The USS CAIRO and her six sister ships ruled the Mississippi during the Civil war. Known as "City-Class" gunships, the CAIRO and her sisters bristled with 13 guns and were the first ironclad warships commissioned by the United States.
The USS CAIRO sank in the Yazoo River in 1862, 7 miles north of Vicksburg, while on a mission to clear Confederate mines from the water and destroy Confederate batteries on the bluffs. As she sailed upriver, CAIRO hit a Confederate mine. The explosion ripped a hole in her wooden hull, and she sank in 12 minutes - remarkably with no loss of life.
She settled into the ooze and soon was covered up and forgotten.
By the 1950s, CAIRO has been buried and forgotten for nearluy 90 years - but she was not completely out of mind. Vicksburg Park Superintendent Ed Bearss (you can see him on Ken Burns's BRILLIANT documentary "The Civil War") would hear a tale from some old boy claiming to have found the remains of the CAIRO. Bearss always doubted these claims, since the claimed locations did not match up with what he knew of the CAIRO's operations.
In 1956, Bearss and two friends, Don Jacks and Warren Grabau, decided to find the CAIRO once and for all. Bearss scoured Union and Confederate records for clues, and finally thought they had her general location identified. Armed with a picket compass and some iron bars to stick in the thick river mud, they went out and found what they thought had to be the CAIRO.
Their discovery was confirmed in 1959, when divers dove on the site and found iron artifacts that were unquestionably from the CAIRO.
The process of recovering the CAIRO had its ups and downs over the next six years, as the ship was raised from its muddy environment and brought on barges to Pascagoula MS to be preserved and stabilized.
Finally in 1977, 20 years after Bearss, Jacks, and Grabau discovered her, the USS CAIRO was returned to Vicksburg National Military Park and placed on public display.
A sign at the parking lot of the USS CAIRO Museum documents her status as "Last of her kind." the sign reads as follows:
"LAST OF ITS KIND
On December 12, 1862, the ironclad boat CAIRO was sunk in the Yazoo River while mine-clearing. The vessel was found in 1956. It was raised, restored, and relocated here. The CAIRO is the only remaining ironclad of its type in existence.
The first use of an ironclad gunboat in battle made every other wooden warship in the world obsolete. Both North and South rushed to build these deadly new vessels, but the North's industrial might gave the Union the advantage. The CAIRO and her six sister boats dominated the Mississippi."
Blasterz (US Navy Persian Gulf war veterans) respectfully take issue with the National Park Service's nomenclature with regard to the USS CAIRO. She is not a "boat" -- she is a SHIP. Submarines are boats. So are small wooden floating vessels like skiffs, canoes, and yachts. The CAIRO is a US Navy ironclad ship of war - she is NOT a BOAT!!
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