Ike Uncovers Civil War Ship, Fort Morgan, AL

[FISHEYE]

It has been buried for decades under the sands of the Gulf in Fort Morgan, Alabama. Hurricane Ike uncovers this Union Civil War ship that was burned by Confederates during the Civil War.



http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-85854

 

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[RELICDUDE07]

Thanks fisheye ,im going to try my luck metal detecting inside it.Im sure someone sooner or later will ask me to leave I will dig the sand with my hands so i will not damage the old wood

 

[FISHEYE]

Published: Sunday, December 3, 2006 at 4:30 a.m.


It’s always treacherous to venture into the waters around Mobile Point, but in the autumn and winter it’s especially so.

Heavy storms ride on the waves of cold fronts, churning the Gulf and pounding the beaches. The tides and currents are powerful and unpredictable. Many a swimmer has been drowned off this long, narrow sand spit; many a sailing vessel has been wrecked and beached.

But days like this past Thanksgiving disguise the dangers.

The morning broke blue and sunny. A mild land breeze ruffled the wave tops; off Fort Morgan, a pod of dolphins --there were at least 20 or them -- were leisurely fishing.

Seated on their overturned buckets and occasionally casting a wriggling minnow into the bay, was doing the same on the dock, hoping for a run of flounder. Two dirty-brown pelicans, looking as grizzled and bored as their human companions, squatted on the boards, biding their time for a trash-fish handout.

Clutching a newspaper clipping, I walked the shoreline near our rented cottage in search of a mystery ship.

A former colleague, Julia Harwell Segars, sent me the story published in the Mobile Press-Register. High surf in late October uncovered the remains of a big wooden sailing ship on the beach not far from Fort Morgan.

Local historians weren’t sure what it was. The wreck looked old -- it was built with wooden pegs -- but it also had a spine of metal stobs that extended in a twin row about 100 feet in a ragged line down its center. Emerging from the sand, it looked like the rusted bones of a prehistoric mosasaur.

Some speculated that it was a molasses barge that caught fire and ran aground, though not necessarily in that order. Others thought it might have been a rum boat that ferried illicit alcohol to fuel Mobile’s partying spirit.

The most intriguing possibility was that it was a Confederate blockade-runner that had come to ruin trying to make it through The Swash, a narrow channel between the beach and the Union warships that hovered in deeper water near the mouth of Mobile Bay.

That conjecture was fanciful, perhaps, but not totally out of the question. Not far from the mystery ship site, the verified remains of the steamer Ivanhoe, a Civil War blockade-runner, are buried under the sand.

The Ivanhoe got stuck on July 1, 1864. Four days later, Yankee sailors boarded the abandoned steamer and burned it to make sure it would never make the run again.

Another blockade-runner, The Denbigh, navigated by a luckier star.

Built in England, the swift, light-draft side-wheel steamer slipped out of Liverpool in the fall of 1863. Its owners hoped to make their fortunes by smuggling goods into the Confederacy.

Its first run almost ended in disaster, however. Headed out of Mobile Bay for Havana in early 1864 under cover of heavy fog, it ran aground near Fort Morgan. The federal fleet spotted the ship and began firing at The Denbigh; one cannonball tore a hole through the wheelhouse.

Confederate batteries at Fort Morgan responded in kind; the boom of cannons and the acrid odor of gun smoke drifted across Mobile Bay. One of the union vessels took three hits; the rest of the blockading fleet backed off.

The Denbigh’s crew, meanwhile, worked frantically to free their ship. Finally they were able to unload enough cargo to refloat it. It returned to Mobile, scarred but still seaworthy.

In fact, its speed and design proved more than a match for the heavy Union fleet. It made monthly runs to Havana through early spring.

Typically the blockade-runners would ship out with Southern cotton and bring home guns and ammo, sugar, rum, food and even fancy dress goods for the ladies.

The Denbigh was the last ship to wriggle through the federal gauntlet before Admiral David Farragut thundered into Mobile Bay on Aug. 5, 1864, ending the escapades of daring seamen who broke the federal quarantine.

By the time I hit the beach, the notion that the mystery ship was a blockade-runner had gotten a strong grip on my mind.

The photo in the Mobile newspaper was intriguing. It showed a local historian, crouched down on the beach, examining the crusted, thick planks and long spikes extending from them.

The story quoted a resident who said she had lived in the area for 11 years and had never seen the wreck before the late October storms uncovered it.

But on this beautiful November morning, there was nothing to be seen. No trace of the mystery ship.

I tried to match up the spot on the beach where I thought the wreck might be with a house in the newspaper photo.

No dice. There was only pure, white sand. The whole wreck had vanished.

It was frustrating but somehow it seemed fitting as well. Even after shipwreck, fire and more than 140 years on the beach, these blockade runners remained frustratingly elusive.

Ghost ships. I loved the thought of it.

My little sister, who I think had come along mostly to humor me, burst my bubble.

“I’m sorry to bother you," she said to a man who was playing with his child near the edge of the surf, “but we’re looking for an old ship. Have you seen it?"

It takes guts to ask a total stranger a question like that, I thought. But the man surprised us with his reply.

“There was an old wreck, right up there. It was uncovered a couple of days ago but it’s covered back up again."

He gestured to a spot just up the beach from us.

“Come on," he said. “I’ll show you where I think it was."

We walked with him to a spot where he dug a little with his toes. An iron stob emerged.

“That’s it," he said.

And sure enough, that’s where the mystery ship lay buried.

We dug a little bit and more spikes began to pop up. Pretty soon, beachcombers started to drop by.

“What is it?"

“Old ship," I said. “Might be a Civil War ship."

One man shook his head and laughed. “I hope it’s a ship that one of ours sank," he said in a heavy Southern accent.

“No, I think one’s a Confederate ship," I said.

He shrugged, kicked some sand and walked off.

But we kept finding spikes. It wasn’t long before the place was swarming with kids.

Little Burch Franklin, dressed in a sun suit, dug in the sand near the hull with her older brother Hardy as their parents, Webster and Penny Franklin, vacationing from Tunica, Miss., supervised.

A Birmingham resident stopped by. He said he’d seen the wreck in various d stages, depending on the weather, over the past few years.

At one point, he said, the wind and rain had exposed some of the ship’s metal plates. They had been made in Mobile and were stamped with a date of 1930, he said.

I think he noticed my disappointment.

“It could be an older ship that was fitted later with the metal parts," he added consolingly.

He promised to e-mail me some more information but I still haven’t heard from him.

The kids, meanwhile, continued to dig away.

“I think next time we come down here, we’ll rent that house right there," one of their parents said, pointing to a comfortable looking two-story cottage directly in front of the wreck. “We can sit up on the porch and make some drinks and watch the kids dig this thing up all day long."

The children’s imaginations were running wild. So was mine. In a way, I hoped I’d never hear from the guy in Birmingham again.

Digging with abandon, the youngsters had exposed the ship’s pointed prow. The wood, cobbled together with pegs, was planed smooth and slick.

Yep, I was thinking. Slick as the wind. Sure looks like a blockade-runner to me.

A short video of the mystery ship may be accessed at http://algulfcoastvideo.com/Videos/Shipwreck/woodenship.html

 

[FISHEYE]

Shipwreck may be Civil War schooner
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
By GUY BUSBY
Staff Reporter
FORT MORGAN -- Determining what kind of ship was washed out of the south Baldwin County sand last week might take time, but some historians said Monday that the vessel's remains could be that of a Civil War blockade runner.

Last week, the remains of a wooden ship were uncovered near the surf line about six miles east of Fort Morgan. After high tides and waves last week, residents said they noticed the bow and part of the outline of the vessel emerging from the sand.

The ship is about 150 feet long and 36 feet wide at its widest point, based on what could be seen, said Jack Friend, author of "West Wind, Flood Tide: The Battle of Mobile Bay," after looking over the vessel Monday.

Friend cautioned against any speculation about the identity of the ship.

"It's a fairly big vessel, but it's hard to say at this point," Friend said. "There have been shipwrecks in this area for 500 years and while it's tempting to say it's this ship or that, it's hard to know. We may not ever know exactly which vessel it was, but if we examine it carefully and go back and check what we find, we can get a pretty good idea of the era and some general information."

The wood of the ship is charred near the beach level.

The schooner Monticello was driven onto what was then a deserted beach six to eight miles from Fort Morgan and burned in 1862 by the Union Navy, laying siege to the Confederate port of Mobile, according to military reports at the time.

The location and description match that of the Monticello, said Sidney Schell, former chairman of the board of the Museum of Mobile, who has conducted research on blockade runners and naval warfare in the region during the Civil War.

Schell said the Monticello, a two-masted schooner, was sailing from Havana, Cuba, to Mobile on June 26, 1862, when it was intercepted and burned by the Union gunboat Kanewha.

A wreck near that spot was uncovered in 1969 after Hurricane Camille hit the Gulf Coast, said Eugene Keebler, who was then academic dean and an archaeological expert at Mobile College, now the University of Mobile. He said the ship uncovered last week appears to be the same vessel.

In 1969, Keebler, now retired, took a small group of students and instructors to the site to examine the wreck, which federal records indicated was the Monticello.

"We located the ship, and I called Washington, D.C.," Keebler said Monday. "They identified it, based on what we found and the ships that had been lost."

According to a Press-Register report from Jan. 11, 1970, Keebler and the team could not completely excavate the wreck due to surf conditions and a lack of equipment. Keebler said Monday that they reburied the wreckage after the partial excavation.

Parts of the wreck have been uncovered on the beach since then, said Dave Albright of Bethalto, Ill., who has been visiting the area for more than a decade.

"It's been there for years. We've been coming out here 11 years, and you could see it at times," he said. "I never knew what it was. They just said there was some old ship out there."

Mike Bailey, site curator at Fort Morgan, said blockade runners sometimes ran aground along the beaches during the Civil War. He said the best known of such wrecks is the Ivanhoe, which struck the beach just east of the fort in 1864. Bailey said he has not had a chance to examine the wreck uncovered last week but that the description and location do not match that of the Ivanhoe.

The Ivanhoe was an iron-hulled ship, and archaeologists have located that vessel inside the Fort Morgan Historical Park at the west end of the peninsula. Due to changes in the coastline, the spot where the Ivanhoe ran aground in the Gulf is now under the beach.

Bailey said that other shipwrecks could also be under local beaches and that the wreck to the east is near the route taken by blockade runners -- called the Swash Channel -- running along the beach.

"There were at least three or four others that were mentioned running aground, and this could be one of them," he said.

 

[MichaelB]

I detected all around the ship the last time it was uncovered. This is the most sand removed by far. You can see the tool marks especially at all the tie points. I believe there are bronze "rivets" for the lack of a better term that ties some of the metal together and you can still see the hammer marks where the head was mushroomed out. I thought the Montecello was listed as a different length and the Ivanhoe is closer to the Fort and father in land.

It is still cool.

MichaelB

 

[MichaelB]

Additional info:

http://www.orangebeach.ws/2008/News/2008-09-15-Hurricane_Ike_reveals_Mystery_Civil_War_Ship.html

MichaelB

 

[RELICDUDE07]

Looks to be alot more around the area

 

[MichaelB]

I am not a ship guy so I thought I would ask if anyone could tell me how many tons this ship would have been given the length and width and knowing she was steam driven.

The CSS Hatteras was a 210-foot long iron hull blockade runner powered by a 500-horsepower walking beam steam engine and her two iron paddle wheels. She totaled 1450 tons.

This one is wood hulled and 150 x 30. Any thoughts?

MichaelB

 

[rgecy]

Looks to be alot more around the area

Uh, those place marks look to be cloud shadows!

 

[Red_desert]

Neat stuff...reminds me of when I found a shallow wreck exposed off of Brazos Island, TX. But people told me it was just a shrimp boat...probably was, found detecting and dug up a piece of the shrimp tank.

 

[RELICDUDE07]

May look like that but there is about 15 big ships in that area ....It was a war zone

 

[FISHEYE]

Glenn Forest, another archaeologist who examined the wreck, said a full identification would require an excavation.

"It's a valuable artifact," he said. "They need to get this thing inside before it falls apart or another storm comes along and sends it through those houses there like a bowling ball."


This archie is right!

 

[MichaelB]

It looks like a large water pump is in tact and loose. I would be willing to get and put it in a tank and start the electolysis process but if I touch it I am sure I would get arrested or something. It will rust away shortly. We took my sons 5th grade class to it today and I recanted the Battle of Mobile Bay and showed them a bunch of canonballs. They told me they didn't know history could be fun......very cool.

MichaelB

 

[Mr.Jody]

I'm going to try and head over there sunday,anyone else try detecting the beaches yet after "the" storm?

 

[MichaelB]

I am going to make one more sweep farther out from it tomorrow after church. Maybe I will luck up...

MichaelB

 

[birdman]

Wow thats six miles from the house that I grew up in.

 

[JahMan2003]

My experience has been working on wooden motor and sailing vessels, but I would call the hinge-like structure that y'all call a rudder bracket a "gudgeon", which was the hinge that housed the 'male' component, or the 'pintle'. Not sure if these were historic or modern terms, so theres my 2cents.

 

[rgecy]

JahMan,

You are absolutely correct. Gudeon and Pintle.

RGecy

 

[MichaelB]

A couple of cool shots from the field tripI took the kids on.

MichaelB

 

[MichaelB]

Well here is someone who found something inside the ship. I wonder how I missed it?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300273853722

MichaelB