SAVANNAH, GEORGIA—The armored siding of the CSS Georgia, a Confederate warship that was intentionally sunk in 1864, is being raised in five-ton pieces from the bed of the Savannah River. The ship’s remains are being removed in advance of a project to deepen the river’s channel. Built in 1862, the ship was anchored in the river to protect Savannah against the Union navy. Just a few years later, its crew chose to sink the boat rather than surrender it to the approaching enemy. Archaeologists are now studying sections of the frame to learn how the Confederacy built ships without a well-developed industrial infrastructure. "A lot of these ironclads are built by house carpenters, they're not built by shipwrights," Jeff Seymour, a historian and curator for the National Civil War Naval Museum in Columbus, Georgia, told the Associated Press. "So what are the construction techniques? They vary from ship to ship." To read more about nautical archaeology, go to “History’s 10 Greatest Wrecks.”
