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There were one or two Confederate reports that put the site of her explosion close to the wrecks of the ironclad Arkansas, destroyed by her crew a few months earlier. But we had discovered the ironclad eight years before under a levee sixteen miles below Port Hudson at the bend of the reach before it dropped toward Baton Rouge.
The ten-mile distance was consistent with contemporary references. Spears’s biography of Farragut states that “she reached the foot of Profit Island when the fire reached her magazine and she blew up.”
A. J. C. Kerr, a Confederate veteran from Corsicana, Texas, stated later in his memoirs that “the Mississippi blew up ten miles below Port Hudson.”
The log of the Richmond also stated that “the Mississippi drifted down the river and blew up ten miles astern of us.”
George S. Waterman recounted that “the Mississippi floated down the river a short distance below the fleet when the fire reached her magazine.”
And finally, there is a sketch of the river and gun emplacements at Port Hudson with a notation by William Waud, a war artist who was on board Richmond. “Air very thick with smoke. The Mississippi drifting down in flames, exploding near the land pier.”
The last was a good reference point, except there were at least six piers along that stretch of river in 1863. Then, to muddy the water, Waud never indicated what he meant by “land pier.” Upper Springfield Landing was the closest to the projected site. Also, two contemporary wrecks were marked on the old chart, one on top of the other, on the west bank below the bend in the river. Over the passing of a century or more, the encroaching swamp had covered them and left their remains a good half mile from the present river flow Since they were u
Next came the important process of overlaying a new chart showing the present course of the river as compared with an 1868 chart. It quickly became apparent that the approximate spot where we computed Mississippi to lie was now nearly a quarter mile west in a huge bog called Solitude Point.
Springfield Bend, as the area that traveled around the point was called, had filled in toward the east. It was encouraging, but we still felt we stood a slim chance.
Having taken it as far as we could go, we decided it was time to gather up the equipment and head for Louisiana to begin our search.
In May of 1989, Craig Dirgo and I arrived in Baton Rouge and arranged with the West Baton Rouge parish sheriff’s department to once again borrow their great little aluminum boat for a river survey. Accompanied by a deputy and his son-in-law, we launched the boat on a hot, humid day under a clear sky. Relying on NUMA’s EG&G sidescan sonar and the Schonstedt gradiometer to find a promising target, we set out hoping for the best, expecting the worse, and willing to settle for anything in between.
We began surveying the river thirteen miles below Port Hudson and ran north past Profit Island, which has changed very little over the past hundred years, to within six miles of where Mississippi grounded and began her drift. I had been told that the Army Corps of Engineers had surveyed part of the river where Mississippi had grounded and had recorded several large anomalies on the riverbed, but we found it as barren as the Mojave Desert. Nothing remotely resembling a wreck was discovered, and no targets worth investigating. There was one wreck depicted on an old 1880s chart against the east bank, but we found no trace of it. Not surprising, since the records show that it was likely dredged out of existence many years ago.
The southern tropical heat, shaken and stirred with 100 percent humidity, nearly did in Craig. With no wind to cool the sweat surging from our pores, the atmosphere was agonizingly oppressive. Many people think it is cooler on the water when the weather is hot — not necessarily so. You have little shade on a small boat, and the steaming water can easily raise humidity off the scale when there is no hint of rain from a cloudless sky.
The Solitude Point swamp is not only huge, it’s impassable. You couldn’t walk, wade, or swim through it, much less penetrate it with a jet ski. Interestingly, the 1836 chart fails to indicate it because it had yet to make its presence known. Oil drilling has since taken place inside the swamp, and pipelines stretch outward like legs on a spider, three of them traveling up the river to the north.
Unable to conduct a mag survey from the surface, I turned to Joe Phillips of World Geoscience, Inc., in Houston, Texas, and arranged for a helicopter geophysical aeromagnetic survey. Using a Bell 206 Ranger equipped with a SCINTREX vapor magnetometer sensor, a Picodaas digital acquisition system, and a GPS navigational system, they launched the survey in August of 1999.
Flying tight ninety-foot lines at an altitude of less than a hundred feet, they found the oil field west of the point without any trouble. Paying special attention to the 1864 course of the river, they easily picked up the magnetic anomalies from the two riverboats aground below the point. Then, almost precisely at the ten-mile drift projection of Mississippi, a large anomaly appeared on the magnetometer recording. It was almost directly in the middle of the old river passage. The target was three quarters of a mile inside the swamp from the river’s west bank. They also determined that it was very close to the long-gone Springfield Landing pier mentioned by the Civil War artist Waud. Another encouraging indication was the computerized profile of Mississippi, showing a large iron mass that would have included guns, shot, anchors, and many tons of ship’s hardware.
Was it Mississippi? Until we could actually touch a piece of it, there would be no uncorking the champagne.
That was about as far as we could go in our search. We reeled in the sensors, packed the equipment, and headed for a Cajun restaurant. We had done our best and would leave it to future archaeologists, historians, and shipwreck hunters to probe the depths of that loathsome swamp.
Mississippi would be a fascinating wreck to excavate since she hadn’t been salvaged, and even despite the damage from the explosion, she had to be relatively intact. Unfortunately, any excavation more than eighty feet deep in the middle of a bog would be extremely difficult, if not impossible.
It seems that Mississippi will remain under Point Solitude for a long time to come, perhaps for eternity. You never know if it’s best that way.
PART FIVE
The Siege of Charleston: Keokuk, Weehawken, and Patapsco
I
Cradle of Secession 1863–1865
Rear Admiral Samuel F. DuPont stared into the distance. The bow of his command, New Ironsides, a heavily armed frigate, was pointed in the direction of Charleston. To starboard lay Sullivan’s Island, to port Morris Island and Cummings Point.
Dead ahead was DuPont’s objective, Fort Sumter.
Fort Sumter, a massive brick-and-concrete fortress rising forty feet above the water, was located on a small island off Charleston. Sumter was one of the first Federal installations to be taken by the Confederates. It was also the most visible reminder to the citizens of the United States of the South’s defiance. The first shots of the War Between the States had been fired on Sumter.
DuPont swiveled his head and glanced at his assembled fleet.
From west to east they stretched across the water. Keokuk, Nahant, Nantucket, Catskill, his own New lronsides, then Patapsco, Montauk, Passaic, and Weehawken. The flotilla was an impressive armada tasked with a difficult mission.