There was a neat find near Savannah this month:
Archeologists working for the Army Corps of Engineers, Savannah District, aided by divers and salvage operations teams from the Navy, retrieved a 64-square-foot section of a Civil War ironclad warship from the bottom of the Savannah River, the evening of Nov. 12.
The divers worked in strong currents with near-zero visibility during a week to assess the possibility of lifting a small piece of the Confederate ship’s casemate for archeological testing.
A crane lifted it onto a barge anchored near historic Old Fort Jackson on the eastern edge of Savannah. Experts estimate the piece weighs more than 5,000 pounds.
FIVE THOUSAND POUNDS. For a “SMALL PIECE… of the casement.” This helps put the ironclads into some more perspective, though clearly I need a lot more to fully grasp how heavy these behemoths were.