Archeologist to speak in Marion about Confederate Navy Yard findings

Christopher Amer, the state’s underwater archeologist with the University of South Carolina and the state’s Institute of Archeology and Anthropology, will give a talk in the Marion Opera House on Godbold Street about the recent findings at a Marion County Civil War Navy Yard. The talk will begin at 6:30 p.m., Marion County Archivist Maxcy Foxworth Jr., with the Marion County Archives and History Center, said. Foxworth said he is hoping area residents, especially those in Marion County, will turn out for the presentation.

Since the late 1990s, area divers with the Pee Dee Search and Recovery group, USC underwater archeologists and now field studies students from the East Carolina University’s Maritime Studies program, have worked to locate artifacts from vessels that were sunk in the Great Pee Dee River.

From 1863-1865 there was an active navy ship building yard at the Mars Bluff, Marion County, site. Locating where the Mars Bluff Naval Yard once stood on in Marion County, divers are bringing up artillery shells and other items, such as a late 19th century “relish” bottle. The bottle, Amer, said is another clue to life along the banks of the Pee Dee River. He made his remarks this past week near what is believed to be the site of the navy yard.

Amer and State Archaeologist and Research Associate Professor Jon Leader began work in April on the project that calls for locating, documenting and raising three cannon, each weighing upwards of five tons, that were once aboard the C.S.S. Pee Dee, a gun boat built at the Mars Bluff yard. Amer said the underwater research has been successful, despite high water, a swift current and low visibility.

More on the project and its discoveries, see Page1B. For more on the presentation, call Foxworth at 431-5024.

Among the several shells located and documented by East Carolina University Maritime Studies students and University of South Carolina Institute of Archeology and Anthropology underwater archeologists at the Mars Bluff Navy Yard in Marion County is this 7 inch artillery shell. Above is a photograph of a clean 6.4” round. Below, the shell is in its “concreted” condition. The iron of the shell and the sand of the Pee Dee River have interacted for nearly 134 years, creating the concrete casing, after a Civil War era gun boat, its guns and ammunition were scuttled in 1865.