U.S. Navy divers successfully recovered a 64-square foot section of the Savannah-built Civil War ironclad warship CSS Georgia from the bottom of the Savannah River Tuesday evening.
The removal and preservation of the historic ship is part of the mitigation involved in the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project, which will deepen the Savannah River channel from its current 42 feet to 47 feet.
Tuesday’s recovery is part of an ongoing operation by the Navy, the Savannah District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and underwater archeological teams.
Divers worked in strong currents with near-zero visibility during the past week to assess the possibility of lifting a small piece of the Confederate ship’s casemate for archeological testing.
When a weather-and-tide window opened Tuesday evening, they were able to secure the 8-foot-long casement section and lift it by crane onto a barge anchored near historic Old Fort Jackson on the eastern edge of Savannah. Experts estimate the section’s weight at 5,000 pounds.
The Confederate navy scuttled the CSS Georgia in 1864 as Union troops approached Savannah. The iron-covered ship remained on the river bottom until 1969 when a dredge removing sediment from the shipping channel struck a portion of the ship, according to Julie Morgan, staff archeologist for the Corps’ Savannah District.
A brief recovery effort in the 1980s removed two cannon, a few cannon balls and other artifacts.
“Tuesday’s retrieval will play a major role in creating a research design to effectively remove the CSS Georgia before expanding the shipping channel along this stretch of the Savannah River,” Morgan said.
“It took a dedicated team working in some very tough conditions to bring this piece to the surface.”
Over time, Morgan said, the casemate, the iron-covered upper portion of the warship, came apart. The small portion removed Tuesday will give archeologists the ability to assess the condition of the remainder of the ship and ensure they are following protocols from the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966.
For more on the efforts to remove and preserve the Georgia, see Friday’s PortSide in BiS in the Savannah Morning News or on savannahnow.com.