Saturday, September 19, 2015

Second Dahlgren Rifled Cannon Surprises CSS Georgia Archaeologists

From the Sept. 17, 2015, DVIDS by Jeremy Buddemeter.

It was a huge surprise when the "five finger" grapple brought up a 9,000 pound Dahlgren rifled cannon that had not been previously discovered by several high tech, multi-beam sonar surveys.  This took place on Tuesday, September 15th.

There is a conflict on two manifest lists of the CSS Georgia while it was in the Confederate Navy.  The first one lists two Dahlgren cannons on board the ship.  the second one, dated October 1864, two months before the ship sank, did not list any.

But archaeologists surveying the ship earlier had discovered shells that would have been fired by Dahlgrens.

This makes seven cannons recovered from the ship.  the cannons are among the big-ticket items from the ship, but other smaller objects like leather shoes, wrenches, ceramic bottles and an anvil have also been recovered.

Jim Jobling, project manager at Texas A&M University's Conservation Research Laboratory said, "The range of artifacts that is coming up is staggering.  Researchers include students working on their master's degrees and Ph.D's.  They often work from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. handling 25-30 grapple loads daily.

--Old B-Runner

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