The USS Carondelet and Manchester, Ohio

For years she sat patiently waiting to be rediscovered. She served her nation well in the war and it was time she received the care and attention she deserved.  This mighty ironclad gunboat fought in more engagements than any other ship (until WWII) but she was perilously close to being dismantled and forgotten. As fate would have it a flood rescued her from her demise, floating her down the Ohio River from where she was docked at Gallipolis, Ohio until she came to rest at the base of one of the three islands by Manchester, Ohio. There she rested, undisturbed for over 109 years, slowly succumbing to her watery grave. 

All was not lost for the USS Carondelet for members of the National Underwater and Marine Agency founded by Dr. Clive Cussler were on their way.  

I wish I could say there was a happy ending to this story. There is not.  The following passage is from the account of the above mentioned agency and their hunt for the ironclad ship.

“As it turned out, we were right on the money. We were also two days too late.

As our boat rounded the eastern tip of the island, there sat the biggest god damned dredge boat we’d ever seen in our lives. The thing was four stories high-and she had recently dredged her way directly over the grave of the Carondelet.
We didn’t even bother dropping the gradiometer, but headed straight for the dredge where we tied up and talked to the superintendent. He showed us some old wood and rusty hardware his crew had retrieved out of the dredge buckets. They thought they had simply dug over an old barge. They were stunned when I told them they had demolished one of the most famous Civil war ships that ever sailed a river.”  Source

USS Carondelet (1862-1865)

USS Carondelet was a 512-ton Cairo class ironclad river gunboat built in Carondelet, Missouri (now incorporated into Saint Louis) for the U.S. Army's Western Gunboat Flotilla. She was the first of seven “City Class” ironclad gunboats built by James B. Eads & Co. at Union Marine Works (AKA Union Iron Works or Marine Railway).

Commissioned in January 1862 Carondelet quickly entered combat taking part in the captures of Forts Henry and Donelson, Tennessee, in February of 1862. In March and April she participated in the campaign to capture the Confederate fortress at Island Number Ten on the Mississippi River. This was followed by operations against Fort Pillow and Memphis, Tennessee.

The Carondelet then spent much of the following year in the long campaign against Vicksburg, Mississippi. On 15 July 1862 she was badly damaged in an engagement with the Confederate ironclad Arkansas on the Yazoo River.

In April 1863, Carondelet was a member of the ironclad force that ran past Vicksburg and later bombarded Grand Gulf, Mississippi. In May she participated in the extensive bombardments of Vicksburg, part of the combined Army-Navy operations that led to that fortified city's surrender on July 4, 1863. 

The USS Carondelet was decommissioned in June 1865 and then sold at auction in November of that year.