Faber-Castell, Lea & Perrins, E. R. Squibb, and Goodyear Rubber. What do these companies have in common? In existence since at least the Civil War era, each manufactured items recovered from the Union ironclad gunboat USS Cairo, which was raised from the muddy bottom of the Yazoo River in 1964. More than a century earlier, on 12 December 1862, the ship had sunk only 12 minutes after Confederates ashore electrically detonated two torpedoes alongside her.
Although the Cairo's war record was disappointing for the Union, what she took with her when she went down has proved a boon to historians. Because she sank so quickly, crewmen were unable to save most of their belongings. The personal artifacts subsequently recovered—items such as pencils, bottles of Worcestershire sauce, medicine bottles, combs, and buttons—provide glimpses into the everyday life of the Civil War Sailor.
A normal day for the Cairo's 175 officers and crewmen began at 0530, when they were awakened. For the crew it included scrubbing and swabbing the decks, drilling on the guns, and preparing for and being inspected. The Sailors were responsible for maintaining their uniforms, which included washing and mending them. For the latter, they had sewing kits, called "housewives"—usually small tin canisters containing pins, needles, linen thread, spare buttons, and thimbles. As well as housewives, scissors of all sizes were recovered from the Cairo.
Conservators found several different types of buttons on board, including black, hard-rubber U.S. Navy enlisted pea-coat buttons manufactured by the Novelty Rubber Company of New York. The most prevalent buttons discovered, however, were durable, three-piece brass military shell buttons made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company in Waterbury, Connecticut.
The varied backgrounds of the men who served in her made the Cairo a virtual melting pot afloat. Some members of the crew had previously served in the artillery, infantry, or cavalry, and as a result of their diverse backgrounds, did not wear a standard uniform. Many of the men simply continued to wear the uniform from whichever branch of service they had previously served. Therefore, in addition to U.S. Navy shell buttons, U.S. infantry, cavalry, and Army general service ones were discovered in the ironclad.
The typical Cairo crewman was a Caucasian, five feet seven inches tall with brown hair and blue eyes. While the average age was 26, the youngest on board was 15-year-old First Class Boy George Yost from Illinois, and the oldest was 64-year-old Quartermaster Thomas Kennedy from New York.
A third of the crewmen were immigrants, mostly from Ireland, England, Germany, Canada, Denmark, France, Scotland, and Sweden. As was the case on board other Mississippi River gunboats, most of the men were new to Navy life and learned the ropes as they went along. A Sailor in one of the Cairo's sister ships, the USS Carondelet, wrote, "If you are ignorant of your duties, it is nothing more than is the case with everyone, with the exception only of the captain and a few eastern officers."
Inspection was a very important time of day on board the gunboats, and penalties for enlisted men found to be unclean included being ordered to strip and then being scrubbed down with sand and brushes by fellow Sailors. Consequently, conservators discovered many grooming articles among the Cairo's remains, including combs, hairbrushes, toothbrushes, razors, shaving mugs, mirrors, and soap. Six-inch-long, black, hard-rubber combs were among the most significant Cairo discoveries, according to collectors of government-issue Civil War artifacts. Stamped U.S. Navy on one side and I. R. Comb Co Goodyear's Patent May 6, 1851 on the other, they were manufactured by the Amerace Corporation, which produces today's common ACE combs.
In their spare time on board the Cairo, many of the crewmen wrote letters to loved ones or perhaps read letters to or wrote them for others who were not so literate. Although no letters or writing paper survived, the Sailors' pencils did. Most of the ones found on board the gunboat were imprinted A. W. FABER NO. 2. The manufacturer is now known as the Faber-Castell Corporation and still produces pencils as well as erasers, drawing materials, ink, markers, and pens.
Meals on board the ironclad were usually served three times a day. The enlisted men were divided into and ate by messes of about 13 men, and each mess was assigned a wooden chest in which to store its tin plates and cups and spoons. Each Sailor, however, was responsible for his own eating gear, so those who could write would inscribe their names or initials on their items and the illiterate men marked theirs with particular symbols to indicate ownership. For example, a spoon inscribed POH belonged to Peter O. Hill, a Norwegian-born Cairo Sailor.
The large number of pepper sauce and mustard bottles retrieved from the Cairo indicates that the Sailors' meals, which consisted mainly of salted beef or pork and beans, needed some spicing up. Bottles of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce, still a popular condiment, were also discovered on board the ironclad.
While the enlisted men ate their meals wherever they could find a place to sit or stand, the Cairo's 17 officers dined in a separate mess area and ate off fine white ironstone china, much of it manufactured by J. Wedgwood. Their meals were accompanied by wine and champagne as well as soft drinks manufactured by J. H. Kump of Memphis, Tennessee. Bottles of each were found in the Cairo during her recovery.
Given the Sailors' diet and the fever-inducing locales where the Cairo operated, it should be no surprise that many medicine bottles of various types were recovered from the ironclad. The raised letters of the name E. R. Squibb were on several of the bottles; while one of them contained distilled water, another held potassium chlorate, a popular Civil War-era drug. The Bristol-Myers Squibb Corporation, of course, presently produces not only pharmaceutical supplies but also health-care products, fragrances, cosmetics, and diabetic supplies.
While researchers recovered thousands of artifacts from the Cairo, they did not find any human remains; the gunboat sank without loss of life. Thankfully for present-day Civil War historians as well as buffs, in the 12 minutes after she was torpedoed her Sailors were more concerned with saving themselves than their personal belongings.
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USS Cairo
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