The April 18th Old Salt Blog ran an article by WIS News about current diving going on at the wreck of the monitor USS Patapsco in Charleston Harbor. This is a continuing part of the efforts to map what they call the Civil War battlefield on the floor of the harbor.
This past Friday, the Charleston harbor battlefield Project continued dives between Fort Sumter and Morris island.
The Patapsco was sunk by a Confederate torpedo January 1865, and half the crew died. Twenty years later, the wreck was declared a navigation hazard and parts were salvaged and sailor remains were recovered and buried.
Diving around the wreck is seriously hampered by visibility which is just a few inches. Divers say the bow is the most intact part and is pointing toward Cummings Point on Morris Island. The stern points back into Charleston Harbor.
A sonogram found what appeared at first to be a ridge of sand through the wreck, but it turned out to be two sections of a dredge pipeline likely knocked loose during a storm. Divers will be back again in July.
South Carolina deputy underwater archaeologist James Spirak wants to record artifacts but not raise them.
Too bad the turret evidently is not there. It would be great is they could raise it like they did the Monitor.
Always Interested in Underwater Archaeology. --Old B-R
