"Among the daring and successful episodes of the War between the States the recovery by the Confederates of the two guns from the wreck of the ironclad vessel Keokuk deserves a place of the highest distinction. It is something entirely of its own kind, involving mechanical skill and ingenuity beside secrecy, cool judgment, and unflinching resolution. It is pleasant to add that it was attended by no casualties.
No special documents, official and contemporary, relating to the enterprise have been discovered. A few paragraphs embodied in more general reports constitute all the notes possessed from Confederate sources, while some correspondence between the Union authorities is the sum of contributions from the other side.
But of the actors in this marine adventure five have been consulted in the preparation of this narrative, and no particulars have been used to supplement the official record except such as rest on the agreement of evidence, or seem to be most probable under all circumstances.
The Keokuk's brave commander, A. C. Rhind, took his vessel within shorter range of the fort than any of her colleagues. His report closes with the sinking of the Keokuk at seven-thirty the morning after the fight [April 8, 1863]. She had been kept afloat during the night in smooth water, but at daylight it became rough, and in the effort to get the vessel round with the assistance of a tug, she sank in eighteen feet of water (high tide), completely submerged to the top of her smokestack. At the later period of the ebb tide, the turrets were just visible above the water. The wreck lay off the southern extremity of Morris Island, and about thirteen hundred yards from the beach. As plainly seen at low tide with the naked eye from the walls of Fort Sumter, it was distant nearly four miles (nearer the ocean), a little east of south.
Later on, the Navy Department asked the rear admiral why the wreck had not been blown up and not left to the Confederates to overhaul; but that official had no answer to give.
Two or three visits were paid to the wreck by Confederate officers, who pronounced the recovery of the guns absolutely impossible, but, after a visit paid to the wreck on April 16, by S. Cordes Boylston, adjutant of the garrison at Fort Sumter, and another visit April 19, by Maj. D. B. Harris (from Goochland County, Va.), Chief Engineer of the Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, steps were taken by Maj. Gen. R. S. Ripley, commanding the first military district, under instructions from General [P. G. T.] Beauregard, to organize a gang of mechanics, with guard boats, for making the hazardous attempt upon the guns.
About this time the Northern public was reading the opinion of some letter writer in their fleet, which was still at its station off Charleston Harbor, that all was going on very well, and that the work of recovering any spoils from the wreck would be a fruitless task. He states that efforts had been made to blow up the wreck, but entirely unsuccessfully, and then goes on to say: "At all events, she is useless to the Rebels. She is filled with sand, and will be broken up or buried after the first gale. The Rebels cannot raise her, and she is covered by the guns of the blockading fleet, and will ever be beyond their reach…"
Full article here
gatehouse-press.com/?p=3668
Amazing work.
Amicalement
Armand
