Friday, June 22, 2012

Civil War Ironclad on the Move-- Part 1

From the June 19th Kinston (NC) Free Press "C.S.S. Neuse scheduled to move downtown Saturday" by David Anderson.

Here might be your last chance ever to see a Civil War ship moving, albeit, along a road, as the CSS Neuse begins its final move to its new museum in Kinston Saturday.  The move is scheduled to start at 6 AM.  The three sections of the hull will be pulled apart and slowly moved to their new home in the 100 block of North Queen Street.  It should be inside by afternoon that day.

Groundbreaking for the new 13,000+ square-foot structure took place last spring.  Monday, workers there could be seen putting the last "ghosting" metal framework to show the top of the ship, which was destroyed.

The hull is all that remains of the ship after the war.  In the 1960s, as part of the Civil War's Centennial< Henry Clay Casey, Lemuel Houston and Tom Carlyle got the boat out of the river and the remains were exhibited at West Vernon Avenue since 1965 in the Caswell Memorial Park.  It remained near the Neuse River until the 1990s, when floods in the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd swamped the site.  It was then moved farther away from the river and placed in an open-air shelter on Vernon Avenue near the former site.

More to Come.  --Old B-Runner

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