Civil War Steamer Discovered Off N.C.

By Joan Wenner · Originally published May 2016 · p. 18

WILMINGTON, N.C. – The North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources Office of Archaeology-Underwater announced a 225foot Civil War-era iron-hulled blockade runner has been found about 27 miles downstream from Wilmington near Fort Caswell at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, and the first such find in decades. Due to its size, researchers believe that it is the wreck of the Scottish-built Agnes E. Fry, one of three sidewheel steamers lost. Part of the Union’s tightening grip along the North Carolina coast to impede navigation and particularly to block the flow of Confederate supplies at the major port of Wilmington on the banks of the Cape Fear River. Originally settled in the 1700s and where columns of Cox’s conquering Federals strutted up Market Street, today the Lower Cape Fear Historical Society in the restored Latimer House keeps guard downtown. A routine sonar sweep in late February revealed the remarkably preserved state of the vessel with diving for examining as weather permits. The operations are part of a project funded by the National Park Service through the American Battlefield Protection Program. Researchers aboard the Research Vessel Atlantic Surveyor initially recorded the sunken steamer and students from the East Carolina University Maritime Studies Program (who several years ago conserved shells from the CSS Neuse) will assist in gathering data. Changing conditions in the area in recent years have revealed large portions of wrecks to be revealed 18 to 20 feet below the surface, rising 6-8 feet from the sand and protruding that much below, said

Side-scan sonar photo of the Civil War wreck.

Billy Ray Morris, state Director of the Underwater Archaeology Branch and Deputy State ArchaeologistUnderwater, told media sources when discovered. As identification proceeds to confirm the vessel as the Agnes E. Fry, it could also possibly shed light on her advanced British engine technology of the day; he said, The Official Records of the Union Navy note Federal officials writing these blockade runners were far faster than Union cruisers could catch. Identification could also confirm, said Morris, that the Fry’s crew ran her aground rather than let the ship fall into enemy hands. The same was done with the famous blockade running “ghost ship” Georgianna when Confederate field artillery batteries destroyed her rather than let her be boarded when Union landing parties tried fetching her cargo of military stores when her captain ran her aground off the South Carolina coast. Some of the blockade running steamers were able to carry 1,440-bales payloads of cotton on runs to Cuba and Bermuda and Nassau with total cargoes valued up to $400,000. The iron-hulled Britannia, for example, had early on (before captured as a prize) made several successful runs with munitions, war supplies, and other commerce through the blockade at Wilmington at the Cape Fear Inlet. Other vessels of this type built in Britain for the Confederacy were to be sent as blockade runners and fitted out as warships upon their arrival, thus serving two purposes. Some, however, were completed too late in the war to be of any real use to the Confederacy.

By Nancy Jennis Olds