Man Says CSS Georgia Photo a Hoax-- Part 1: Was It Real?

From the April 13, 2015, Yahoo! News "Man says mysterious Civil War photo was really teenage hoax" by Mitch Weiss and Russ Bynum.

I figured since I wrote about the CSS Georgia on our recent trip to Savannah, I ought to put this article into my blog.

Rumor of a stained and blurry photo of the ironclad CSS Georgia have been around for thirty years  The 1,200 ton, armored with railroad iron never fired a shot in combat and was sunk in December 1864 to prevent its captured when Sherman captured Savannah.  No blueprint of it survives and period illustrations of it varied greatly in details.

Records show that John Potter donated a copy of the photograph to the Georgia Historical Society in March 1986.

Right now, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has embarked on a $14 million project to raise the ship from its wreck site in the Savannah River by Old Fort Jackson.

They were also hoping to track down the original, long-lost, photograph of the ship.

That Is, Until Now.  --Old B-Runner