Wreckage of Civil War Battleship Found

The wreckage of the Kearsarge, the last of the Navy’s wooden warships and victor of a famed Civil War battle against the warship Alabama, has been found in Colombian waters by a movie crew that hopes to salvage major artifacts for museum display.

The Kearsarge was a steam-and-wind powered sloop-of-war, weighing 1,031 tons, that sailed for more than three decades before running aground, on Feb. 2, 1894, on the deadly Roncador Reef about 300 miles north of the Colombian mainland.

Its most famous mission came on the direct orders of President Abraham Lincoln, who was aghast at the Alabama’s huge toll against the Union--69 merchant vessels and one warship. The Kearsarge followed the Confederate marauder to France and sank it.

The Kearsarge’s wreckage was found by a film crew that was exploring last year for sunken Spanish treasure ships.

Steven Edward Morgan, the chief executive officer of Hollywood Adventure Films & Galleon Hunters Corp., announced the discovery on Monday at the U.S. Naval Memorial Museum, near a 7-foot scale model of the Kearsarge. Materials retrieved in two visits, the last in December, were verified as artifacts from the Kearsarge by several Navy historians and private analysts, he said.