Farragut's Flagship

Being a shipwreck enthusiast and even professional of sorts in the field, it made a strange sort of sense to plan a trip to Oklahoma City in order to experience Odyssey Marine’s Shipwreck! exhibit at the Museum of Science there. The exhibit combines a vast array of artifacts from several different wrecks with interactive technology highlighting Odyssey’s state of the art salvage techniques and equipment.

Of primary interest was their discovery of the S.S. Republic, a sidewheel steamer sunk by a hurricane off the coast of Georgia in 1865. Built in Baltimore in 1953 as the Tennessee, it operated as a merchant vessel, eventually becoming the first Baltimore steamship to cross the Atlantic. The Tennessee also claimed the title of the first passenger steamship providing regular service between New York and Central America.

Serving as a blockade runner for the Confederacy during the Civil War, the C.S.S. Tennessee was captured by the U.S. Navy following the siege of New Orleans - during which Admiral David Farragut's famous order "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" was given - and became Farragut's flagship for the remainder of that campaign. Farragut, adopted son of Commodore David Porter (a hero and villain of local Key West history ) will be revisited and more thoroughly examined in a later entry.

Following further service as the U.S.S. Tennessee in the blockade of the Gulf of Mexico and the assault on Ft. Morgan in Mobile Bay, the ship was renamed the U.S.S. Mobile. Shortly hereafter, she was damaged in a hurricane near the mouth of the Rio Grande and decommissioned. Sold at auction, repaired and renamed, the S.S. Republic resumed her career as a passenger steamship on the route twixt New York and New Orleans. On October 25th, 1865 - the fifth day of her fifth journey, she succumbed to the strength of a hurricane off the coast of Georgia.
The Republic was carrying not only passengers and commodities, but also a cargo of cold, hard cash sorely needed to aid in the reconstruction of the war-torn South. Over $400,000 in gold and silver coins was lost with the ship.

In August of 2003, Odyssey Marine Exploration discovered what was left of the S.S. Republic 100 miles southeast of Savannah in over 1700 feet of water. Their salvage yielded over 51,000 coins (approximately 1/3 of the original cargo) with an estimated value of $75 million and over 14,000 unique and varied artifacts. A vast assortment of these items are included in the Shipwreck! exhibit alongside touch-screens and talking kiosks that tell the story of the Republic and other wrecks.