or shoot out of this one here in other words and the one on the back could get together so they could deliver a broadside about right now you could you could have shot out the side or the broadside you could shut out a quarter panel or you could shoot out the bow or the stern oh man and now we've got someone from stockholm watching so uh eat that uh eat your hot out uk uh you are now in the lead stockholm uh somebody has to try to beat that we've got maine the fossa in stockholm is to be seen too all right it's an amazing ship we'll see if the person agrees i'll bet you they do um i see central virginia and we are uh seeing on here do you know anything about where the brook rifles were built uh i we don't unfortunately and we don't know what happened to them the ship sank in 1865 she was recovered by the firm of satterly and lyon out of new york she won the south the saturday line won the salvage contract and was told you can keep and sell off everything except the cannons the cannons are to be retained by the government so the u.s navy kept the guns but we have no idea what happened to them because they weren't recorded what numbers they were when they went in i have a friend of mine who works at the dc navy yard who says he may have a 6.4 inch off the news but he's not sure it's one of the great mysteries of the css news where are her guns now good good so great question shannon and she was curious if they were built at tretaker and i'll give that i don't know if they built brooks there but i'll give it a good chance we do know that most of her iron plating probably came from atlanta and not trevor good good so chris is obviously showing up toward uh you know the pilot house and chris did you show those little areas what did you say about that earlier so these four slots that are up above the pilot house there's one forward one on each side and one to the stern um that was the only way you could see to steer the ship i tell people it's like driving an 18-wheeler backwards down the interstate only using your mirrors i i liked it just as much the second time and it's much heavier than an 18 wheeler okay good we have she was probably 225 or 230 tons when she was in the water originally so we have a lot to show you but we're still on the artillery front so let's pivot over here and see what we have to see i think you all are aware that you know rifled guns could fire a variety of ordinance it exploded it didn't explode it scattered what do we have we have all four different types of original ordnance that this cannon fired first we have the solid brook rifle bolts these are about 95 pound projectiles they could go about two and a half miles then you have the brook rifle shell and the mullein shells we've sliced one in half so you can get an idea for how it would have looked the gun powder would have been packed inside and on top would have been one of these which is a contact percussion fuse when it made contact sends a spark down ignites the powder shell explodes then up here we have our stand of brook grape shot so that's a very standard naval type shot large round balls that were meant to disable enemy sails rigging smoke stacks and then you have your anti-personnel over here the canister shot and you can see we took the canister directly out of this can here and you'll see that it not only has the round balls but it has nuts and bolts and bits of other metal and shrapnel it was designed to create mass casualties mass bits of shrapnel wiping the enemy deck good good check it out so somebody was asking about the draft of the news did you already address that about eight feet she had a draft of about eight feet eight feet you heard it here let's keep moving on here and i thought this this interactive is really cool um could you explain this a little bit sure i'll uh i'll go hard over so this is our sailing interactive our steering interactive it's all connected together the ship's wheel um is all connected all the way back to the ship's runner so people can actually see that it's working and that's really cool it lets you know really how slow this rudder is really moving and the ship would have been moving very slowly too her top speed would have only been four three to four knots and that may be going with the current okay good good now sometimes i get a little bit excited maybe i was turning that thing a little bit faster for once not talking loud enough believe it or not but uh you know i'd like to hear from you all we've got a couple of people that just wished i would calm down or maybe we would have lessons no no i want to hear your vote if you'd like less energy and a whole lot less jumping around i'd like to hear from you because we've got a couple of people that just want me to calm down and i'm sorry i can't does the cameraman get a vote the cameraman votes frequently when we ride hours in the car together you're with the american battlefield trust and we're at the css news civil war interpretive center with the site director matt young and we are loving it it looks like chris wants to take a shot at the wheel there it just has to be right in the middle for instead all right what else do we have all right so the ship was crewed by professional officers these are mostly men that had gone to annapolis uh they had had prior experience as officers in the navy and they were the ones who were in charge of the ship however most of their crew not all of it but most of their crew were amateurs they were soldiers they were farmers there were men who had no experience or little to no experience on board ironclads um we found a record recently where the commander of the albemarle is telling the quartermasters in kinston and in where the albemarle was to contact the north carolina depot and get clothing from the north carolina depot for the men so we know that it was a mixture of of army and navy stuff that these guys were actually wearing good good let's check more of it out so i think the answer is yes you have things from the people yes that were actually on this ship and some of it's identified i think it is um we one of the questions we often get is well where did they sleep or what did they sleep in we have records of bunk beds but we also have found hooks and hammock rings on board so we know that they also slept in hammocks very cool and i like what you showed us on the end yes we have the original ship's stove and it's a naval stove because it's got this piping around the top to prevent pots and pans from sliding off when the ship is in waves now of course the noose never got out of the noose river so it never got into the sounds or the ocean so big waves weren't really a problem but this was a naval stove that was on board all right now one of my favorite artifacts can i ask you about that can i ask i'm going to ask gary about this the first time we went through i said take a look at that glass bottle at the very top and see if you can tell me without looking at the label what is on the bottle i think that he's chris is giving you a good enough shot you should be able to get it we'll give you a sec let's see if anybody can actually get it into the comments while we're waiting i did hear somebody say maybe drink decaf um but two other people say love the energy so thank you for the support all right so what's the bottle so the bottle if you couldn't make it out is a lee and perrin's worcestershire sauce bottle i think i said that right worse to sure let's ask the folks in the uk worst disher worcestershire sauce so they are flavoring their food with the exact same brand of worcestershire sauce that we still flavor our food with today and a little known fact worcestershire has anchovies in it yes all right the original recipe did yeah absolutely you're right um all right what do we have to see next i know we have some recovery stuff coming up and you have something really cool to show before we get to the recovery i want to show you one of the hidden gems here at the css news um that hidden gem is located in the stern and i don't know wait till you see this chris if you can get this right here what you see is the back of a 58 caliber mini ball this is from when the ship was attacked as it was being constructed at whitehall north carolina so that is the back of a 58 caliber mini ball uh and you know there's a slight delay on these live videos so let it be shown that at least four people got the leah and parents uh correct oh nice my compliments to um roger tom michael j tom and eric even though two only said worcestershire we're going to go ahead and give you that close enough what a cool view chris is showing there and finally we talk about the recovery of the ship she was it was always kind of known where she was but in the 1960s with the centennial the war people were asking the question what did kinston do what did they contribute to the civil war and everybody was like oh we built an iron clad some people said it was 100 feet long some people said it was 250 feet long the reality was it was somewhere in between and everybody kind of knew where it was because at low river levels they would fish off it the kids would dive off of it and when it was recovered they found it largely intact unfortunately for us they destroyed about half the ship bringing it up because it was seen as more of an economic opportunity than an actual historical or archaeological recovery okay well what pictures do you want to show us just to give people the flavor here so you can see uh it was outside until 2012 and here in 2012 we moved the ironclad about three road miles from its former location underneath a big shelter to this building and then we built the wall to block us off from the street so it came right in here you set it down on the concrete set it down on the concrete pad absolutely all right now one of the most exciting things about this ironclad is the views that you can get from up above this is the only place in the world that you can stand gun deck level on a confederate iron clad and we're about to do it all right well let's make a let's make a walk over there really cool we'll let chris go in front so we don't have our posteriors live on camera again i'll say to learn more about our place go to facebook.com css news n-e-u-s-e so gary here we are gun deck level on a confederate iron clad and i think what i want to just say is um to while chris is showing this to thank the north carolina department of historic resources and matt young for having us today uh matt thank you so much it's been my pleasure this is super cool we hope you can come here check them out on their facebook page um css news uh and uh you know we hope you can come visit and thank you for supporting battlefield preservation and for keeping up with all of our videos make sure you share them with your friends i'll leave you with a moment of zen and the ship you

Channel: American Battlefield Trust

Views: 25,063

Keywords: American Battlefield Trust, Civil War Trust, CSS Neuse Video Tour, CSS Neuse Civil War Tour, Confederate Ship Tour, Civil War Ship tour, North Carolina Civil War Tour, Kinston Civil War Tour

Id: G1xmkL1mL-s

Length: 25min 42sec (1542 seconds)

Published: Sun May 09 2021