Torpedoed, Salvaged, and Buried: Findings from the 2021 Investigations of the USS Housatonic Shipwreck off Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

On the night of 17 February 1864, USS Housatonic while on blockade duty off Charleston Harbor was attacked and sunk by a spar-torpedo delivered by the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley during the American Civil War. The ill-fated blockader became the first surface warship sunk by an underwater vessel. In 1999, a partnership of Federal and State organizations conducted a geophysical and archaeological study of the site that determined the orientation of the shipwreck and noted the excellent state of preservation of recovered artifacts. In 2021, another round of investigations built upon the earlier findings by focusing on the damage caused by the torpedo and on life aboard an Union blockader during the siege of Charleston. This presentation will discuss preliminary findings from the recent geophysical and archaeological examination of the sunken Union warship undertaken by the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, College of Charleston, and Clemson University’s Warren Lasch Conservation Center.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SHA 2022 General Sessions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology