Archaeologists Document Civil War Shipwreck in Gulf of Mexico

摘要

A team of marine archaeologists and technicians assembled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) began work in September to create a three-dimensional sonar map of the storm-exposed remains of the U.S. side-wheel gunboat Hatteras-the only Union warship sunk in combat in the Gulf of Mexico during the Civil War. The Hatteras, an iron-hulled steamer the U.S. Navy converted into a gunboat, was lost in a battle with the famous Confederate commerce raider Alabama on 11 January 1863, about 20 miles off Galveston, Texas, the key Southern port that changed hands twice and remained one of the last bastions of the Confederacy.