Scoop and grapple: New phase of CSS Georgia recovery bringing rush of artifacts

The grapple in action on Sept. 15 (Courtesy of USACE)

A dozen young archaeologists, 150-year-old chunks of iron and wood and an inexhaustible supply of mud are the ingredients for what could be an exciting new phase in the recovery of the CSS Georgia in the Savannah River.

A team working from two barges a couple miles east of downtown Savannah, Georgia, on Monday used a device called a five-finger grapple to bring up artifacts and pieces of the Civil War ironclad.

They brought up 13 loads from the glistening water, said archaeologist Jim Jobling, a project manager with Texas A&M University’s Conservation Laboratory. He has been on the site for several months as the recovery has progressed.

“It is very, very exciting, a real wide array was recovered,” Jobling said from a barge during a late-afternoon phone call.

Just Monday, the archaeologist brought up ceramics, a brass door handle, gun carriage pieces, hinge parts, parts of two shoes and hooks for hanging coats.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is overseeing the recovery of the remnants of the Confederate ironclad as part of a harbor deepening project, calls this the mechanized phase. It follows hand retrieval of artifacts by contract divers and the recovery of large items by a U.S. Navy salvage team.

Machinery parts from river bottom on Sept. 15

An anvil amid pieces of timber (Photos: USACE)

The grapple and a clamshell scoop are in place after the departure of the Navy team, which was on site for about two months. So far, at least 1,750 artifacts have been recovered this year.

“MDSU (Mobile Diving Salvage Unit) 2 did a fantastic job salvaging large artifacts and casemate sections from the wreck,” said Jobling. “Their help was invaluable to the archaeologists and we would not have been able to do it without them.”

Navy divers completed their work Sept. 9, said Corps spokesman Russell Wicke. 

Mechanized recovery is scheduled to last through late October, officials said. “Our teams have done, and continue to do an excellent job in this recovery process,” said Wicke.

Conditions for diving and salvage operations have been challenging.

Navy divers, working in low visibility, heavy currents and brief diving windows, brought up the vessel’s four remaining cannon, 133 pieces of ordnance, a propeller with attached shaft, remaining parts of the propulsion system and more than 43,500 pounds of small casemate sections.

But there are at least another 100 tons of the CSS Georgia strewn across the river bottom, Jobling said. While the Navy was able to get much of the casemate, there’s more to go. And officials expect to find many additional artifacts.

The CSS Georgia was part of the so-called Savannah Squadron, which included the ironclads Atlanta, Savannah and Milledgeville. The leaky ship lacked much engine power and became a floating battery as part of the city’s defenses. Its Confederate crew scuttled the ironclad in December 1864 shortly before Federal forces took the city.

Jobling said the grapple is dropped into archaeological “squares” on the river bottom. The crew also places the grapple on the intersection of four squares so that it picks up additional pieces of the ship. The grapple’s jaw closes by gravity and it is brought to the surface.

Remnants of a CSS Georgia gun carriage (U.S. Navy)

“It lands on the concrete deck of the barge and we have a partition and we have a fire hose and sluice all the mud through the screen,” said Jobling.

Sometimes, only five artifacts may be found in the pile of muck. Other times, there are dozens of items inside. But the volume of artifacts has increased markedly with the introduction of the grapple.

The dozen archaeologists, some of whom are working on their masters degrees, received additional training on the barges and are helping separate artifacts from the mud.

“They are young, bright and extremely motivated,” said Jobling. “Today is the roller coaster because you are downhill when the artifacts start coming in. Wow. How do we start processing?”

Not all of the items brought up will be conserved. Those that don’t make the cut, such as broken pieces or twisted piping, will be reburied.

Dredging for the harbor deepening, meanwhile, officially began Monday in the outer channel off Tybee Island.

Part 2 on sword coming to The Citadel: C.C. Tew dedicated life to teaching cadets

(Courtesy of Daniel Library, The Citadel)

Charles Courtenay Tew wielded the sword metaphor several times during his address to fellow Citadel graduates in 1846. Only 18 years old, Tew spoke eloquently of the glory and horror of war, saying the sword could be “dazzling" in its influence and the patriot soldier should use it only for “God and country.”

“There are no aspirations to imminence over the slaughtered bodies of his fellow men,” he told two dozen peers at the military academy in Charleston, S.C.

The school’s first honor graduate concluded his remarks with encouragement to fulfill one’s responsibility: “The same principle which impelled him to arms, sustains him in their unsanguined use. Strongly attached to life, he is yet willing, ready, eager to lay it down for the public.”

Sixteen years later, Tew, 34, would lay down his life for the Confederacy. He died amid the carnage on the Sunken Road, or Bloody Lane, at the Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg) in western Maryland.

The colonel’s sword was taken by a Federal soldier, as were other items as trophies of war. Now, 153 years later, the sword is being given by a Canadian military regiment and foundation to The Citadel in ceremonies next week. Descendants had long looked for the sword, which ended up in Ottawa.

The loss of Tew, who led the 2^nd North Carolina State Troops, was felt keenly by loved ones and his home state. Before the war, he was known as an erudite academic who instilled discipline and duty in cadets on three campuses in the Carolinas. Students were grateful for his dedication, and in 1858 they presented him the sword at the Arsenal Academy in Columbia, S.C.

Great-great-granddaughter Caroline Sloan of Portland, Ore., says the graduation speech shows Tew was a “product of his time.” A soldier was trained to take up arms, when necessary.

In his 1893 “History of the South Carolina Military Academy,” John Peyre Thomas wrote:

Tew's sword will be displayed at The Citadel library

"Col. Tew was no ordinary man. In temper he was cool and equable. His tastes were literary and yet practical. His intellect was trained and disciplined for almost any work. With mathematical and scientific attainments, he was also conversant with the dead languages; had acquired several of the Continental Languages, as to French, he was an accomplished scholar of that tongue. The power of mental concentration he possessed in large degree and what he attempted he mastered thoroughly. As a friend he was steady and loyal; as a man direct and upright; as a husband and father, tender and devoted. Among The Citadel dead, no other graduate has done more honor to the Academy then Charles Courtenay Tew."

Tew’s father was from a French Huguenot family and his mother had Irish ancestry.

While not all that prominent or wealthy, the Tews ensured Courtenay (pronounced Courtney), as he was known, would get what they considered an ideal education for a South Carolina lad.

“He wanted to be an educator,” Sloan said.

After graduation, the professor taught and led students at the Arsenal Academy for five years, spent a year in Europe and returned to The Citadel as second officer in rank. He enlarged and expanded his department before returning to Columbia in 1857.

He then followed his own dream, moving to North Carolina with his wife, Elizabeth, and children to start a new school: The Hillsborough Military Academy.

!937 view of Hillsborough barracks, now gone (Library of Congress)

“It was modeled on The Citadel,” said Richard Barnes of Raleigh, N.C., who has researched the 2^nd North Carolina State Troops, the unit Tew led during the Civil War. “He was a good tactician. He was an academic man. He loved to instruct young men.”

Tew didn’t get to lead the North Carolina academy for long. While apparently not a slave owner, Tew sided with the Confederacy and led troops during a number of Virginia and Maryland campaigns, ending at Antietam.

The officer won admiration for tactics from his peers, including Maj. Gen. Joseph B. Kershaw and Lt. Gen. D.H. Hill, who described Tew as having “no superior as a soldier in the field.”

But Tew felt he could help the cause most by returning to North Carolina to turn young students into prospective soldiers. His resignation was forwarded to the government in Richmond, but it had not been acted upon when the battle at Sharpsburg was fought.

The academy in Hillsborough did not last long after the war’s end and Tew’s widow died in 1870, leaving the care of their three surviving children to her father-in-law.

Sloan, who will speak about Tew and the sword during a Sept. 17 event on The Citadel campus, has taught her 7-year-old son that it is best that the South did not prevail.

Still, she said, “I am proud of (Tew). The Civil War was a terrible, terrible thing. The family loved him and never got over his death.”

• Part one: Sword finally coming home

Explosives, hubcaps -- or something else?

Utility workers will soon begin searching a river in Columbia for possible Civil War-era ammunition left over from U.S. Gen. William T. Sherman's attack on the city in 1865. The State newspaper reports the contractors for South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. will begin digging up and removing 74 metallic objects found in the Congaree River. • Article

Fallen officer's sword finally coming back to South Carolina -- from Canada

Col. C.C. Tew fell in this area of the Bloody Lane (NPS photo)

(The Citadel)

On Sept. 16, a sword that enemy soldiers took from a mortally wounded Confederate officer will be presented to nine cadets from his alma mater at the spot in Antietam’s Bloody Lane where he fell 153 years before.

The 1 p.m. ceremony on an undulating, fence-lined country lane will transform the sword and scabbard from a spoil of the Civil War to an enduring symbol of respect and principle.

Descendants of Col. Charles Courtenay Tew, who was from Charleston, S.C., and led the 2^nd North Carolina State Troops, had long looked for the sword, making inquiries by word of mouth and magazine ads. The soldier’s father, who was not certain that his son had been killed at the 1862 Maryland battle, had even traveled to a remote island in the Gulf of Mexico to try to learn his fate.

Relatives eventually learned the weapon had made its way to Ohio, but they had no idea that it ended up on the wall of an officers’ mess for a military unit in, of all places, Ottawa, Ontario. A foundation associated with the Canadian regiment researched and authenticated the sword and decided The Citadel should be its permanent home.

“I think this is the most important artifact that The Citadel has ever had,” said Lt. Col. David Goble, director of the Charleston military college’s Daniel Library. “This gentleman was among the first 20 cadets ever to matriculate on this campus, and the first honor graduate. The mission of The Citadel is to produce principled leaders in all walks of life. This is our first principled leader.”

Goble will lead the school’s contingent to Antietam National Battlefield in Sharpsburg for the ceremony and wreath-laying, prayer and playing of Taps where Tew died. Representatives of the 33 Signal Regiment of the Canadian Army and its foundation will hand the sword over to Keith Snyder, a National Park Service park ranger, who will then transfer it to the cadets.

“It is an incredible story and we are going to be standing on the very location where this event took place,” Snyder told the Picket this week.

The Citadel contingent will return to the school, which will have a Sept. 17 reception at Daniel Library with the cherished sword on display, and an official transfer on Sept. 18 on Summerall Field, just prior to the traditional Friday cadet dress parade.

Among the Tew descendants who will attend the events in Charleston is Caroline Sloan, a great-great-granddaughter who grew up in Greenville, S.C., and now lives in Portland, Ore. She will give a talk at the Sept. 17 reception.

Tew’s family had high hopes for The Citadel graduate, who went on to teach at the school and led the affiliated Arsenal Academy in Columbia, S.C., where cadets gave him the sword on Nov. 25, 1858.

“He was educated,” said Sloan. “As soon as he hit the pavement, everybody said the boy was going somewhere.”

(Courtesy of Caroline Sloan)

Tew, called Courtenay (pronounced Courtney) by his family, later moved his family to Hillsborough, N.C., to start a military academy there. When the Civil War broke out, he joined a North Carolina regiment.

The Citadel has long honored Tew’s legacy and has some of his belongings. Now the sword will be at the institution he attended and served. Sloan cited research efforts led by Michael Martin, chairman of the 33 Signal Regiment Foundation, which supports soldiers in the Canadian unit.

Sloan said: “I am thrilled to know what happened, the fact that (Martin) could connect the sword on a wall in Canada to the battlefield.”

While the journey of the sword is remarkable in its own right, there’s also a compelling human element, through communication between Tew’s father, Henry, and a Union soldier who came into possession of Courtenay Tew’s drinking cup that was taken from his saddlebags at Antietam.

That soldier, J.W. Bean of the 5^th New Hampshire Infantry, returned the cup to the Tews in 1874 and showed a spirit of national reconciliation in a letter to the family.

“All brave men can but respect & honor the memory of those who were willing to sacrifice their lives upon the altar of their principles, however they may differ from each other,” Bean wrote. “War is between nations and not between individuals -- and when the battle is over – brave men on either side learn to respect each other.”

He fell leading troops at Sharpsburg

Charles Courtenay Tew was among the first 26 cadets to report to The Citadel in 1843. He was the college’s first honor grad and alumni association president. He taught at the campus in Charleston and for a time was superintendent of Arsenal Academy, where he received the sword. The scabbard has inscriptions about its bestowal and capture.

While leading the academy in North Carolina, Tew – a renowned scholar and academic – was called upon to take up arms after secession.

According to the 1893 “The History of the South Carolina Academy,” Tew helped secure North Carolina coastal defenses and led the 2^nd North Carolina as part of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. The book said he was “prompt, thorough, efficient and devoted to duty.”

His unit served around Richmond, Va., and was part of the Seven Days Battles. They moved north when Lee decided to invade Maryland and were posted on the famous Sunken Road (Bloody Lane) on that fateful Sept. 17, 1862, the largest single bloody day in U.S. military history.

An onslaught of Federal troops tried to oust the Southerners from their positions. The colonel briefly became brigade commander when its general was wounded.

Cup returned by Federal soldier (Courtesy of Carolina Sloan)

A Capt. M. Manly of the 2^nd North Carolina wrote: “During the battle in this bloody lane Colonel Charles Courtenay Tew was killed, his body falling into the hands of the enemy … He was shot through the head and placed in the sunken road … Here he was found, apparently unconscious, the blood streaming from a wound in the head, with his sword held in both hands across his knees. A Federal soldier attempted to take the sword from him, but he drew it toward his body with his last remaining strength, and then his grasp relaxed and he fell forward, dead.”

It’s believed that Tew’s sword, scabbard, cup and perhaps his watch were taken by one or more Federal soldiers, likely with the 8^th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Bean’s New Hampshire unit also charged Bloody Lane.

It’s impossible to know with certainty who took the trophies, but Martin told the Picket that a Capt. Reid, a Canadian serving with the 8^th Ohio, may have taken the blade. Another soldier apparently gave the cup to Bean.

Tew, 34, and thousands of other Confederates killed at Antietam were buried in mass graves. They were later moved to cemeteries in Hagerstown and Frederick, Md., and Shepherdstown, W. Va. Snyder of the NPS said Tew’s final resting place is not known.

The colonel left behind a widow and three surviving children in Hillsborough.

But the family didn’t know he had been killed because none of the regiment’s members had seen the body. Perhaps he had been captured.

A few years later, a man visited Hillsborough and said that Tew had just been released from Fort Jefferson on the islands known as the Dry Tortugas, west of Key West, Fla. (The fort housed prisoners during and after the Civil War). Tew, according to his man, had been confined for killing the colonel of an Illinois regiment.

Henry Tew, in a newspaper article, described his response.

“It was startling and improbable but the utter absence of all motive for the deception made upon oath and without demand for compensation induced me to take the long tedious and expensive voyage from Charleston via Balto & Key West to the Port to realize its falsity, and return cheerless via Havana, Key West & Balto to my home.”

Col. Tew’s widow, Elizabeth Tradewell Tew, passed away in 1870 and her father-in-law took custody of the children.

Henry Tew received a letter from an individual in Norwalk, Ohio, claiming the sword was at a fraternal lodge in that city. Efforts to obtain the sword failed, but the family did hear from Capt. Bean, who said he buried the Confederate and had the silver cup.

“Perhaps the only relic of his last hours,” Henry Tew wrote about his lost son. “And to (the) generous kindness and magnanimity of this gallant opponent on the fatal field it is now in our possession.”

Engraving on scabbard (The Citadel)

In 1885, a Yankee veteran, Col. John Finn of the 8^th Ohio wrote to Ella, the colonel’s daughter, explaining that there were high casualties in the Bloody Lane fighting. He said a bullet struck the Confederate officer in the left temple.

“I think that he was unconscious of what was going on around him, and knew that it was impossible for him to live more than an hour or so at most,” Finn wrote. “He was sensible enough to hold a tight grasp to his sword, of which we were very anxious to secure, and which was taken from him by my company, as also was his waist belt and scabbard.”

Finn pledged to have the sword returned to the family. Apparently, he was unsuccessful.

On to Canada, via Ohio

So what became of the sword?

Martin, with the Canadian foundation, helped conduct research that proved the provenance of the Tew sword.

Not every detail is certain, including who took custody of the sword on the battlefield and held it for decades. What’s known is that the weapon was donated to the 703 Communication Regiment (now the 33 Signal Regiment) in 1963.

Martin said the woman grew up in New York and was a relative of a colonel of the 55^th Ohio who participated in the fighting at Antietam. It’s possible that the colonel, who was killed the next year, shipped souvenirs back home from Sharpsburg. The sword was believed to have been displayed for a time at a fraternal lodge in Norwalk, Ohio. The woman moved from the United States to Canada. She had a distant cousin who served with the Canadian military unit.

The sword was displayed in the regimental mess but was taken down during an inventory in 2009 when the unit was moving to a new armory. During the insurance process, the blade was sent to an appraiser, who told them, “You don’t know what you have here.”

The regiment was told even without the Tew provenance it was valued between $20,000 and $30,000. But given its history, it was deemed irreplaceable, Martin said.

Thus began the quest to authenticate the sword (through Sloan family letters, The Citadel archives, etc.), which ended successfully in December 2014. The college was notified in March 2015.

Martin said Friday that Canada's top general signed the authorization to transfer the sword, culminating a seven-year effort by the regiment and foundation.

Richard Barnes of Raleigh, N.C., an “historian by passion,” is researching the 2^nd North Carolina State Troops and hopes to write a book about the bloodied unit that saw action in numerous campaigns, ending with Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Va.

“(Tew) was highly praised by fellow colonels and senior officers. He was considered one of the most finished scholars on the continent,” said Barnes. “His cadets loved him and they followed him anywhere. He produced a lot of fine military minds.”

View of Rebel dead at Sharpsburg (Library of Congress)

Barnes will be part of the Sept. 17 event at The Citadel.

“I can tell you I am extremely excited about it,” Barnes said. “It is great closure that will bring attention to a much overlooked individual.”

Search, finally, comes to an end

This month’s events indeed are time for celebration and reflection by the Tew and Sloan families.

Caroline Sloan’s father, Edward “Ned” Sloan Jr., in recent years led the charge to find the colonel’s sword.

Her mother, Charlotte Ferguson Sloan, was from the Tew line and grew up in a Spartanburg, S.C., house with the colonel’s second surviving daughter, Ella.

“She grew up on the stories of the colonel. The family really did worship him. He was a superstar when he died. They thought on he would be president. It was crushing.”

Sloan said the family learned only in the past month about the sword’s fate and plans for its repatriation. But they agreed that The Citadel should have the sword.

“My most immediate reaction was it is terrible my mother died (in 2013) before we knew this has happened. She was very invested in this story.”

Sloan said she is pleased Goble and others are the college are celebrating Tew’s legacy.

Goble, a 1969 Citadel grad and Vietnam veteran, said he hopes events related to the sword will assist fund-raising efforts to modernize the school’s archives and museum.

Goble cited efforts by Ned Sloan, Citadel Class of 1950.

“He has truly been looking for this sword forever. This is a huge deal. For The Citadel, Charleston and the family. It is an amazing story.”

• Related: More on the life of Col. C.C. Tew

The result of a typical musket wound

When Confederate surgeons amputated Maj. Gen. Richard S. Ewell’s bullet-shattered left leg, they were anxious to prove to his young, soon-to-be stepson that the operation was life-saving. “Dr. [William A.] Robertson of La. opened the leg along the track of the ball, in order to show me they were justified in taking it off – a Dr. Launer of Ala. having objected to it – but it had been plainly a necessity,” recalled Maj. Campbell Brown, 21. • Healio article