From Ironclad to Artifact: The Journey of the CSS Georgia

render the wine when ready on a sweltering summer day in Savannah Georgia a team of US Navy divers guided by US Army Corps of Engineers archaeologists splashed into the murky waters of the Savannah River this was the watery grave of the Civil War ironclad CSS Georgia one of the most interesting wreck sites that I've ever worked on has some of the most amazing artifacts one could hope for on a wreck the dives in 2015 represented the final stages of more than 40 years of archaeological study and offered the promise of artifacts and information about one of the nation's most significant yet mysterious shipwrecks so this is this is our one chance to really understand the Georgia how it was constructed what it looked like we probably know less about the Georgia than we do any other Confederate ironclad so everything every scrap of material every fragment of machinery is going to tell us a little bit more about the Georgia but the work would not be easy it would require many thousands of dollars worth of specialized electronics and 274 dives into one of the most challenging underwater environments imaginable the CSS Georgia doesn't give up her secrets very easily this is the story of the recovery of the CSS Georgia [Music] [Music] the Georgia's story begins in the opening days of the Civil War when President Abraham Lincoln ordered his powerful Navy to blockade every southern port and choke off the Commerce of the new Confederacy when to nearby Confederate forts fell to the Union Navy in one short battle in November 1861 Savannah ins frustrations turned to fear that their city could be next people expected any day any hour that Armada comes steaming up the Savannah River lay Savannah under its guns and forced the surrender of the city or blast the city off its foundations but southern hopes were buoyed by the Battle of Hampton Roads Virginia on March 8 through 9 1862 when a new kind of vessel inflicted terrible damage on the Union blockading fleet the CSS Virginia was America's first ironclad warship featuring sloping iron armor attached to thick wooden walls soon it seemed every southern city wanted its own version of this now legendary craft the idea of building iron clads just sprang up all over the south the Confederate Navy Department was just inundated with plans desires to get a contract to build iron plants in Savannah just a few days after the battle in Hampton Roads 22 local women branding themselves the ladies gunboat Association began a statewide campaign to pay for the construction of a new ironclad unique fundraising events included a concert at the Masonic Hall in Savannah featuring a new song by jingle bells composer James Lord Pierpont who lived in Savannah [Music] [Music] donations poured in from every corner of the state and within just three months the ladies gun Boat Association raised 115,000 Confederate dollars more than two and a half million dollars in today's terms if you want something bad enough you can get the money to do it and they did in short order sedan Ian's began the work of building the ladies gunboat soon named the Georgia like the fundraising the construction proceeded at a lightning fast pace the Georgia was built in just a few months like about a third the time that most iron clads took to build the Georgia was built extremely fast I don't know of another ironclad that was built quicker in the south because no plans drawings or written records at the Georgia's construction survived only one thing is known with any degree of certainty because the builders could obtain no supplies of iron plate like that used on the CSS Virginia they instead used heavy iron railroad rails to protect the ship's armored top called the case-mate or casement the wooden structure of the casement was composed of several layers of thick wood up to 24 inches in thickness the railroad TRN was placed on the angled side of the wooden casement of the Georgia like this flat side down then another piece was slipped in between usually down and locked in place and it formed a flush surface on the exterior of the casement surprisingly for a ship that commanded Savannah's full attention for so long no good images of the Georgia remained there are three engravings from period newspapers but the first drawing is missing the smokestack the second has too many cannon on the end the case-mate and the third shows the iron rails hung horizontally rather than vertically a purported photo of the Georgia discovered in the 1970s was revealed in 2015 to be a hoax and not only are there no blueprints written descriptions of the vessel vary wildly with estimates of its length ranging from 120 to 250 feet long so the Georgia's true appearance remains a mystery to this day in July 1862 the members of the ladies gunboat Association were invited to tour their finished ironclad expectations for the ship's success ran high they all expected this vessel to go down the river attacked the blockade sink or drive off the Yankees and reopened Savannah to world commerce but those dreams were to remain unfulfilled as the Georgia proved unable to power itself against the strong currents of the Savannah River perhaps because its engines were too weak its iron Armour too heavy or a combination of both a ship that couldn't move couldn't attack and that wasn't the ironclads only shortcoming on the trial trip the hull leaked so badly that the bilge pumps couldn't pump the water out as fast as it came in it got to the point the captain of the Georgia was considering throwing the coal overboard to keep the vessel afloat and apparently she also leaked when it rained as well it came from both ends top and bottom apparently in order to stop the never-ending trickle of water seeping into the ship the Georges crew was forced to make her interior unbearably hot you can imagine what that festal was like in August sitting in the middle of the Savannah River with at least some part of the engine running to operate the pumps so it probably would have been like 120 degrees inside that vessel soon it became apparent that this leaking underpowered and sweltering ship was never going to steam down the Savannah River and fight the blockading Union warships when she was completed and looked like just a disaster people were disappointed and then upset and then angry angry letters poured into the offices of local newspapers people granted the Georgia a mud tub a nondescript marine monster and a splendid failure to counter this rising tide of anger the ship's builders wrote back claiming they never meant the Georgia to be a powerful warship like the Virginia but rather an armored floating fortification this is what we intended we intended from the beginning for it to be a floating battery the Georgia was anchored in the Savannah River east of town its cannon pointed menacingly downriver toward the Union fleet with little else to do the crew incessantly practiced loading and firing their weapons ready to pound any Union warship foolish enough to try to pass by [Applause] the Georgia was an important part of a system of defensive fortifications protecting Savannah from attack by sea the ironclad was stationed in front of Fort Jackson a brick structure mounting up to seven cannons just downstream set battery Lee the strongest fort in the system this earthen fortification boasted nine cannons and two mortars in the river itself invaders face submerged explosives and obstacles driven into the sand Confederate Navy sailors manned five cannons placed in a man-made island in the river across from Fort Jackson and behind that were another six cannons at battery Lawton disappointed Savannah ins quickly forgot about the CSS Georgia but little did they know the ship was helping to save their city what they didn't realize was that she actually delayed the fall of Savannah until December of 1864 and is angry and frustrated and disappointed as were the people of Savannah the Georgia is the important link in that defensive line the federal Navy did not come up to a tax of n so the deterrent defenses were one hundred percent successful though the Union Navy never did steam up the Savannah River the Union Army encircled the city from behind Savannah was the final target in General William T Sherman's famed marched to the sea on the night of December 20th through 21st 1864 Savannah's Confederate defenders created a temporary floating bridge and walked silently across the river into South Carolina slipping away to fight another day the city's Confederate naval ships were intentionally destroyed to prevent capture by the enemy the powerful new ironclad CSS Savannah was blown up by its crew the CSS Georgia met a much less violent end the crew disabled the cannon then shut off the pumps and fled the vessel they opened the sea-cocks and they let it feel and just go down when the Georgia was scuttled she sank so quickly that most of the crew had not a chance to get all of their belongings off the ship [Music] with the war's end the Georgia was no longer a powerful defensive shield now she was an obstacle to Commerce and needed to be removed or destroyed in the weeks after Union forces took over Savannah u.s. Navy divers removed Confederate obstructions in the river so ships could steam all the way into the city plans were made to raise the Georgia and salvage its valuable iron but before the work could begin the passenger steamer Lizzie Baker collided with the Georgia's wreckage in May 1866 Savannah Mayor Edward C Andersen published a warning to Mariners and local newspapers advising them to steer clear of the Georgia that summer the US Treasury Department took over salvage work giving the job to a New Yorker named Henry S Wells who represented a northern owned railroad whose iron had been seized by the state to armor the CSS Georgia in addition to the other obstructions Wells had divers working on the wreck of the Georgia for three years stopping only during the hot summers until his contract was abruptly canceled in 1870 Wells complained to Congress but he had not had time to salvage most of the valuable iron on the Georgia in this 1871 map the Georgia's wreck is depicted lying on the north side of the shipping channel opposite Fort Jackson submerged beneath 11 feet of water at low tide the assistant US army engineer in Savannah reported that though 80 tons of iron had been salvaged from the wreck using dynamite the ship's machinery and engines were still on board but authorities decided to focus their efforts on removing other obstructions that were actually blocking the channel and a Georgia was left where she lay not to be heard from again for almost a century [Music] the Georgia's century long silence was shattered with this innocuous headline in the March 30th 1968 Savannah Morning News ironclad revisited buried in an interior page the short piece announced that this dredge contracted to the Savannah district of the US Army Corps of Engineers had struck something hard in the water when the machinery was pulled up from the bottom it was found to be snarled up in rusted railroad iron ralston Lattimore superintendent at Fort Pulaski National Monument arrived on scene and identified the mangled mess as the long-forgotten CSS Georgia after the National Park Service and Smithsonian Institution said they were not interested in raising the Georgia the Corps turned to the state of Georgia specifically the Georgia Historical Commission which operated Fort Jackson as a Maritime Museum and had already raised to Civil War shipwrecks in Columbus Georgia Commission head Mary Gregory Jewett wrote to the US Navy asking for advice on how to proceed in January 1969 Rear Admiral HJ kossler who commanded the 6th naval district in Charleston South Carolina replied to Jewett offering the services of an officer and two enlisted divers in February to positively identify the wreck and give an estimate of what it would cost to raise it Jewett accepted the offer and the officer cost or sent was lieutenant commander Liu - captain of the submarine rescue ship USS petrol we got on a tugboat Georgia was and we got we got no water went down Hugh and his men explored the wreckage on Thursday February 27th 1969 and confirmed that the Corps of Engineers had indeed discovered the CSS Georgia they reported that the ship's upper decks and structures had collapsed and that 12 to 16 feet of silt had covered the wreckage which was otherwise intact the divers brought three or four pieces of waterlogged timber to the surface but left all the other artifacts where they found them so we report to the people involved there needed dredge around the wreck the Navy estimated it would cost up to 1 million dollars to raise the Georgia which was 2 to 3 times the Georgia historical Commission's annual operating budget accordingly the Commission thanked the divers and their commander but politely declined the Corps of Engineers request to salvage the ship this was a frustrating turn of events for the Corps which needed the Georgia out of the way so the harbor channel could be deepened and widened port was developing and they were bringing in larger and larger ships and they needed to widen and deepen the channel so this obstruction then came to the forefront serious archaeological study of the wreck began in earnest in November 1978 with a sonar survey conducted by dr. Jim Henry from the skidaway Institute of Oceanography outside Savannah encouraged by the results of this study the Corps brought in experts from the University of South Carolina's Institute of underwater archaeology with a more powerful device one month later archaeologist Ralph Wilbanks was part of the team I was just too kind of given the image of the Georgia see what it all looked like see what was going on it was now obvious to experts there was not an intact warship on the bottom of the Savannah River once I saw the side scan image of it I knew that the record had had been terribly displaced from the original it's its original sinking when Wilbanks returned to dive on to Georgia later that month he sketched in his logbook a simple drawing of the ship's railroad iron armor I remember you know looking at the railroad iron where it was where this casemate was laying over and I could see the ends of the railroad iron and I could see a minute lock and stuff like that the work shifted into high gear in 1979 when the corps hired Texas A&M University to study serious options for raising the Georgia if it was in good enough shape to race it we would probably take it across the river before Jackson in January 79 I brought a team of students and colleagues from Texas A&M to begin what we thought would be a very short-term study of the site of the CSS Georgia the river became the scene of constant activity as divers explored the wreck the archaeologists found the cloudy fast-moving Savannah River to be a difficult place to work it's like diving into chocolate pudding so many suspended particulates in the water column that it just blocked out all light so we did archaeology by Braille for the most part my first impression of the Georgia was it was an armored barn when I would be sitting on the casement waiting for one of my colleagues or my partner to be doing something it really felt like I was sitting on an armored roof we always went down with at least two people we always had a tag line between us a line around each of our wrists maybe about two meters long so that if one guy fell into one of these Sally ports that the other guy could pull him out because you're in Blackwater the whole idea the whole diving project was to be safe to plan your dive and dive that plan after a while it became we faced reasonably comfortable with the site we were able then to get a sense of how big the wreck was and what components were where the team included only a few underwater archaeologists it was truly a multidisciplinary force comprising members of various civilian career tracks within the US Army Corps of Engineers we had attorneys we had real estate people engineers technicians just anybody who actually wanted to do it best I've ever been taught we had camaraderie it was a good time their accomplishments were impressive among the artifacts divers brought to the surface or a carpenter's tool a serving dish and leg irons for use on unruly Confederate sailors as part of its contract with the Corps of Engineers Texas A&M produced a 150 page report in 1980 detailing its findings on the wreck site three years later the University followed up with a formal proposal to raise the Georgia's remains the archaeologists proposed directing an underwater box around the Georgia called a coffer dam which would slow down the current and clear up the water inside so divers could work the price tag an estimated two to four million dollars was too high for the Corps of Engineers to consider but the dive team was sent back down to the wreck site in 1984 to recover more artifacts including cannonballs and shells from the Georgia's Arsenal and we recovered 100 rounds of ordnance the projectiles were disarmed and sent to Texas for conservation [Music] on one of the dives Joe Wilson and his partner made an exciting and unexpected discovery atop two Georgia's case-mate myself and another diver went down and we're trying to put a marker just a buoy on the wreck so we know where to go back to every time and my friend started tying to the line around uh what he thought was the cleat and I went up to to check make sure he had a tied ride and I found out I figure I felt the trunnions like they not follow the cannon the divers had discovered the one-of-a-kind twenty four pounder cannon cast at Alvin Miller's Savannah foundry especially for use on the Georgia 24 pounds refers to the weight of the projectile fired by the gun the team raised the relatively small weapon on April 14 1984 the barge brought it ashore where it was lowered into the moat at Fort Jackson this would protect it from decomposition until a special treatment tank could be prepared to conserve the historic weapon when it gets out of the water and comes in contact with the oxygen it starts to deteriorate immediately and if it's not kept out of the air or preserved it'll disintegrate on April 28th a much bigger 32 pounder rifled cannon broke the surface again the crew hoisted the gun into the air and ferried it over to Fort Jackson but this cannon could not be stashed in the moat 32 pound the rifle weighs over 5,000 pounds so if we put that in the moat it would have sank all the way to the bottom and it may have been hard to get back out we dug a pit and lined it with plastic and filled it with water they're etched on the side of the 32 pounder were clues about the big guns identity we had some paperwork that listed all the weapons on the ship and the markings on them and when we brought that gun up to the pit where we were going to bury it we host it off real good and looked at the markings on it so we were able to identify it right then normally something like that is impossible after two years in wet storage and three more years in treatment both cannon were finally ready for exposure to the air in summer 1989 but before he could prepare them for public display Roberson first had to take care of a potentially dangerous surprise concealed within the barrel of the 32 pounder the 32 pound the rifle was loaded and so that had to be taken to the explosive ordnance disposal range up at the Buford Air Station Marine Air Station and we were moved to shell up there with the cannon unloaded after more than 120 years Roberson handcrafted historically accurate wooden carriages for both guns and put them on exhibit outside at Fort Jackson yeah I almost feel like I'm part of the crew after handling all this stuff so many times [Music] you but the Georgia itself remained on the bottom with no funding in sight for bringing it to the surface the nonprofit coastal Heritage Society which had taken over management of Fort Jackson from the Georgia Historical Commission became an active advocate for the ship hosting academic conferences and lining up support from other groups in the community in 1987 the Georgia was named to the National Register of Historic Places and that summer coastal heritage obtained permission to hire Ralph Wilbanks and archaeologist Gordon watts to dive on the Georgia one of the principal things we were trying to answer was is there a hole underneath the case-mate sections because early divers had indicated that they'd been they'd found a companionway had gone down into the hull of the ship but as as soon as we were on the bottom we figured out pretty quickly that there was no hull that was pressed into that myosin claim around the same time coastal Heritage Society volunteer Tim Callahan undertook a tireless years-long study of archival sources on the Georgia looking for information on its crew construction armament and more research is not a simple thing never is it's just a very painstaking effort to go through every daily newspaper that's still available today I feel that my efforts really brought it alive more so than that what I've ever been otherwise and that makes me proud to have done that meanwhile the society continued to lobby for raising the Georgia and even drew up plans for exhibiting the Georgia's remains inside a large 1920 structure that was part of the historic railroad complex downtown everybody naturally thought at that time that next year we're going to have the Georgia brought up but those dreams never materialized and the georgia secrets remain concealed beneath the waters of the Savannah River waiting for the funding required to bring them to light you [Music] another 20 years passed before divers once again visited the wreck of the CSS Georgia in 2003 Kor contracted archaeologists entered the water not to recover artifacts but rather to map the wreck site in detail and collect information information that core planners would use to ascertain the best way to protect the Georgia's remains we've been able to document up basically everything on the bottom and determine what's there and this will basically pave the way for future investigations to come back and you know possible recovery of four pieces remain on the bottom the archaeologist also deployed high-resolution sonar which used sound waves to penetrate the cloudy water and what they found alarmed them the case-mate sections outlined in red in the 1980s image were broken off and had disappeared completely by 2003 there has been a tremendous amount of deterioration and we looked at it 15 years ago had a lot of structural integrity that today you don't see archaeologists pinpointed additional dredge strikes as the cause of the damage and advised that raising the Georgia's remains was the only way to protect them from future damage and destruction it would be yet another decade before any more archaeological work took place at the wreck site of the CSS Georgia but when the team returned in November 2013 they made history for the first time US Navy divers raised a large section of the Georgia's iron and wood case-mate intact the piece measured eight feet by eight feet and weighed close to 5,000 pounds everybody is real excited to get it up and over we worked hard for five days to to get that piece to the surface the Corps of Engineers and the US Navy which officially owns the historic warship needed to know the most effective way to recover and conserve the Georgia's remains they hope this casemate section would provide valuable clues conservators transported the wood and iron to the well-respected conservation Research Laboratory at Texas A&M University where it was subjected to a variety of tests to determine its strength stability and condition at the moment we're not conserving what we're going to be doing is renewing testing on this piece ultimately the decision will be made sometime between now and next year as to whether we're going to keep this piece and it'll go on museum display just over one year later recovery began in earnest and this time the team intended to leave nothing behind when we and the Navy are through here all of the CSS Georgia all that remains of it will be out of out of the river using all of the information gleaned over more than a quarter-century of diving and survey work and armed with new sonar images of the wreck site archaeologists plunged into the brackish water in January 2015 their work was limited to the short slack water periods at high and low tide and divers were forced to exit the water when the current started moving again the tide window can be as little as 30 minutes and it could be as much as an hour and a half it just depends on the moon wind and a lot of other conditions big ships passed by at what appeared to be arm's length but the team took precautions to make sure everyone was safe oh and you're underwater and a big ship goes by you can hear it and sometimes you can actually feel it with experience we've learned that the there isn't really a bad effect from the ship's as long as they're in the channel where they belong in spite of the challenges the recovery moved along at a quick pace yielding more than 1,500 small artifacts including wooden pulleys metal gunsights devices for moving cannons around on the deck this will be used as a big lever to slide underneath the back of the gun carriage and scissor shaped pieces of metal that were part of the gun carriages archaeologists were surprised to find brass artifacts that seemed to function just as well as they did when they sank into the river in 1864 but after a hundred fifty years in water still functions as it did the day came out there were small or personal items such as dishware a bayonet handle another set of leg irons for use on the crew and even prehistoric Native American pottery fragments that must have somehow washed downstream into the Georgia's wreckage we're getting you know such a variety of things that are really well preserved and tell the story the ship changed how we think about things but it's the smaller more personal things that really tell us things about life on board in June 2015 after five solid months of archaeological diving operation shifted from the comparatively small dive boat to a pair of dive barges operated by the US Navy diver under the water when ready okay right and also at Navy divers trained in underwater salvage and explosive ordnance disposal a skill needed to remove the still armed shells and cannonballs mixed in with the wreckage though they wore the uniform of the United States Navy the CSS Georgia's one-time foe the divers were glad with a chance to help save the historic ship's remains it's definitely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get to be able to dive in this dive and to claim that you helped salvage the CSS Georgia the Navy divers were aided by some of the best equipment available a high-tech underwater positioning system coupled with 3d real-time sonar allowed archaeologists on the surface to monitor the divers movements even though it was impossible to see much of anything underwater red diver do you have the grenade they may not know where they are on the bottom because of the low visibility but we know exactly where they are and we're able to systematically cover the bottom over the course of 28 dives that Navy divers raised more than 200 pieces of ordnance which were transferred ashore so experts could remove the explosive powder and fuses then it was time to move on to the four large cannon known to remain in the wreckage the first to come up a small smoothbore cannon that fired six pound shells broke the surface of the water on July 15th our eyes were the first eyes to see that cannon in over a hundred and fifty years since she was scuttled and Sherman took the city three more cannon emerged in July Oh two more rifled guns like the larger of the two raised in the 1980s along with a massive 9,000 pound Dahlgren smoothbore gun their safe recovery was a difficult well orchestrated job on the part of the Navy divers and the archeologists these are big cannon these are big guns it takes a lot to get them off the bottom when you do it successfully it's a major accomplishment each cannon was carefully lowered into a metal container and prepared for safe transport to the conservation research lab at Texas A&M with the last of the cannon and shells removed from the side the dangerous and tedious ordnance recovery phase of the archaeological project was complete thanks guys appreciate it you guys did a hell of a job it does feel much better to get over this hump get these on out of the water get on to the next phase which is much more enjoyable for everyone on the team following an old Navy tradition the chief diver lashed a broom to the mast of the tug that pushed the barges back to shore back in World War two United States Submariner is but often times display a broom and their sail on the way back into show a clean sweep of the oceans at the enemy complete clearance and that's what we did today we've cleared the Confederate guns and ordnance from the Savannah River attention now shifted to recovering large mapped artifacts such as remnants of the ship's machinery and fittings engine parts and a propeller all eyes were on the water as the blades and shaft of one of the Georgia's two propellers saw daylight for the first time since it sank after gently cradling the big iron artifact onto the deck conservators carefully cut the propeller into two parts to ensure a safe transit to the conservation lab in Texas when I'm back in the lab and I'm clean the propeller on the shaft we can see exactly how she goes together and we can realign her from using this plane the success is achieved during the large artifact recovery phase were later dampened by the crews inability to recover the large heavy case-mate sections on the bottom their recovery would have to wait until new methods were developed we just got to a point where we could not separate off any more sections of the case-mate and what was left exceeded you know the weight of their cranes now it was time to recover the remaining artifacts too heavy for divers to lift for this task the archaeologists would use mechanized equipment the wreck is just spread out over a more than a football-field-sized area a lot of it's buried most of its too heavy for one or two or even three people to pick up you've got to have big machinery to pull this stuff to the surface you just can't do with divers more than 2000 times the crane scooped up mud-covered artifacts from the bottom and deposited in on Dec each scoop of the claw or clamshell was conducted with precision using global positioning satellite guidance and a detailed grid map of the wreck site this allowed archaeologists to know where the artifacts were located before they removed the objects eager archaeologists fired up high-pressure hoses to remove the muck and see what was concealed within and we just wash it through a screen literally we just hose it down and it pushes it through the screen it just filters the sediment out and retains the material and the artifacts since the crane could work regardless of the river's current there was no need to wait for slack tide like divers were required to do and the work continued unabated for hours on end the results astonished even the most veteran archaeologists on the team every grab that we pull up and up on the deck we have no idea what's going to come out and over and over again it's just been some phenomenal artifact a brass belt buckle with an eagle on and a brass button with an eagle on at the handle of an 1832 artillery short sword bullets sights off the guns is just every day every morning every afternoon every grab you never know what's gonna come up and it's just an incredible experience but the biggest surprise came on September 15th 2015 when the crane recovered a 9,000 pound Dahlgren Cannon and placed it on deck looking out the window in the conference man and seeing that the cannon in the grapple I think that was one of the biggest surprises of the entire project you know because nobody expected that lo and behold we recover as a second Dahlgren cannon it was hidden in the mud nobody knew anything about it so I'd been talking about the air being a second Algren cannon and lo and behold we found it so yes it was fun in addition to the unexpected cannon the crane also raised eight brass gun sights and five mechanisms used to fire the cannon more than ever found on any other Civil War shipwreck team member Miguel Gutierrez demonstrated how the sites were placed on the Georgia's artillery I'm the right hand we have a tangent sight it was places the breach of the gun otherwise known as the back of the gun right here on the tangent sight mass on my left hand we have a disk by sight it was also called a front sight and it was placed with the second reinforce that is this area of the gun in line with the trunnions on the site mass which is this this lifted area right here bolted with two bolts to keep it in place it's quite a fine it's very interesting and we it is a very great opportunity we have to study naval gunnery during this time in our country's history on October 25th 2015 the team completed its last mission in this phase of the work a tug pushed the barges to a secluded spot in the back river behind Hutchinson Island where the archaeologists intended to Ribery close to half of the artifacts they had raised we set aside some artifacts that we determined weren't really going to contribute that much to our understanding of the CSS Georgia and life on the Georgia today we are reburying those in a in a spot not that far from their original location the objects were gently placed inside several open-topped metal containers and covered with plastic a top which was piled a thick layer of heavy wet mud scooped from the bottom of the river this would create an oxygen-free environment to protect the artifacts as team members watched the containers were lifted off the barge and gently placed into the water where they sank several feet into the soft sediment on the bottom the process was carefully planned to allow future researchers to access the artifacts should the need arise we want to make these accessible to someone in the future who wants to come along and recover them and we have records of everything that's in each container so if anybody really wants to to come back and retrieve these they know exactly what they'll be getting in each container sonar scans and final archaeological dives ensured the containers were placed snugly in exactly the right spot for now the salvage and recovery of the CSS Georgia was complete now the artifacts began a thousand mile journey from Savannah to the campus of Texas A&M University about 100 miles northwest of Houston here they were offloaded at the same lab where the case-mate section raised in 2013 was sent to begin the process of preparing them for display in museums here at consciousness research lab after the work in Georgia was over the work here really began we took possession of around 140 142 tonnes when the material over 13,000 artefacts ranging in size from our 12 foot Dahlgren cannons to 24 foot long sections of iron case-mate down to the smallest small partial effects and each one of those just takes its own personal care to figure out the best way to conserve these and make the most out of these artifacts to tell the story conservatory Karen Martindale began identifying each of the 1700 small artifacts one at a time and painstakingly entering the information into a computer database so it has all of the pertinent information needed for each artifacts next each item was photographed before being treated and those which were trapped in layers of marine concretion from many decades underwater were scanned with a medical x-ray the x-ray is a priceless tool to be able to actually see inside them to be able to for example see inside a padlock to see what mechanisms are still there other conservators all of them students in AMS highly regarded archaeological training program used handheld devices called air scribes to chisel away concretion from artillery shells and cannonballs this is an untreated shell from the CSS Georgia as you can see it's heavily concreted there's still shells there's barnacles um it's really rusty this one over here has already been treated while they're still concretion on it and it's still a bit rusty you can see that there's many smooth patches of metal still left in some of the big water filled containers outside large metal artifacts were in the beginning stages of a process called electrolysis during which electrical current and a chemical solution were being used to return the rusty metal to its original state it slowly leeches these salts out of the metal into the water that we can start to control and make this metal more stable that it will not rust as it's supposed to camp the conservation process can last as long as a few months for smaller artifacts to a year and a half or more for large cannons and case-mate sections waterlogged wooden artefacts require their own type of tender loving care to reverse extensive damage caused by a wood devouring Mullis called the Teredo worm as you can see here the shredder Teredo worms will burrow into the wood and then leave behind their shell in its place much of the time wood is so eaten that by traído worms that the only thing left holding the wood together is the traitor worm shells after a two-year pause archaeologists returned to the wreck site in June 2017 armed with new and more powerful tools calibrated to finish the recovery of the CSS Georgia this time around we are using a larger crane and with that crane we can put down a much larger frame and rigging a system than we could in 2015 last time we had max a hundred ton here we have it's capable of 300 ton but right now certified for 150 first to break the surface of the water was the 31 by 24 foot 67 tons section known as the East case-mate just before dark on Wednesday June 21st using steel beams salvage experts built metal cradles to safely lift the century and a half old casemates section to the surface the piece is so fragile we don't know where it's gonna fail we just fling wires under it it could basically collapse on itself like a basket so the frames just give that under underneath support as the archaeologists watched with bated breath the crane operator gently placed the heavy artifact down on an adjacent barge you know we were just anxious to get it up because we knew it was coming out with knew it was gonna get on deck and we knew we were gonna get a really good look at it next up was the larger West case-mate section weighing in at an estimated 120 tons at first this artifact defied efforts to bring it off in one piece but on July 2nd the team managed to raise the most of the West case-mate intact placing it in line with its companion on the artifact barge it feels good to get that last big piece finally out of there finally see it break the surface swing around it was quite a sight to behold a sight and a smell after more than 150 years on the bottom the big pieces of iron and wood were slathered in stinking muck archaeologists employed good old-fashioned fire hoses to blast the coating off on top of the case-mate we've got numerous inches of muscle and mud and we want to wash this away so we can record all the rail and the fastenings underneath oh this is a mess I don't know how to say it other than that we're trying to clear that all away so that we can clearly see the rails and any other distinguishing features as soon as the sections were cleaned off experts began studying them in detail their findings confirmed basic ideas about how the Georgia was built but yielded some surprises the case-mate is rail up rail down railway and fastened tightly together and they sit in our fasten two two layers of wood with each piece we learned a little bit more about the Georgia and we also realized that some of the assumptions we made may be may not hold true one of the unexpected things was the diversity of the types of rails that were involved we've got seven different types of rails that we've been able to document in these two sections of case-mate team member Matt misused his digital camera and specialized software to produce 3d images of the Georgia's renamed the way we do that with photogrammetry is take literally hundreds or for larger artifacts like the east and west case-mate will be over a thousand images and so by establishing a grid of images with sufficient overlap we can actually align those using computer programs to create a three-dimensional model it's a tremendous resource for us very very accurate very nice and we have something we can show people the technology is amazing but archaeologist Gordon wants ensured that important details were captured the old-fashioned way - I don't think there's any substitute for sitting down and doing the drawings mechanical drawings of certain aspects of it when you make those drawings you've really got to think about what you're recording and I think it's infinitely better to have your hands on the real thing in concert with Matt Mouse's 3d models watch detailed drawings provide a complete picture of the Georges remains with the big section safely on board the archaeologists returned to the methods that proved productive in 2015 scooping the river bottom up onto the deck one bucket load at a time and blasting away the mud to see what it concealed each scoop was precisely placed with the aid of computers and sonar devices the next grab is going to be clamshell three eight the West case made especially on the southern periphery that was a an artifact rich environment there is no telling what is underneath the search yielded few of the personal artifacts that so astonished archaeologists in 2015 but the discovery of the missing cylinders from the Georgia steam engines more than made up for any disappointment we found them initially in 2003 then when we were back working in 2015 they had disappeared we looked everywhere that they had been in 2003 no sign of them whatsoever and in one grapple both of the cylinders came up and we think they may have been fouled in the chain that went to one of the buoys that's right there that literally marched the wreck it may have been drugged down the slope into the toe of the channel in conjunction with information gleaned from the ship's propeller raised in 2015 the engine parts discovered two years later will yield important clues about why the Georgia was so underpowered during the final stages of the work on the river the recovered artifacts were continuously soaked to make sure they didn't dry out and start to decay the steam cylinders would be sent to the lab at Texas A&M for conservation but now it was time for the big case-mate sections to return to a safe secluded spot on the river bottom here they will wait until someone comes up with a plan and funding to conserve them and put them on exhibit bitter-sweets a good way to describe it it's kind of sad to be you know involved in the second scuttling of the ship but maybe it'll rest in peace over here for the next hundred and fifty years when you get right down to it what we did preserves everything that went down on the bottom so yes it's bittersweet we put it back in the water on the other hand we've gained a tremendous amount of knowledge we know how the whole thing was put and in years to come if somebody wants to display its here we know where it is it's buried in the mud they can come back recover it conserve it and put it on this plate there's a for the recovery team reburial marked the end of a long journey they marked the occasion by gathering for a special cannon salute at Old Fort Jackson it's a wonderful way to end the project a canvas salute from the fort where the soldiers on a daily basis would have seen the Georgia and it's kind of fitting that the one would salute the other at the end of a project [Music] you know it was appropriate indeed I think to reburying to George's case-mate and I think this was a celebration for everybody who worked really hard to get that taste made up and get it reburied in the back river [Music] I think we we did a really credible job and I think everybody's proud of it this point have been cretians all over some art events from the beginning of recovery operations in 2015 the US Army Corps of Engineers has made a concerted effort to involve members of the public in this exciting process the outreach began with the public presentation including artifacts and lectures at the Savannah History Museum in May 2015 more than 1,100 people came to Fort Jackson for the raise directive ilan July 25th of that year it's a great chance for them to get a first-hand view of the what's going on on the dive vessel what the project's all about with the shipwrecks about it's a great way that for them to interact in educational manner 15 Coastal Georgia educators took part in a CSS Georgia teachers Institute in 2016 interacting with archaeologists and learning about the science technology engineering and math involved with recovering the shipwreck the Corps released brochures and a full-color poster about the recovery effort in 2017 and in August of that year close to 200 people participated in a final public presentation to wrap up the work not surprisingly the number one topic on most people's minds is where will the Georgia's artifacts be exhibited right here in Sedalia that's where I would love to see that you should be enjoy in Savannah there's no question in my mind members of the archaeological recovery and conservation team share the desire to bring the Georgia story before the public either in Savannah or elsewhere the CSS Georgia was something that's been forgotten for a long time and maybe this will help get her back into some of the history books or on people's radar again we could serve a part of our history that I want to see on display in a museum to relive our history to show people to educate them that's what it's all about since the passage of the sunken military craft Act of 2004 the US Navy has been the caretaker of all military shipwrecks in American waters including the Georgia dr. Robert Neyland as head of the branch that will determine where the Georgia's artifacts are eventually exhibited logically one would expect it to be there in Savannah a major exhibit on CSS Georgia I think we the Navy are certainly interested that and be supportive of it if someone has the ability to carry out that exhibit and into end and do it and the way that the artifacts are preserved in a proper environment or the proper temperature and proper humidity controls toward the end of the field season in summer 2017 the Corps of Engineers hosted a visit by representatives from several museums that had expressed an interest in obtaining artifacts from the Georgia these institutions included some from Savannah and others from elsewhere in the southeastern US we are the National Civil War naval museum this ship is a Georgia ship it's very near and dear to our heart so I'll be in Georgia it should certainly have a home with us we're working on you know a future Maritime Museum so it's a very broad aspect so it doesn't just mean South Carolina as well so you never know there is so much material it's been brought up from the Georgia that there's plenty to go around for multiple institutions to tell this story in a whole variety of ways if the Georgia's remains do eventually go on exhibit they will join a small exclusive club only a handful of civil war ironclads are on display anywhere Union examples are limited to the turret and other parts of the USS Monitor in Hampton Roads Virginia and the USS Cairo in Vicksburg Mississippi on the Confederate side only the wooden halls of the CSS Jackson in Columbus Georgia and the CSS Neuse in North Carolina remain but even among this remarkable fleet of historic ships the Georgia is exceptional the other Confederate ironclad that are on display are essentially just the hulls of the ships if they can raise the remains of the ship and put it back together it'll be the most complete Confederate ironclad ship that anyone can see anywhere regardless of where the Georgia's artifacts eventually find a home archaeologists and conservators know they are riding the latest chapter in a story that began with the ladies of Savannah in 1862 and it was continued by the Georgia sprue the narrative was picked up by the divers who explored the wreck from the 1960s onwards and embellished by those who combed the archives to fill in the blanks now it's up to all of us to write the next chapter in the story of the CSS Georgia [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you you

Channel: Michael Jordan

Views: 513,874

Rating: 4.7389984 out of 5

Keywords: CSS Georgia, Civil War, ironclad, shipwreck, archaeology, Savannah, Old Fort Jackson

Id: lXq9deBHM5c

Length: 58min 57sec (3537 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 07 2018

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