By Jared Samuelson
Dr. Cathryn Pearce joins the program to discuss myths and realities around Cornish Wreckers of the 18th and 19th centuries. Cathryn is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Portsmouth. She is a member of the Port Towns and Urban Cultures research team, Chair of the British Commission for Maritime History, and a Vice-President of the Society for Nautical Research.
Download Sea Control 511 – Cornish Wrecking with Dr. Cathryn Pearce
Links
1. Cornish Wrecking 1700-1860 – Reality and Popular Myth, by Cathryn Pearce, The Boydell Press, 2010.
Jared Samuelson is Co-Host and Executive Producer of the Sea Control podcast. Contact him at [email protected].
This episode was edited and produced by William McQuiston.
Early 20th century Wrecking or Harbor obstruction clearance of sunk Confererate navy Iron clad rams by the Army Corps of Engineers in Charleston Harbor, can be viewed as the handmaiden to Civil War Naval History. In the early 1920s Heny Fowels Rivers was assigned by the Army Corps of Engineers to the Charleston District, as a junior engineer surveyor. Tasked with clearing the ” Town creek channel” within the harbor, to a more navigable depth of 35 ft. at mean at ” low water”. In order to accomplish this “four Confederate” war vessels, were removed. The first of three logbooks recorded by Rivers are currently housed at the South Carolina Historical society, document the subsequent removal of these navigation obstructions, constituted by the wrecks of the CSS Palmetto State, CSS Chicora, and the CSS Charleston. The Iron clad rams Palmetto state and Chicora attacked the Union blockading fleet off Charleston on January 31st seriously damaging the USS Keystone state and the USS Mercedita in 1862. The Iron clads were later scuttled by the Confederates in Charleston harbor ” to deter Naval assistance to General Sherman in his march across South Carolina. Volume one of River’s logs sits well with in Dr. Pearce’s ” Navy and Nation ” concept mentioned within the context of her Cornish Wrecker study. Rivers observations in the course of his wreck work, lend valuable insight into advances in Naval technology, history viewed though interviews with maritime professional’s present during the demise of the historic wrecks, he’s charged with removing. Kevin Rooney