Stars of the Sultana: Tennessee cavalryman 'Plez' Keeble and a mule competed for a piece of the boat's wreckage. Keeble won out and went on to live a long life. His brother, also on the Sultana, was not as fortunate

Pvt. Pleasant Keeble (left) survived the Sultana disaster; his brother John Keeble (right) did not

Submitted by Norman Shaw

Ahead of the Nov. 14 grand opening of the new Sultana Disaster Museum in Marion, Ark., the Civil War Picket asked experts and descendants for submissions about the people involved in the story – the soldiers, the survivors, the heroes and the scoundrels. The overloaded steamboat exploded and caught fire in the Mississippi River on April 27, 1865. About 1,200 people perished, many of them released Federal POWs heading home at the end of the war. Norman Shaw, a Knoxville, Tenn., resident and founder of the Sultana Association of Descendants and Friends, submitted the following about Pleasant Keeble. (Part 1 of the series is here, Part 2 is here and Part 3 is here)

Pleasant (Plez) Keeble, 17, must have been excited when he learned Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside's Union army had arrived in Knoxville, Tenn., on September 3, 1863, after a grueling march over the rugged Appalachian Mountains from Kentucky. 

This gave Plez the opportunity to join the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry on February 16, 1864, to serve with his older brother, John, who enlisted in the regiment early in the war, on August 10, 1862, and assigned to Company A, the initial company formed. Although placed in Company H, the younger Keeble was probably content to know he would be near his big brother for the remainder of the war.

Neither soldier could imagine the terrible events that awaited them.

First, the remnants of the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry would be sent to the small Rebel prison at Cahaba, Ala., a converted cotton warehouse with little or no roof, following their capture almost en masse by Confederate Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest in September 1864. (The Federal troopers had been positioned in forts at  Athens, Ala., and Sulphur Branch Trestle, seven miles north of Athens on the railroad line.)

Former POW Jesse Hawes' drawing of Cahaba prison in Alabama

Having survived several months of captivity at the Confederate pen at Cahaba, including standing in knee-deep water for three days caused by the flooded Alabama River flowing nearby, the Union survivors were transported in March 1865 to a recovery camp at Camp Fisk, located four miles east of Vicksburg, to regain their strength for a steamboat journey to Cairo, Ill. From here, they would be transported by train to Columbus, Ohio, to be mustered out of the army.

Unfortunately, the Keeble brothers, along with their comrades in the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry, were loaded April 24, 1865, onto the ill-fated steamer Sultana, at Vicksburg, along with other former POWs from several Midwestern states, totaling almost 2,000 men.

Dedication of Sultana monument near Knoxville in July 4, 1916 (courtesy of Norman Shaw)

The overcrowded Sultana would unexpectedly explode on the Mississippi River seven miles above Memphis at 2 a.m. on April 27, 1865, killing nearly 1,200 people, including most of the crew, civilians and soldiers, America's worst maritime disaster.

After the explosion, Plez, sleeping on the hurricane deck, frantically tried but failed to locate John on the nearby Texas deck. John likely perished in the explosion after a large section of the deck was torn away in the blast.

The private, a nonswimmer, survived by beating off a mule with a stick while floating on boat wreckage with several others.

No doubt, teenager Pleasant Keeble was traumatized for life after losing his older brother John.

1920 Knoxville survivors reunion; Pleasant Keeble at far left, John H. Simpson
second from right (Knox County Public Library, McClung Historical Collection)

Eventually, Plez returned home to Knoxville to live a normal life by working, marrying and starting a family. He faithfully attended almost every reunion of Tennessee Sultana survivors who met in Knoxville and the surrounding area. They were in the sister organization to the Midwestern survivors. 

Plez was repeatedly elected adjutant and for many years kept the minutes of the yearly meetings in a school composition book.

Time took its toll on the Tennessee survivors, leaving only Pleasant and his good friend, John Simpson, alive to attend the 1929 reunion. Plez found himself all alone at the 1930 meeting and by 1931 all from the Knoxville area were gone.

To ensure the memory of the Sultana would never be forgotten, the Knoxville veterans collected enough donations to erect a beautiful marble monument in South Knox County that was dedicated on July 4, 1916, the first one in the country, and without any government assistance.

Only the names of the Tennessee men, whether they lived or died on the Sultana, are etched on all four sides of the stone.

Stars of the Sultana: Her ancestor, Pvt. Daniel Garber of the 102nd Ohio, jumped into the Mississippi River in desperation, though he 'could swim but very little'

Daniel Garber in 1862, with wife Matilda and family in 1890. Carol Lundquist's grandfather David stands at far right

Submitted by Carol Lundquist

Ahead of the Nov. 14 grand opening of the new Sultana Disaster Museum in Marion, Ark., the Civil War Picket asked experts and descendants for submissions about the people involved in the story – the soldiers, the survivors, the heroes and the scoundrels. The overloaded steamboat exploded and caught fire in the Mississippi River on April 27, 1865. About 1,200 people perished, many of them released Federal POWs heading home at the end of the war. Carol Lundquist (left) of Minneapolis submitted the following about her paternal great-grandfather, Pvt. Daniel Garber of the 102^nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Lundquist and her daughter Kirsten will be in Marion for the museum events. (Part 1 of the series is here, Part 2 is here and Part 4 is here)

Daniel’s Civil War history is not especially notable in itself. He entered service as a private, and left as a private.  He was a wagoner or a teamster, and I haven’t found that Company E saw a lot of front-line action.

I think of Daniel’s experience as emblematic of the many thousands of ordinary men who served and survived the horrors of the war, including the Sultana disaster, came home and somehow resumed their lives.  

Daniel Garber (born in Pennsylvania) was a shoemaker and farmer, from Butler, Ohio.  He enlisted in the 102^nd OVI, Company E, in August 1862 at age 34, 10 years older than the average age of enlistees. He left behind his wife Matilda and seven children ranging in ages 12 years down to a 6 month old baby. Daniel served for the duration of the war.

He was captured near Athens, Alabama, by Forrest’s cavalry; the 102^nd was guarding the railroad. He survived being imprisoned at Cahaba, and survived the Sultana disaster

Daniel came back after the war, resumed shoemaking and farming, and fathered several more children, including my grandfather, David Scott Garber, in 1872.  

What I find extraordinary in Daniel’s story is simply that of survival. His account of the Sultana disaster is in the Chester Berry book (left). Daniel was on the pilot deck, and waited to jump into the water so as not to collide with all the men already in the water. I grew up hearing of how Daniel had to push men off his shutter or piece of wood so as to save himself.

Daniel says himself that he “could swim but very little.” He floated down the cold, dark, flooded Mississippi River, past the lights of Memphis for four more miles before he was picked up by the boat Pocahontas, 11 miles from the site of the explosion. 

Daniel surely knew that many men who were on the Sultana in the same situation were never rescued and their bodies lost to the river forever.  

Daniel (below) was an invalid for a number of years before his death in 1906. 

Of the 13 men from Company E who were on the Sultana, only three survived: William Yeisley, William Lockhart, and Daniel.  William Lockhart was a close friend of Daniel’s and a pallbearer at his funeral. Yeisley married into the Garber family after the war; he married Nancy Garber, who was a niece of Daniel’s.

In 1996, I met William Lockhart’s daughter-in-law at the Mansfield, Ohio Civil War show, thanks to Gene Salecker. She was quite elderly at the time and died within the next year or two.

It was and still is quite an emotional encounter to meet someone with such close ties to Daniel and the Civil War, through William, although she never knew Daniel.

It only emphasized for me how near we are to the Civil War in time and its lasting effects.    

Stars of the Sultana: John Clark Ely left a brokenhearted family -- and an amazing journal of his wartime service -- when he perished in the 1865 maritime disaster

Pages from Sgt. John Clark Ely's journal (Courtesy of the late John M. Ely)

Submitted by Jerry O. Potter

Ahead of the Nov. 14 grand opening of the new Sultana Disaster Museum in Marion, Ark., the Civil War Picket asked experts for submissions about the people involved in the story – the soldiers, the survivors, the heroes and the scoundrels. The overloaded steamboat exploded and caught fire in the Mississippi River on April 27, 1865. About 1,200 people perished, many of them released Federal POWs heading home at the end of the war. Noted Sultana author Jerry Potter submitted the following about Sgt. John Clark Ely, who wrote an amazing journal about his service, captivity and doomed voyage on the Sultana. (Part 1 of the series is here, Part 3 is here and Part 4 is here:)

John Clark Ely (left) of Summit County, Ohio, enlisted in Company C of the 115th Ohio Volunteer Infantry on August 9, 1862, and was appointed third sergeant. For the next 14 months, the regiment served primarily on guard duty in Ohio and northern Kentucky.

In October 1863, it was ordered to Chattanooga, Tenn., where the Army of the Cumberland faced Confederate forces under Gen. Braxton Bragg. Ely left behind his pregnant wife, Julia, who gave birth to their third daughter on November 29, 1863.

Before the regiment reached Chattanooga, its orders changed. The 115th Ohio was sent to Murfreesboro and assigned to protect the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, a critical supply route for Union forces operating in Tennessee and Georgia. The regiment guarded 12 blockhouses and fortifications along the railroad, including a small earthen fort at La Vergne, where Ely kept a diary.

On November 30, 1864, Ely heard artillery from the Battle of Franklin, approximately 25 miles away:

“Usual morning duties, very pleasant all day. Heavy cannonading all day in direction of Franklin, do not know the result.”

Four days later, on his 39th birthday, he wrote:

“Today is my birthday, am 39 years of age, for better or worse.”

The following day, Dec.  5, Ely's circumstances changed dramatically. As Capt. Lewis Hake prepared to evacuate the fort at La Vergne, a large Confederate cavalry force supported by four artillery pieces surrounded the position and demanded its surrender. Recognizing that resistance against the superior force was impractical, Hake surrendered 59 men of Company C, 32 of Company G and 12 members of the regimental band.

Ely and the other prisoners were marched south. During the difficult journey through northern Alabama, he recorded:

“Rained all day and night. Men killed from the cold.”

After reaching the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, the prisoners were transported to Corinth, Ms., where Ely wrote simply, “Very cold, suffering much.” They were then taken south on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad through Okolona and West Point, arriving at Meridian, Ms., on Christmas Day. There, Ely recorded one of the most poignant entries in his diary:

“Will another Christmas find us again among friends and loved ones?”

POW Thomas O'Dea's sketch of overcrowded Camp Sumter at Andersonville (NPS)

During the following weeks, the prisoners traveled by railroad and steamboat through Mississippi and Alabama before reaching Georgia. On Jan.  23, 1865, Ely and his comrades arrived at Andersonville prison. The following day. he summarized what he encountered there in a single sentence:

“Of Andersonville the mind must draw its own picture.”

By the time the 115th Ohio arrived, Andersonville's population (had declined to approximately 4,000 prisoners, far below the more than 30,000 confined there during its most overcrowded period. Ely remained at Andersonville until March 22, a period of eight weeks and two days. Only one soldier from the regiment died during their confinement, a markedly different experience from the high mortality among prisoners held there during the summer of 1864.

After leaving Andersonville, Ely and his comrades traveled toward Union lines. On March 31, 1865, they reached the Big Black River near Vicksburg. Ely described it as “The place we have looked for now have found.” After crossing the river and reaching the parole camp four miles east of Vicksburg, he found other members of Company C and recorded:

“Oh! This is the brightest day of my life long to be remembered.”

Prisoner exchange negotiators at Camp Fisk (Library of Congress)

The soldiers were housed at Camp Fisk, or Four-Mile Camp, where approximately 5,530 former prisoners were held during March and April 1865 while awaiting formal exchange and transportation north.

While there, the men learned of Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox. On April 14, Ely also received news that Maj. Gen. Napoleon Dana had ordered the former prisoners paroled and sent north. His reaction reflected his anticipation of returning home:

“Bully, may we soon see our sweethearts.”

That optimism was soon tempered by news of President Abraham Lincoln's assassination. Ely wrote:

“Sad, sad of this morning our president honest old Abe was shot by J. Wilkes Booth in Washington on Friday night in theater.”

He concluded:

“Our president is gone, can it be true, too true.”

(Library of Congress)

On April 24, Ely and approximately 850 other former prisoners traveled by train into Vicksburg and boarded the steamboat Sultana. From his position on the hurricane deck, Ely wrote:

“Beautiful day but very warm, about 10 a.m. we were ordered to take a train for Vicksburg, and then up river, we went from cars to boat Sultana, a large but not very fine boat.”

Two additional trainloads of paroled prisoners subsequently boarded the vessel. Although the Sultana had been built to carry 376 passengers, it departed Vicksburg with an estimated 2,135 people aboard, including 1,953 paroled prisoners, 22 guards, 70 civilian passengers and 85 crew members.

Ely's final entry for April 24 stated: “Left sometime in the night for Cairo, Illinois.”

The following day, as the overcrowded vessel traveled north on the flooded Mississippi, he wrote:

“Fine day, still going up river very high over country everywhere, no places along the river where white people live but many monuments of where people had been.”

On April 26, the Sultana stopped at Helena, Arkansas, where the final known photograph of the crowded steamboat was taken. The Sultana left Helena at approximately 8 a.m. and steamed up the flooded Mississippi River toward her next stop at Memphis. For the day, Ely wrote in his diary: “Very fine day. Still upward we go.”

The Sultana reached Memphis at approximately 6 p.m. and later moved upriver to take on coal. At about 1 a.m. on April 27, the vessel resumed its journey north.

Approximately an hour later, about seven miles above Memphis, three of the Sultana's four boilers exploded. The explosion severely damaged the vessel and caused portions of the crowded upper decks to collapse. Fire subsequently spread through the wreckage.

The disaster resulted in an estimated 1,169 deaths, including 1,047 paroled Union prisoners. Of the 77 soldiers of the 115th Ohio aboard the Sultana, 41 died.

John Clark Ely was among them.

On May 11, 1865, William H. Jones, assistant surgeon of the 115th Ohio, informed Col. Thomas Boone:

A Harper's Weekly depiction of the April 1865 disaster in the Mississippi River (Library of Congress)

“Ely's body floated down yesterday morning and was buried. I have a bundle of papers found upon it which I have with me and will turn over to his family.”

Among those papers were Ely's diary and a copy of Confederate prison regulations. The diary helped identify his remains and preserved the record of his final months. Ely was initially buried at the cemetery at Fort Pickering in Memphis and was later reinterred in Memphis National Cemetery.

READ ELY’S JOURNAL ENTRIES:

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2015/01/journal-of-prisoner-sgt-john-clark-ely.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2015/02/journal-of-pow-sgt-john-clark-ely_18.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2015/02/journal-of-sgt-john-clark-ely.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2015/02/journal-of-pow-sgt-john-clark-ely.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2015/02/journal-of-pow-sgt-john-clark-ely_18.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2015/02/journal-of-pow-sgt-john-c-ely-watching.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2015/03/journal-of-sgt-john-clark-ely-prison.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2015/03/journal-of-pow-sgt-john-c-ely-rumors-of.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2015/03/journal-of-sgt-john-clark-ely-beautiful.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2015/03/journal-of-pow-sgt-john-clark-ely-tired.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2015/04/journal-of-sgt-john-clark-ely-awaiting.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2015/04/journal-of-sgt-john-clark-ely-prisoner.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2015/04/journal-of-pow-sgt-john-c-ely-curse-on.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2015/04/pow-sgt-john-c-ely-his-journal-and.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2012/04/sultana-disaster-took-lives-of-those.html

Stars of the Sultana: Maj. William H. Fidler commanded Union soldiers on the overloaded steamboat. He tried to keep his men safe, but then calamity struck. Stories about the maritime disaster will be told at a new Arkansas museum

A Harper's Weekly depiction of the April 1865 disaster in the Mississippi River (Library of Congress)

Submitted by Gene Salecker

Ahead of the Nov. 14 grand opening of the new Sultana Disaster Museum in Marion, Ark., the Civil War Picket asked experts for submissions about the people involved in the story – the soldiers, the survivors, the heroes and the scoundrels. The overloaded steamboat exploded and caught fire in the Mississippi River on April 27, 1865. About 1,200 people perished, many of them released Federal POWs heading home at the end of the war. Noted Sultana author and collector Gene Salecker submitted the following about Maj. William H. Fidler, who tried to save a female passenger on the boat. (Part 2 of the series is here, Part 3 is here and Part 4 is here)

The highest-ranking officers among the 1,947 released Union ex-prisoners of war were two majors, James William Carlin, 71^st Ohio Infantry, and William H. Fidler (right), 6^th Kentucky Cavalry. Since Carlin had been captured in October 1864 and was not in good shape physically, and since Fidler had been captured in April 1865, only a few days before the loading of the Sultana, the 22-year-old was placed in command of the returning soldiers.

Born in Haysville, Ky., southwest of Louisville, in 1843, he was the second of eight children born to Samuel and Minerva Fidler. Samuel, a shop owner, died in August 1861, leaving the family void of a breadwinner. To help reduce the number of mouths’ to feed, oldest brother James enlisted in the 10^th Kentucky Infantry in November 1861.

Almost a year later, 20-year-old William and his 18-year-old brother Jessie both traveled to Louisville and joined the newly formed 6^th Kentucky Cavalry, William as the major and Jessie as a sergeant in Company K.

Always the dutiful son, William regularly sent most of his $169 per month pay home to his widowed mother and siblings. Over the next three years, he proved himself a competent officer by ably handling his cavalrymen in Middle Tennessee and throughout Gen. Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign. In the spring of 1865, the 6^th Kentucky Cavalry took part in Maj. Gen. James H. Wilson’s cavalry raid through northern Alabama and Georgia.

On April 6, 1865, while fighting a rear-guard skirmish near Tuscaloosa, Ala., Maj. Fidler and a large portion of the 6^th Kentucky Cavalry (flag at left) were cut off from Gen. Wilson’s main body and forced to separate and flee into nearby swamps. Tracked down by Confederate soldiers with bloodhound dogs, Fidler and two privates were eventually captured near Pleasant Ridge, Ala. First held in a city jail, he was eventually sent to the neutral exchange camp, Camp Fisk, set up four miles outside of Vicksburg, Ms.

As the ranking officer among the men from Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee, West Virginia and Kentucky, Maj. Fidler helped organize the men into companies of 100 by state and assisted in getting the rolls called and the men placed on the trains that took them from Camp Fisk into Vicksburg to be loaded aboard the Sultana.

Coming in on the third and last train, Fidler immediately saw how crowded the Sultana had become with the first two trainloads of ex-prisoners, and stopped the third trainload of men, insisting that they should go on a different steamboat, the Pauline Carroll. Unwilling to divide the prisoners and mess up their rolls and books, one of the Union officers involved in the loading of the Sultana told Maj. Fidler that the Pauline Carroll had smallpox onboard.

Realizing that in their weakened condition, many of the men would not survive a bout of smallpox, Fidler agreed to put every last man on board the Sultana, to the number of 1,947.

During the trip upriver on the Sultana, Maj. Fidler and the other officers among the ex-prisoners were constantly reminding the men to stay in one spot and not crowd to one side of the boat, thus causing the vessel to capsize. As an officer, Fidler and his aide, Capt. James M. McCown, and all the other officers, slept on twin bunkbed cots set up down the length of the second deck main saloon.

At 2 in the morning of April 27, 1865, while almost everyone was asleep on the Sultana, three of her four boilers suddenly exploded, erupting upwards and tearing a huge hole in the center of the saloon.

Both Fidler and McCown were tossed from their bunkbed, with McCown being severely scalded in the face, neck and hands, and inhaling the scalding, spreading steam, thus burning his lungs and the mucous membrane on his tongue.

In spite of his horrible injuries, McCown followed Fidler down to the main deck so that they could find fire buckets to put out the slowly growing fire. Unable to do so, and with the flames growing in size, the two officers from the 6^th Kentucky Cavalry began tossing pieces of the Sultana into the water to help others stay afloat.

While the two men were thus engaged, they heard a female civilian passenger call out that her mother was in the water and drowning. Without hesitation, Maj. Fidler jumped into the water and went to the mother’s rescue.

Although Fidler reached the lady and took hold of her, they were soon swallowed up by the mad, panicked crowd. Both Maj. William H. Fidler and the mother of the young female passenger were soon pulled beneath the brown, swirling water. His body was never recovered. (McCown survived the tragedy.)

Only 22 years old at the time of his death, a military headstone was later erected for Fidler in the Lebanon National Cemetery in Lebanon, Ky.

COMPLETE COVERAGE OF THE MUSEUM

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2026/10/an-alligator-was-mascot-of-steamboat.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2026/10/descendants-of-sultana-disaster-victims.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2026/07/remembering-sultana-disaster-this-14.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2026/01/steamboat-sultana-stories-of-heroic.html

https://civil-war-picket.blogspot.com/2025/06/an-arkansas-museum-telling-tragic-story.html

Perdido Key's Fort McRee is long gone. But the shifting sand at a federal seashore in Florida continues to serve up Civil War cannonballs, including 157 just this year

Some of the mortars found in February in the vicinity of Fort McRee (Michael Lockman/NPS)

You can forget about seeing any visible signs of Fort McRee if you travel to the remote, eastern edge of Florida’s Perdido Key.

Civil War artillery fire, time, storms and shifting sands have erased all traces of the 19th-century bastion a few miles southwest of and across the water from Pensacola. But that doesn’t mean the former Confederate site built on what was called Foster's Bank doesn’t serve up reminders of its existence.

Gulf Islands National Seashore announced in September 2021 that 192 mortar rounds were found along the remote beach after Category 4 Hurricane Ida.

When the Picket reached out recently to the park about whether anything new has been learned about them, officials said another large cache of encrusted shells were found this year, in February. That was a surprise to me, though not the park.

Fort McRee was built in the 1830s to protect Pensacola and its deep harbor.

The fort had 12 casemates and an associated water battery, which may be underwater today. There may have been other batteries. It’s unclear whether these particular shells were discarded, forgotten about or left behind by Confederate troops..

It’s likely the cannonballs are somehow associated with Fort McRee, which was built on a narrow barrier island separating Pensacola Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. In 2022, the park said some of the cannonballs utilized Hotchkiss timed fuses.

In November 1861, the garrison engaged in gunfire with nearby Union-held Fort Pickens and a couple warships -- and came up on the losing end. The heavily damaged brick fort was abandoned by May 1862, only to fall into further ruin over the years. (Fort Pickens was one of only four Southern forts to remain in Union control throughout the war.)

These archaeological finds suggest this portion of Perdido Key has "moved" over the years, because of currents and the ever-shifting sand. Visitors to the area generally come by boat, because the road ends several miles to the west. Ruins of post-Civil War batteries are visible.

Likely Confederate soldiers at Fort McRee, circa 1861 (Gulf Islands National Seashore)

The Picket recently submitted questions about the February discovery. The responses below are by Michael Lockman, archaeologist at Gulf Islands National Seashore. Some responses have been edited for brevity.

Q. I understand some additional Civil War cannonballs were found in the vicinity of Fort McRee in February 2026. Was that the case?

A. The shells found in February of 2026 were located nearly a kilometer from the historic location of Fort McRee on Perdido Key Island.

Q. Were they found along the surf line?

A. The shells were exposed in the intertidal zone.

Some of the mortar rounds uncovered by Hurricane Ida in September 2021 (Gulf Islands National Seashore)

Q. What is the total number of shells for this discovery? 

A. US Air Force explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) experts rendered 157 shells inert within the same week of the identification.

Q. Who called in the discovery to park rangers?

A. A Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) employee discovered the shells during a routine species survey.

Q. Did this discovery, like the one in 2021, come after a storm?

A. To the best of our knowledge, the February 2026 exposure was not associated with any named storm event.

The ruins of Fort McRee, beginning to vanish by the late 1880s (NPS collections)

Q. Are the rounds believed to be Confederate, likely from 1861?

A. The provenance of the shells remains uncertain, though Hardy and Bezemek (2023) cite Bartelson’s (1972) “A Field Guide for Civil War Explosive Ordnance” to suggest the presence of ears on either side of the fuse are characteristic of shells from the Confederate states army.

Q. Were they destroyed on site by EOD experts from Hurlburt Field, as was done in 2021?

A. Yes, the shells were rendered inert onsite via controlled detonation by US Air Force explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) experts station at Hurlburt Field.

Not much was left by the time of this 1907 post card (NPS collections)

Q. Are they believed to be mortars, possibly 10-inch?

A. The shells were 8-inch mortar rounds.

Q. How were they found? In clusters? Singly?

A. The shells were exposed in two clusters.

Q. Were the shells stacked in any way?

A. The shells appeared to be palletized (stacked).

Just a fragment remained at the time of this 1940 photograph (NPS collections)

Q. One of my posts on the 2021 finds mentions 194 shells, with 53 mortars being destroyed. I am trying to ascertain the total number from 2021. Was it 194 or 247? Or something else?

A. EOD rendered 192 shells inert in 2021 via controlled detonation. (Below, photo of that operation, NPS; click to enlarge)

Q. Does the NPS have any current investigation/findings on the 2021 and 2026 cannonball deposits -- source of shells, type of artillery battery, etc.

A. The area is being investigated as a Formerly Used Defense Site (FUDS) by the U.S.  Army Corps of Engineers (USACE).

Q. Does the park currently, or will it in the future provide information or exhibits on these discovered mortars?

A. Gulf Islands National Seashore currently has no plans to create virtual or printed exhibits about this topic. To protect the resource and comply with all applicable laws, regulations, and policies, the exact location of the mortar cache will remain confidential.

Q. Would it be fair to say this second find was surprising?

A. Not exactly, since this area has history of having a large military presence.