CSS Chattahoochee
Ship's engines and lower portion of the after hull, photographed following recovery in the vicinity of Columbus, Georgia, circa the early or middle 1960s |
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| History | |
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| Name: | Chattahoochee |
| Laid down: | Saffold, Georgia |
| Fate: | Scuttled to prevent capture |
| General characteristics | |
| Length: | 150 ft (46 m) |
| Beam: | 25 ft (7.6 m) |
| Draft: | 8 ft (2.4 m) |
| Speed: | 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph) |
| Complement: | 120 officers and crew |
| Armament: | 4 32-pounder smoothbore cannon, a 32-pounder rifled cannon and a 9-inch smoothbore cannon |
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CSS Muscogee and Chattahoochee
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| NRHP Reference # | 70000212 |
| Added to NRHP | May 13, 1970 |
CSS Chattahoochee was a twin-screw steam powered gunboat built at Saffold, Georgia; she was christened for the river upon which she was built. The gunboat entered Confederate States Navy service in February 1863.
Chattahoochee was plagued by machinery failures, one of which, a boiler explosion on 27 May 1863, killed 18 as she preparing to sail from her anchorage at Blountstown, Florida. Once there, Chattahoochee's crew were going to attempt to retake the Confederate schooner CSS Fashion, captured by the Union Navy. On 10 June 1864 she was towed to Columbus, Georgia for general repairs and the installation of engines and a boiler reclaimed from the fatally wrecked ironclad CSS Raleigh.
While undergoing those repairs at Columbus, 11 of her officers and 50 of her crew tried unsuccessfully to capture the Union ship Adela blockading Apalachicola, Florida. USS Somerset drove off the raiders, capturing much of their equipment.
When the Confederates abandoned the Apalachicola River in December 1864, Chattahoochee was moved up the Chattahoochee River; she was later scuttled near Columbus to avoid capture, just as Union troops approached the city.
Chattahooche lay underwater until 1963, when her sunken remains were found within the boundaries of Fort Benning. They later were raised and a portion of her hull and her original steam engines once more returned to her home in Columbus, where they were placed on display at the National Civil War Naval Museum. Because she was scuttled and lay submerged for a century, Chattahoochee is the only Confederate Navy gunboat that survived to the modern era.
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Wikipedia