CSS Pee Dee exhibit set for Conway

The Horry County Museum has a display of artifacts recovered from the sunken CSS Pee Dee. The CSS Pee Dee was a 150-foot Macon class gunboat that was outfitted with two Brookes rifled cannon and a Union Dahlgren cannon and launched in January 1865. The Pee Dee’s career was short-lived. Fearing that the gunboat might fall into enemy hands as Gen. William T. Sherman’s Union troops moved from Columbia northward to advance on North Carolina, commanders ordered the cannons thrown overboard into the Pee Dee River before the ship was scuttled on March 15, set ablaze and blown up.

The vessel was built at the Mars Bluff Naval Yard on Pee Dee River. The Mars Bluff Naval Yard was one of a score of Confederate naval yards that were located inland in Southern states so gunboats and support vessels for the war could be built and protected from Union forces. Mars Bluff was chosen for its inland location, proximity to the railroad, and water communication with Charleston via Georgetown and the abundance of ash, oak, and pine lumber.

After being lost for many years the site and scuttled vessel were found by the CSS Pee Dee Research and Recovery Team in 1991. The team was lead by local historian and Director of the South Carolina Civil War Museum in Myrtle Beach, Ted Gragg. The team was granted permission to conduct an intensive survey from the South Carolina Institute of Anthropology and Archeology that covered one square mile of river. Since the vessel and all of the associated equipment, tools, and materials were torn up, blown up, or broken up, the excavation site yielded a variety of unusual artifacts.