Submerged Civil War Relics Could Get a New Home-- Part 2

These 'sunken" weapons are still there. Divers occasionally look in the murky waters for items to sale and sometimes get arrested.

City councilman Greg Bjelke has gotten a $13,160 grant for Selma to study ways to protect the weapons above and below the water. Those recovered are sent to a museum.

Selma was a sleepy village before the war, but the Selma Ordnance and Naval Foundry (the CSS Tennessee was built here) grew to employ 10,000 workers producing pig-iron ingots from Alabama blast furnaces.

Union forces destroyed a million pounds of small arms, ammunition as well as 60,000 artillery shells and 15 siege guns. Another 8,000 pounds of horseshoes, five locomotives, 3 million feet of lumber and 10,000 bushels of coal also were destroyed.

--Old Secesh