One of two recovered cannons from the wreck of the Confederate Raider CSS Alabama arrive in Mobile yesterday where it will be housed at that the Museum of Mobile, making that place a must-see for me the next time I'm there which may be at the end of the month.
The three-plus ton 32-pdr., so called because of the weight of the shell it fired, was recovered from 200 feet deep in the English channel off Cherbourg, France, where the vessel sank June 11, 1864, after its engagement with the USS Kearsarge.
According to Paul Mardikian, the top conservator of the Confederate submarine Hunley at whose lab the cannons were preserved, this process to stabilize the guns took six years of immersions in a sodium bicarbonate and sodium hydroxide solution. He figures this will be the last cannons he preserved in this old way as Clemson University in South Carolina is testing a new process using subcritical fluid methods which will cut the time down from six years to six months.
Human remains, including a jaw bone, were found in the gun's encrustation. These were buried in a ceremony in Mobile a few years ago.
Roll, Alabama. --Old B-Runner
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