Tasked with heading up the efforts to bring the Confederate Ironclad Warship CSS Georgia out of her watery grave after nearly 150 years, Savannah District U.S. Army Corps of Engineers archeologist Julie Morgan has assembled a team of the country’s top specialists to help with the delicate dance.
Among those on hand when the test section came out of the water Tuesday evening were:
• Marine archeologist John Broadwater of the NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, who was the chief scientist of the Monitor expedition in 2001;
• Jim Jobling of the Conservation Research Lab at Texas A&M University, one of the oldest continuously operating labs in the country dealing primarily with archeological material from shipwrecks and other underwater sites;
• Robert Neyland, head of the Underwater Archeology Branch of the Navy’s History and Heritage Command who was the project director and chief archeologist on the recovery team for the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley;
• Steve James, founder and principal of maritime archeology and cultural resource management firm Panamerican Consultants Inc.;
• Gordon Watts, archeological scholar and founder of Tidewater Atlantic Research Inc.
James and Watts have been doing much of the preliminary work, putting divers on the site to gather information on the wreck, map the visible structures, put down mooring lines and help determine a potential piece for lifting. In doing so, they have dealt with currents, extremely diminished visibility and ship traffic.
Late Tuesday, U.S. Navy divers found a small window of opportunity to recover the piece the team had indicated had the best chance of being successfully raised.
“We are very happy to have this small section,” James said Wednesday, adding that it will be the only piece recovered on this preliminary trip.
“Next year, we will be looking at recovering cannon, propeller, engines — hopefully every aspect that remains of the ship.”
In the meantime, the raised piece will go to Texas A&M, where Jobling will clean and stabilize it and get it ready for testing as the team takes what they are learning from this part of the expedition to plan for a more intensive effort in 2014.
The raised piece itself should offer a wealth of information.
“The piece is a small part of one of the ship’s casemates — the compartments that housed artillery pieces,” Neyland said. “It was comprised of three separate layers of wood topped with iron railroad rails to form an armored plate.”
The wood itself is mostly mush, Neyland said, having been ravaged not only by the constantly flowing salt water, but by several marine species — the black saltwater mussel and the teredo worm, a small bivalve that drills into wood.
“We do have some small blocks of wood still relatively intact, and we will be sampling from the armor plating,” he said.
The team also hopes to learn more about how the ship was constructed.
The Georgia is unique in that not much is known about how ironclads were built, Broadwater said, adding that, with no blueprints, much remains a mystery.
“The ultimate goal is to recover and preserve these tantalizing pieces in the hopes that a bigger picture emerges,” he said.
Its hull laid in Savannah in 1862, the Georgia was launched and commissioned in 1863. According to Watts and James, while the ironclad was originally intended to be a gunboat, it is believed the heavy ship lacked the locomotive power to maneuver offensively. It was subsequently anchored in the Savannah River, serving as a “floating battery” to protect Savannah and Fort Jackson.
The Georgia was intentionally scuttled in December 1864, rather than surrender the ship to advancing Union forces.
The wreck was discovered during a 1968 dredging operation. A smaller-scale recovery effort in the 1980s removed two cannon, a few cannon balls and other artifacts. The site was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.
The current effort to recover, document and curate the historic ironclad is now part of the mitigation process for the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project, which will deepen the channel from 42 to 47 feet.
The Corps of Engineers, which is the federal sponsor of the deepening project, has estimated the cost of the Georgia mitigation at between $9 million and $14 million.
Senior business writer Mary Carr Mayle covers the ports for the Savannah Morning News and savannahnow.com. Reach her at 912-652-0324 or mary.mayle@savannahnow.com
SHIPping SCHEDULE
Following are the ships expected to call on Georgia Ports Authority this week. Information is provided by GPA and is subject to change.
TERMINAL SHIP ARRIVAL
GCT OOCL SEOUL Today
GCT JULIETTE RICKMERS Today
GCT PARTICI Today
GCT YM SHANGHAI Today
GCT JPO CAPRICORNUS Today
GCT MAERSK UTAH Today
GCT XIN WU HAN Today
OT JIN TAO Today
GCT RIO THOMPSON Saturday
GCT MSC ANNICK Saturday
GCT CMA CGM ATTILA Saturday
GCT SAIGON EXPRESS Saturday
GCT EVER DIADEM Saturday
GCT CHARLESTON EXPRESS Saturday
GCT MERKUR BAY Sunday
GCT PARIS EXPRESS Sunday
GCT APL CYPRINE Sunday
OT BBC INDIANA Sunday
OT TEXAS Sunday
GCT HANJIN SAN DIEGO Monday
GCT MSC LUISA Monday
GCT TOKYO EXPRESS Monday
GCT IBRAHIM DEDE Monday
GCT HYUNDAI SUPREME Monday
GCT MAERSK CHICAGO Monday
OT TALISMAN Monday
GCT ZIM QINGDAO Tuesday
GCT YM MOBILITY Tuesday
GCT ZIM PIRAEUS Tuesday
GCT APL EGYPT Tuesday
GCT NYK LAURA Tuesday
GCT YM MILESTONE Tuesday
GCT SKIATHOS Tuesday
OT CLIPPER MARISSA Tuesday
GCT RANJAN Wednesday
GCT MOL PRESENCE Wednesday
GCT NYK NEBULA Wednesday
GCT ZIM SAVANNAH Thursday
GCT CSAV LLANQUIHUE Thursday
GCT WARNOW ORCA Thursday
GCT MAERSK MONTANA Thursday
GCT HANJIN MARSEILLES Thursday
OT TAMERLANE Thursday