Found: The Alexander Hamilton
Some seeping oil has led to the discovery of one of the first U.S. warships sunk after the United States entered World War II. On 7 July 2009, an Icelandic Coast Guard aircraft using new pollution-detection equipment spotted traces of an oil leak. The coast guard dispatched a survey ship equipped with a multibeam side-scan sonar to look for unidentified wrecks in the vicinity. The resulting data revealed a ship about 90 meters long lying in about 100 meters of water. It was suspected that she was the USCGC Alexander Hamilton (WPG-34), lost to a U-boat some 67 years ago, but the data was not of high-enough resolution for a positive identification.
An Icelandic cutter, the EAgir, with equipment and technicians from autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) manufacturer Hafmynd Ehf on board, took a closer look using both AUV and remotely operated vehicles. When the data from this 31 August mission was compared with dry-dock photos of the cutter's hull, it was determined that the wreck was indeed the Alexander Hamilton.
After being struck by a torpedo from the U-132 on 29 January 1942, the cutter capsized while under tow and sank the next day barely ten miles from safety. The torpedo had ripped into the Alexander Hamilton's starboard side, exploding between the boiler and engine rooms, killing the seven men in those spaces and mortally wounding six more. Another 13 died on board from injuries or severe burns. The explosion knocked out all power and destroyed three of the ship's seven boats. The wounded were loaded in the remaining boats and ferried to other ships. The destroyer USS Gwin (DD-433) later rescued the remainder of the 186 survivors.
In addition to being the first U.S. warship sunk in the Atlantic after the 7 December 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, the Alexander Hamilton remains the only U.S. war grave in Icelandic territory, about 46 miles northwest of Reykjavik and 14 miles off the coast.
Important Confederate Discoveries
Archaeologists from the University of South Carolina and East Carolina University have located two large cannon—a 6.4-inch Brooke rifle and a 9-inch Dahlgren smoothbore—from a sunken Confederate gunboat in South Carolina's Great Pee Dee River. They also have identified where the nearby Mars Bluff Naval Yard was once located, on the east side of the river about ten miles from Florence. State underwater archaeologist Christopher Amer and state archaeologist and research associate professor Jon Leader began work 30 April on the project to locate and raise three cannon that were once on board the CSS Pee Dee and determine the location of the naval yard where the gunboat had been built.
Amer noted, "We have not as yet located the 7-inch Brooke Rifle but hope that it is one of the magnetic anomalies that showed up on our magnetometer survey of the Great Pee Dee River adjacent to the Mars Bluff Confederate Navy Yard site."
A variety of objects, including ceramics, glass, and nails, provide clues to the location of specific buildings and areas of activity at the naval yard, which operated as a Confederate stronghold from 1862 to 1865. The yard was one of a score that were located inland on Southern rivers so gunboats and support vessels could be built and protected from Union forces. Mars Bluff was chosen for its proximity to the Wilmington & Manchester Railroad and the abundance of ash, oak, and pine lumber. "Our underwater work hasn't been easy," Amer said. Despite high, near-flood-level water in the river, the researchers have raised two 7-inch and four 6.4-inch Brooke shells and located pilings from the dock where vessels were outfitted.
The CSS Pee Dee was a 150-foot Macon-class gunboat built and launched at Mars Bluff in January 1865. Her career was short-lived. Fearing that the gunboat might fall into enemy hands as Major General William Tecumseh Sherman's Union troops moved from Columbia northward toward North Carolina, commanders ordered the cannon thrown overboard before the ship was scuttled on 15 March, set ablaze, and blown up.
Plans call for the cannon and artifacts recovered from the naval yard and associated with the Pee Dee to be preserved at conservation laboratories at Francis Marion University. They will then be exhibited at the Florence County Museum.
Laffey in Drydock
The "Ship That Would Not Die" is getting a second chance. The World War II destroyer Laffey (DD-724) was towed in late August from her mooring at the Patriots Point Maritime Museum near Charleston, South Carolina, to a dry-dock for some much-need repairs after more than 100 leaks appeared in her hull last winter. A last-minute emergency state loan of $9.2 million allowed the Patriots Point Development Authority to get the historic destroyer a date in the repair yard. If all goes well, the work should be completed by late November, and the Laffey will go back on display at the museum, where she's been open to the public since 1981.
The Laffey's move, by tug and tow up the Cooper River to Detyens Shipyard, went without a hitch. The only scare for the skeleton crew on board was the sudden bang of a loose door slamming shut, sending a gunshot echo through the ship's bowels.
"Popcorn dry," Joe Lombardi, a marine surveyor and consultant from Ocean Technical Services, reported of conditions below decks.
The repair work includes rebuilding the ship's structural beams and hull plating on the destroyer's lower sections. With good maintenance, the fix should keep her shipshape as a museum site for another 20 years.
The optimism is a far cry from fears raised just a few months ago by members of the non-profit group dedicated to saving the Laffey when in-wash from Charleston Harbor was a real threat. "When we were here in December and saw the water coming in, we thought she was gone," said Sonny Walker, president of the Laffey Association, who served on the ship in the 1960s. "It was like visiting your mother who was in the hospital with a terminal illness," he added.
Patriots Point staff first noticed the leaks in October 2008. The number of emergency patches soon reached 115. At its worst, 3,000 gallons of seawater flooded into the ship every hour.
Normally berthed next to the aircraft carrier Yorktown (CV-10), the destroyer is most famous for a single day of action off Okinawa. On 16 April 1945, 22 Japanese bombers and kamikaze planes pounced the ship. Five of the kamikazes smashed into the vessel, and three bombs hit home, killing 31 and wounding 71 of the 336-man crew. Eleven of the attackers were shot down. The tin can limped to safety and was later widely honored.
In August, some of the ship's veterans were on hand to watch the Laffey make the four-mile trip from Patriots Point to Detyens Shipyard in North Charleston. Dan Essing, 85, of Queens, New York, joined the ship right after her commissioning in Bath, Maine, in early 1944. He remembers being assigned to convoy duty in the Atlantic, serving in the D-Day invasion of Normandy, and chasing the rising sun in the Pacific.
"Plenty of memories, good ones and bad ones," he recalled. The bad ones included when the Laffey's crew picked up "survivors from other [tin] cans that got sunk" and seeing dead soldiers floating in the English Channel on D-Day.
Walker said he would miss seeing the ship while repairs go on behind the shipyard gate. But he put his trust in the much-needed work that the Laffey would come out much better off. "We know her heart is beating just as hard as ours are," he said.
Showdown on the Delaware
On Christmas night 1776, George Washington used a makeshift navy to cross the ice-clogged Delaware River and turn the course of the American Revolution. Today, another revolution is brewing at the site of the crossing, aimed at reversing years of neglect at a Pennsylvania state park created in 1917 to honor Washington's pivotal act of bravery.
"This is a damned disgrace!" said Michael T. Etzrodt, president of the Bucks County Conference and Visitors Bureau, before a packed meeting last spring at the Washington Crossing Historic Park's visitors' center. Retired Army Colonel Larry Rubini agreed. "We are talking about decades of neglect, not months. There is no excuse for treating the first defenders of this country in such a way." Gregory Irwin, professor of military history at Temple University, put it in stark terms: "This is a third-world presentation."
Things have gotten so bad that steps to the visitors' center are crumbling and the roof is a sieve, requiring buckets to collect rainwater inside. The smell of mold dominates the center's 400-seat theater, with its broken seats on a floor stripped bare. A film once shown in the theater is now viewed on a television in an anteroom with folding chairs. Outside, a reflecting pond surrounded by Colonial flags has been filled in with grass to save money. A nearby mechanized pole for flying the American flag malfunctioned long ago, leaving the Stars and Stripes aloft to rot until reduced to tatters. Meanwhile, ugly gray trailers were moved to the front of the center to serve as office space. As if matters couldn't get worse, an ongoing state budget crisis threatens closure of the entire 500-acre park with its observation tower and burial grounds of more than a dozen of Washington's Soldiers.
The significance of the Delaware crossing, which draws an estimated 500,000 visitors annually, only underscores the outrage. It was here that Washington risked everything by launching a surprise holiday attack on British-aligned Hessian mercenary forces controlling Trenton, New Jersey. At the time, the general's Continental Army was demoralized, its Soldiers deserting in growing numbers, after a series of stinging defeats in New York and New Jersey.
Washington had to find some way to give his Soldiers hope. So in a bold move, he cobbled together large, flat-bottomed river boats that he hid from enemy view behind an island on the Pennsylvania side of the river. Throughout Christmas night, the general and his 2,400 Soldiers, under the battle cry "Victory or Death," crossed over to New Jersey amid ice floes, high winds, sleet, and snow. They marched six miles downriver and attacked at dawn, killing 22 enemy troops, wounding 98, and taking 1,000 prisoners. It was a stunning victory that shocked Europe and re-energized the Revolution that eventually triumphed in October 1781 with the British surrender at Yorktown. In conceding defeat, General Charles Cornwallis raised a toast to General Washington: "When the illustrious part Your Excellency has borne in the long and arduous contest becomes a matter of history, fame will gather your brightest laurels rather from the banks of the Delaware than from those on the Chesapeake."
Now, 228 years later, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission is taking the hit over conditions at Washington Crossing park. A heavy-handed bureaucracy has discouraged volunteer groups, leaving it the only historical park in the state without supporters to raise funds and help maintain facilities. Added to that is a 30-year legacy of budget shortfalls that has led to a steady deterioration of buildings and grounds. When the commission announced last spring it might be forced to close the visitors' center and sell off portions of the park, the community rallied. Under pressure, the agency is trying to fast-track a $4.2 million rehabilitation of the center that was authorized six years ago but never carried out. Some wonder if the money will be enough. Meanwhile, Bucks Congressman Patrick Murphy and state Representative Scott Petri, who lives near the park and now serves on the commission, are organizing community volunteers. Recently, the Pennsylvania Heritage Society started a Washington Crossing fundraising campaign, and the newly created eponymous 2026 Foundation is seeking grants and endowments to improve the park in time for the 250th anniversary of the crossing in 2026. Also, students in Bucks County schools have placed posters in the visitors' center urging donations to "Save Washington Crossing."
Representative Petri's wife, Ellen, took a symbolic first step. She obtained a new American flag to replace the tattered one flying outside the visitor's center. Her husband said: "This community has been promised over and over again that this site is going to be taken care of and that it is going to be restored. And it hasn't been. I think we all have to pull together and figure out how to try to make it happen and to do it right."