A team of archaeologists from the university were in Florence County Tuesday to literally uncover pieces of history.
The USC archaeology team recovered those pieces from the Great Pee Dee river Tuesday morning — three cannons (two Confederate, one captured Union) that were used aboard the CSS Pee Dee, a Confederate gunboat that protected the state’s coastal waters near the end of the Civil War.
Historical records indicated that the cannons had been onboard the Confederate ship, but had been thrown overboard into the river on March 18, 1865, in reaction to U.S. Gen. William T. Sherman’s march northward through South Carolina. Confederate commanders also ordered the CSS Pee Dee be burned and scuttled.
South Carolina Institute for Archaeology and Anthropology (SCIAA) underwater archaeologist James Spirek, state archaeologist Jon Leader, USC students and volunteers had been working on discovering the location of the gunboat and its Confederate manufacturing site — The Mars Bluff Navy Yard — since March 2009.
Courtesy of John Brunelli
Assisted by 1990s research from the CSS Pee Dee Research and Recovery Team, the archaeologists were able to find the location of both the boat and the naval yard in the summer of 2009. After finding the inland naval yard and the remains of the ship, the next step for the team was to find the three cannons.
“The students and volunteers were key to ... defining the hidden below-ground portions of the naval yard. We accomplished what would have been six months of traditional investigation in a matter of weeks,” Leader said.
By 2012, the team had pinpointed the location of all three of the cannons with the help from local property owners.
Two Confederate Brooke rifle cannons — each approximately 12 feet long — and one captured Union Dahlgren cannon (almost nine feet in length) were raised from the sediment in the river at approximately 10 a.m. on Tuesday, completing a
project six years in the making. The cannons' weights ranged from 9,000 to 15,000 pounds.
Courtesy of John Brunelli
“The recovery of these three cannons — the complete armament of a Confederate gunboat — offers unique insight in the arming and intended role of this warship to contest the Union blockade off the coast of South Carolina and to perhaps engage in high seas raiding against Northern merchant vessels,” Spirek said.
The cannons will be conserved at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center, the same site where the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley is being held. The North Charleston center will house the cannons for approximately two years when they will be put on permanent display outside at the new Veterans Affairs building in Florence.