Very cool.  THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN!!!

Awesome!

That is pretty awsome, I've always thought it would be pretty damn cool to find something nobody else ever had while diving.  Glad you guys were able to locate the wreck and close out that chapter in its history.

Not if they keep trying to make gunboats out of rotten tugs

It would be a great addition to the Civil War Naval Museum in Columbus. Anyone in the area, don't miss going!

Great post, OP!

Any idea why they named her the "Appomattox"? Ironic!

I sailed in the Oriental area for a couple of years. Good times.

Nope.  There have been a few references to her being called the EMPIRE right up until they sent her down to coastal North Carolina to join the Mosquito Fleet.  Before her trip to NC she was a part of the Virginia Navy and spent a lot of time on the James River.  Maybe they just passed the Appomattox River on their way to coastal NC and thought it was a good name, especially since she was changing hands from the Virginia Navy to the Confederate Navy.  But this is nothing more than mere supposition on my part.

Good thread, GREAT pictures.

While attending Son#2's graduating Basic Training at Fort Benning, we visited the
Confederate Naval Museum in Columbus.

GREAT stuff, if y'all have never been there.

I heart museums (especially the US Army Aviation museum at Fort Rucker)

The Confederate Naval Museum is on our list of places to visit once the kids get a little older.  We still have to take a metric ton of baby support equipment on our vacations, making educational trips a distant goal.

I love this stuff.  The CSS Ram Neuse is about 15 minutes up the road from me.

If the Neuse and the Albemarle had gotten together, it would have changed the course of the war in coastal NC.  Add to that the CSS Raleigh  ( a formidable ironclad that chased the blockaders from Wilmington then, to celebrate, made a close pass to Fort Fisher, fired their guns in triumph, and promptly ran aground and broke in half when the tide dropped!)  

It took me a while to find it, but here is a pic of the famous Skerritt spoon.  This artifact gave us near 100% proof that we had found the Appomattox.  It is so rare that a first initial and an entire last name (especially a unique one like 'Skerritt') would be scratched into a spoon.  Typically just initials are found.   James Skerritt was later a sailor on the CSS Virginia (Merrimac) when it fought the Monitor at Hampton Roads.  I'm glad he left his spoon on the Appomattox.

There is no way I would be able to dive with that limited visibility. I thought I was cool for diving in the PNW.

I actually prefer the black water sometimes.  About fifteen years ago, when we first began diving, a severe, late-Fall drought turned the local creek clear.  Not just a few feet, but fifty or sixty feet of visibility.  It was amazing just swimming along this narrow creek and being able to see all of the contours.

I was having a good time until a came around a bend in the creek and saw a Portugese Man-o-War not fifty feet in front of me.  I cautiously swam close to it and studied the large air bladder above me.  Just as I was wondering how a Portugese Man-o-War got way up a freshwater creek, fifty miles from the ocean, my eyes followed the tenacles down to some sunken logs where I saw they were connected to a badly decomposed deer carcass  

It turns out it wasn't a Man-o-War but a deer's stomach full of decomposition gases, tethered by the intestines traling down fifteen feet to the bottom.    

I decided that I prefer black water that day.   Ignorance is bliss, right?

Awesome story.  Discount on your book for Arfcommer's?

That's one way of finding the brighter side

Uh, my novel, Turner's Cut, is only $2.99 on Amazon's Kindle store.  If you buy it I'll split my profit with you.  Just let me know an address where I can send you a check for 52 cents.  I published Turner's Cut on Kindle so some of my friends and family could get easy access to it, not to really make any money.

The book I am writing now (along with another novel 70% done, a  screenplay 99% done, and a children's book 100% except for the illustrations) is called Diving the Dismal . I have a detailed outline and I thought I was about half way through writing it.  I even had the epilogue of our return to the swamp one last time written as a goal for the story to work toward, but we have found some additional sites and the State has issued us permits.  Two of the sites seem rather minor but facinating to those connected to history, but the third site, if we can find what we are looking for, has the poriential to warrant its own book, if not more.

Another time I was diving up on the Appomattox and Dad shoved me hard enough that it knocked the requlator out of my mouth, I popped up to see where his bubbles were are so I could give him some room, but he was still in the boat.  I was the only diver in the water.  I assumed that it must have been a big catfish, but recently some photos of a six-foot alligator living near the Appomattox have been printed in the Elizabeth City newspaper.   I'm glad I didn't see what shoved me.  I probably would have retired from diving and ruined a good wetsuit.

You paying shipping/postage???

Anyway, still diggin' this thread!
Thanks again.

Tag for when I have time to read it all.

Thanks for the great thread.

Funny, sending a 52 cent check with what a 42 cent stamp.  

 Since it is only available as an e-book on Kindle, yeah, I'll cover the shipping cost

I just got my first cell phone about a year ago, don't have cable, BluRay or any of that fancy, new stuff.

It'll be another 20 years before I get a Kindle.
Could you mimeograph me a copy?


(anyone else having a gradeschool flashback, huffing the heady, intoxicating aroma of a freshly mimeographed test?)

I had to Google mimeograph.    That's pretty funny.

Dear God I'm old!
But hell, my Grandpa knew some War of Northern Aggression vets!

Hey, maybe I'll qualify as an artifact soon!

ETA:
Will be pulling my boat down to SC soon: pulled a gator tag.
Will come back up via 17 and take a look around.

Or if things don't work out well, you can dive for our remains.

When you travel down Hwy 17 you will be passing a lot of history.   In new Bern look out into the river past the waterfront of the city.  The USS Underwriter was blown up there.  In Washington, NC, near the waterfront the US Pickett was sunk there, and just north of Elizabeth City, where a high rise goes over the Dismal Swamp Canal,  the Appomattox was sunk not far from there.  All were involved in the Battle of Roanoke Island all were sunk violently.   I have been diving on all of them.

P.S. I don't dive for remains.  Everybody has to draw a line somewhere.  

Fascinating! Love me some history, especially civil war.  Thanks for doing it and sharing with us!

I'm sure I don't need to say it but, its really awesome you can do this with your Father.  You should be really proud and cherish these finds and the experiences you've had with your Dad.


I love history, and being from the South, our history has really faded away.  Its important to be able to pass along the relics and stories of our past.

I'm unfortunately one of those that has NEVER had a relationship with my Father, even though I have tried so hard.  So, reading your OP is like the ultimate Father/Son adventure to me.

Thanks again for sharing.

So true.  My dad is my best friend, even if some of the adventures he has dragged me into have almost killed me.  

For example, we were digging out an old well in his yard (He lives in an old plantation house that he restored himself)  finding some really good stuff.  He guaranteed that the old wooden casing would support the well's walls.  We left the well for a few minutes to take a break and when we came back it had collapsed.  I stopped going into wells.  He didn't.  At last count he has evcavated fourteen water wells.  He dug one out a few months ago at age sixty-eight.  He acts like an old man at home to keep from having to do too many chores around the house.  Put a shovel in his hands or strap a scuba tank on his back and I can't keep up with him.   I guess farming 500 acres by himself keeps him in good shape.

Another time I somehow swam into an overturned fiberglass boat that was being held on the muddy bottom by a cluster of logs that a storm surge had piled up next to a bridge.  I didn't realize I was in the boat until I rammed into the steering wheel.  Trying what seemed like every direction, I kept running into barriers of fiberglass. Fighting hard to keep panic from making me do something stupid, I took several slow breaths and took stock of my situation.  I had about twenty minutes of air, and I had gotten in there, so there must be a way out.  After three methodical trips around the inside of that boat I finally found the hole that I came into.  It was barely big enough to get out of and I have no clue how I passed through it so easily the first time.

 

Cool thread!

Thanks for sharing!

Fascinating topic!  Someday, I'm hoping to make it to see the CSS Hunley and the USS Monitor at their respective museums.

Thanks for the share. Very nice piece of historical sleuthing you and your father accomplished.

Thanks again for all the kind words.  I'll pass them along to the dive team members.

Our work on the Appomattox was a secret for so long it is nice to be able to discuss it among people who enjoy this kind of thing.

I live in Appomattox, pretty cool there is a gunboat named after us.  Im not into Civil War stuff, but dont remember hearing of it in our local history class from years ago.  I wonder if Appomattox County would be interested to hear of the ship?

Maybe this has already been covered and I don't know much about that area, but why so many wrecks in that area?

The upper Pasquotank river is narrow and winding by the time it gets to the Dismal Swamp Canal which was dug in the 1790's.  In an effort to streamline the movement of goods, a second canal, called Turner's Cut, was dug in the late 1850's and significantly widened after the Civil War.  Turner's Cut bypassed the upper portion of the Pasquotank, which led to the majority of the larger boats using the canal instead of the river.  Falling into disuse, the "old river" became a natural area for boats to be scuttled.  Most of the wrecks were likely left there after Turner's Cut was widened.  The Appomattox and another two or three boats are the exception.