Relic hunters and history lovers, hold onto your hats! There’s nothing more exciting than venturing out into the wilderness with a metal detector and discovering buried treasure just inches underground. Old war bullets, historic tools, and ancient coins lie waiting right under your nose.
Years of study, however, suggested these three South Carolina men would need something larger than a metal detector. Guided by mapping equipment, excavators, and a distant memory, they believed they were on the precipise of a major relic from historu.
On September 29th, 2015, Jonathan Leader, Chris Amer, and Michael Hartley stood on the banks of the Pee Dee River, beaming with joy. They hoped they were seconds closer to finding the answers to a 150-year-old mystery.
University of South Carolina
The trio had spent the past decade searching for a ship, the C.S.S. Pee Dee, that was wrecked over a century earlier along the river for which she was named. The vessel, which dated back to the winter of 1865, was integral to the area’s history.
University of South Carolina / YouTube
The Pee Dee had been built in a Confederate port in January of that year, only a few months before the Civil War was finally over. But why had a Confederate ship been destroyed by its own crew, in its own territory?
University of South Carolina
You see, towards the end of the Civil War, the Union had sent its ships south to create a blockade at every Confederate port along the coast. No supplies were allowed through to the Confederacy, and the southern states were getting frantic.
New Line Cinema
Because of the sheer size of the Union, it had more than three times the number of ships as the Confederacy. The South’s navy was no match for the North, but they desperately needed those supplies. So they came up with a plan.
Wikimedia Commons
To try to break the blockade, the South began building ships at inland ports, upriver from the coastline. Pee Dee was one of these new ships, and she was armed with three cannons — two Brooke cannons, and one Dahlgren — to fend off any attack.
Department of the Navy
But by the time she was finished, Pee Dee only ever saw one mission. She provided protection for a simple and uneventful river crossing, and it’s believed her cannons never even fired. So when she went down, the guns were still brand new.
NavSource Online
In March 1865, things heated up. Union troops were closing in, and Mars Bluff, Pee Dee‘s shipyard, was about to fall into their hands. Rather than give it up, the South burned the shipyard, and Pee Dee too…but not before dropping her cannons into the river.
New Line Cinema
As the river rose and fell, salvagers came to pull metal from Pee Dee’s wreckage. They retrieved her propellers, and her boiler was taken for scrap in 1954. Nothing else was left. Or so it was thought.
Mapio
As it turned out, one 12-year-old boy had seen the boiler being salvaged. The river was low enough to see some of the wreckage, and he was so intrigued by it that he made a detailed map of its location. That boy was Michael Hartley.
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He never forgot the sight, or the map. When Hartley grew older, he moved to North Carolina, where he became the head of archeology at Old Salem Museum & Gardens. And Pee Dee‘s wreck still fascinated him.
David Rolfe / Winston-Salem Journal
Hartley kept up with the news, scanning for signs of the old ship. In 2010, he was rewarded. Jonathan Leader, South Carolina state archaeologist, knew about the shipwreck too, and made headlines after he discovered a clue lying in the riverbed.
University of South Carolina / YouTube
Working with underwater specialist Chris Amer, Leader had been taking sonar readings of the river near Mars Bluff. The pair was unlucky until their scans picked up a curious pattern of heavy iron bolts, laid out in the silt in a straight line.
Viv Hamilton / Wikimedia Commons
This straight line wasn’t a pattern normally found in nature, and Leader and Amer were ecstatic. They were almost certain they’d found the ship’s remains, but they needed to confirm it. Hartley heard the news and got in touch.
John Brunelli / USC
He told the two men what he’d seen, all those years ago in 1954, and sent them his map. Leader and Amer went back to the spot Hartley had labeled, took some magnetic readings, and sure enough — there it was.
SCDNR
They couldn’t believe their luck. With this find, they now knew the location of all three of Pee Dee‘s cannons — the only major artifacts still left from the ship. Two of its cannons had been located downriver a few years before. Now they just needed to be recovered.
The Daily Gamecock / YouTube
Careful preparations began. In September 2015, layers of mud were removed from atop the cannons, and thick straps were attached to their barrels. They were then moved closer to the shore for easier access.
SCIAA / Nena Powell Rice
Finally, on September 29th, the removal day had arrived. A huge crowd gathered along the riverbank. As the excavator bent down and gently lifted the cannons out of the water, Hartley, Leader, and Amer couldn’t have been more proud.
Gerry Melendez / The State
The guns were carefully rinsed, then packed to send off to Clemson University for restoration. “This closed the book on a lot of history. It’s really special,” remarked diver Bob Butler, who had helped locate the artifacts.
After a four-year restoration process, the cannons are almost new again, and they can be seen in Florence, SC at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs — a true testament to the fascinating history hiding just out of our sight.
Nia Watson / WMBF News