Tracking Alligator, the Civil War Mystery
Edward Colimore
Philadelphia Inquirer
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Riverside, Delaware (US):
One of the searchers fell in the mud, breaking a metal detector and losing his footwear. He turned back wearing only his socks.Others barely escaped muck up to their knees but pushed on yesterday through the jungle of cattails and duckweeds, hoping to solve a 140-year-old mystery: What happened to a Civil War submarine once stored along the Rancocas Creek at Riverside?
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See Archive:
In Search of a 145 Year Old Civil War Submarine
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The small party of amateur history sleuths in the marsh and others in kayaks headed to a narrow tributary where the sub was believed to have been abandoned in the 1860s.And by the end of their arduous, sometimes scary two-hour search, they came away with a tantalizing discovery: a large 35-foot cigar-shaped mound of sand, mimicking the sub's shape and size.
It was apparently created by a solid object, causing a bend in the shallow tributary. A return trip with metal-detecting equipment and ground probes is planned, the searchers said.
"Wow! That's where I used to play in the 1960s," said Richard Pattanite, 49, a Delran resident and vice president of the Riverside Historical Society.
"There was a cylinder there but we didn't know what it was."The search efforts came as the Independence Seaport Museum at Penn's Landing plans to hold a national symposium from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Tuesday on the Navy's first submarine, the USS Alligator, a Union vessel that sank off the coast of Hatteras, N.C., and the object of a search by the Navy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration over the summer.
The vessel being sought at Riverside is the 33-foot prototype of the Alligator.
Nov 06, 2005
Edward Colimore
Philadelphia Inquirer
________________
Riverside, Delaware (US):
One of the searchers fell in the mud, breaking a metal detector and losing his footwear. He turned back wearing only his socks.Others barely escaped muck up to their knees but pushed on yesterday through the jungle of cattails and duckweeds, hoping to solve a 140-year-old mystery: What happened to a Civil War submarine once stored along the Rancocas Creek at Riverside?
______________________________
See Archive:
In Search of a 145 Year Old Civil War Submarine
______________________________
The small party of amateur history sleuths in the marsh and others in kayaks headed to a narrow tributary where the sub was believed to have been abandoned in the 1860s.And by the end of their arduous, sometimes scary two-hour search, they came away with a tantalizing discovery: a large 35-foot cigar-shaped mound of sand, mimicking the sub's shape and size.
It was apparently created by a solid object, causing a bend in the shallow tributary. A return trip with metal-detecting equipment and ground probes is planned, the searchers said.
"Wow! That's where I used to play in the 1960s," said Richard Pattanite, 49, a Delran resident and vice president of the Riverside Historical Society.
"There was a cylinder there but we didn't know what it was."The search efforts came as the Independence Seaport Museum at Penn's Landing plans to hold a national symposium from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Tuesday on the Navy's first submarine, the USS Alligator, a Union vessel that sank off the coast of Hatteras, N.C., and the object of a search by the Navy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration over the summer.
The vessel being sought at Riverside is the 33-foot prototype of the Alligator.
Nov 06, 2005
