A team of underwater archaeologists from the University of South Carolina has recovered three Civil War cannons – two Confederate Brooke rifle cannons (11.8 and 12.25 feet each) and one captured Union Dahlgren cannon (8.9 feet) – from CSS Pee Dee, a 150-foot Confederate gunboat that was destroyed by Confederate forces so it would not be captured by Union forces.
CSS Pee Dee.
On March 4, 1862, the Secretary of the Confederate Navy, Stephen Mallory, requested the immediate construction of naval yards on inland waters throughout the South in an effort to protect newly built warships from Union forces blockading the Southern coast.
In South Carolina, Mars Bluff on the Great Pee Dee River was chosen for the site of that state’s inland Confederate shipyard.
Adjacent to the Wilmington-Manchester Railroad and a major ferry crossing, the navy yard had good water communication with Georgetown and Charleston via Winyah Bay, and the surrounding terrain held vast stands of ash, oak and pine necessary for a successful shipbuilding facility.
In its two years of operation, the Mars Bluff Navy Yard produced a number of vessels including a 150-foot long Macon-class gunboat named after the river on which it was constructed.
CSS Pee Dee, also known as CSS Pedee, was a twin-screw, steam and wind-powered Macon-class gunboat with a 7.5-foot draft similar in design to CSS Chattahoochee, the remains of which reside in the National Civil War Naval Museum at Port Columbus, Ga.
The 150-foot long and 25-foot wide deck of the Pee Dee supported three large guns. At the bow and stern were two Brooke rifle cannon, one firing a 6.4-inch shell, the other, a 7-inch round. A 9-inch smoothbore Dahlgren was fitted amidships. All three guns were mounted on carriages that could pivot 180 degrees for a prodigious arc of fire.
The Pee Dee’s complement consisted of 91 officers and crew, two-thirds of that number filling out two shifts devoted to manning and maintaining the three guns.
The gunboat was launched in January 1865, and due to the rapidly deteriorating military situation in the state, it was too late to fully outfit the vessel and move it down the nearly 100 river miles to Winyah Bay.
U.S. forces under the command of Gen. William T. Sherman were moving northward through the state and by February were to take Georgetown, effectively blocking the gunboat’s route to the Atlantic.
In early March, Lt. Oscar Johnston, CSN, the Pee Dee’s commander moved the gunboat upstream to Cheraw, S.C., to cover the crossing of the Great Pee Dee River of Confederate troops under the command of Gen. William J. Hardee to join Gen. Joseph E Johnston’s forces in North Carolina for what was to become the last major battle of the war. Thereafter, Lt. Johnston, turned the vessel and returned to Mars Bluff.
On March 2, 1862, as Cheraw succumbed to Sherman’s forces, Lt. Edward Means, commander of the Mars Bluff Navy Yard, was given the order to destroy the navy yard and vessels.
Two weeks later, on March 15, the guns of CSS Pee Dee were jettisoned into the river and the gunboat floated downstream of the railway bridge, set afire and blown up.
“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,” said James Spirek of the University of South Carolina’s Institute for Archaeology and Anthropology.
Three cannons recovered from CSS Pee Dee. Image credit: University of South Carolina.
Spirek and his colleagues began their search for the Confederate Mars Bluff Navy Yard and the elusive CSS Pee Dee in March 2009.
Their efforts were greatly facilitated by earlier work conducted at the site, particularly by a private research group, the CSS Pee Dee Research and Recovery Team, in the 1990s.
Quickly after the team began its archaeological work, one of two Brooke rifle cannons (6.4 inch) and the Dahlgren cannon were located. The discovery of the wreck itself came 18 months later using sonar.
The underwater work wasn’t easy, with the team often working in conditions of high, near-flood water levels in the river and with a river bottom of timber from past logging operations that resembled an underwater field of ‘pick-up sticks.’
“The elusive third cannon was finally located in 2012,” Spirek said.
The newly raised cannons will undergo conservation for two years at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in North Charleston, S.C.
Once complete, the cannons will return to Florence, S.C., for outdoor display at the newly constructed U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs building.
The project was funded in part by grant exceeding $200,000 from the Drs. Bruce and Lee Foundation in Florence, S.C.
