Sunken vessels near Island #10

Lost Cause

1st Lieutenant
Joined
Sep 19, 2014
Looking for information concerning recovery efforts of sunken vessels near Island #10, particularly the steamer Winchester. I read somewhere the remains of the burned Winchester were recovered decades ago under a tow head along the Winchester Chute near Donaldson Point, Mo. Thanks.

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I know most of Island Number 10 is now. They dredge that area a lot. I would not be surprised if it had not been in that area.
I have read that approx. 2/3 of the island is gone and the remaining portion is part on the southern tip of Donaldson Point. I attempted to visit there thinking the whole section was a conservation area, but found the main road on the southern end to be on private property. The other option would be by boat I guess.
 
There are two significant problems with finding anything near Island No. 10... one, of course, is that the river has changed its bed and what was river then isn't necessarily so now. (The location of the island itself is part of the land on the eastern/southern side of the river now, as I understand.) The other is that if it was anything close to a navigable channel, it would have been rapidly removed as a menace to navigation, either during the war or soon afterward.

But I don't doubt there are some interesting artifacts in the mud somewhere around there, even if the boats are long gone. I mentioned in another thread that the histories relate older cannons being shoved overboard into the river by Union gunboats when they received an issue of better ones. I would not at all be surprised if there is a rifled 42-pounder or two still buried in the mud...
 
There are two significant problems with finding anything near Island No. 10... one, of course, is that the river has changed its bed and what was river then isn't necessarily so now. (The location of the island itself is part of the land on the eastern/southern side of the river now, as I understand.) The other is that if it was anything close to a navigable channel, it would have been rapidly removed as a menace to navigation, either during the war or soon afterward.

But I don't doubt there are some interesting artifacts in the mud somewhere around there, even if the boats are long gone. I mentioned in another thread that the histories relate older cannons being shoved overboard into the river by Union gunboats when they received an issue of better ones. I would not at all be surprised if there is a rifled 42-pounder or two still buried in the mud...

Removing artifacts or anything else from the conservation area is illegal. I would also imagine the vessels were found were quickly removed and perhaps destroyed, or claimed by the river, since there seems to be no record. From Tut11’s link, Mark Twain discussed the fate of the island originally appearing in an article in 1874.
 
A friend I knew around New Madrid has a cotton field with some of Island Number 10 in it. The Union Army canal is still around also I have seen some of it. I was a curator at the museum in town. They have some interesting Civil War stuff in it as well as a lot of Mississippian artifacts.
 
A friend I knew around New Madrid has a cotton field with some of Island Number 10 in it. The Union Army canal is still around also I have seen some of it. I was a curator at the museum in town. They have some interesting Civil War stuff in it as well as a lot of Mississippian artifacts.
Quite interesting that the Union Army canal can still be seen.
 
While on the internet looking for Civil War era newspaper maps for my CWRT talk on Walke, I found a interesting map in the Cleveland Morning Leader on April 8, 186 2 page 2 column 2
 

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While on the internet looking for Civil War era newspaper maps for my CWRT talk on Walke, I found a interesting map in the Cleveland Morning Leader on April 8, 186 2 page 2 column 2

When and where will you be giving that?

I've been researching Walke for a number of years-- anything I can help out with?
 
When and where will you be giving that?

I've been researching Walke for a number of years-- anything I can help out with?

I will be giving my lecture on "Henry Walke: The Man Who Ran The Guns & Lived to Draw About" to the Nassau County (NY) CWRT on April 18 at the Bellmore Public Library.

Thanks for your offer, I think that I have more than enough to give Admiral Henry Walke the credit and justice he deserves. My lecture is already 14 pages (1.5 line spacing) with a 76 slide power-point presentation. The thing about talking to a CWRT is that there members who know just as much, if not more than you! So one must do their homework.

I came across Walke while doing research on the Fort Pickens Crisis and found Commander Walke's story worthy of a talk. I was able to copy the color plates from his deluxe edition of "Naval Scenes," which work has (it was a signed book by Walke to the Brooklyn Public Library, very cool). Living in Brooklyn, NY, I was able to copy Audrey Wright's "Romanic Painter" from the Brooklyn Historical Society and a pamphlet of his court-martial from the New York Public Library. Plus the Old Fulton Post Cards newspapers website was a great resource if you get passed its clunky search engine. I would have love to get Walke's scrapbook when it was on the market last summer. Hopefully it ends up in a library or a museum.

I am surprised that a full biography has not been done on Admiral Walke.
 

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I would have love to get Walke's scrapbook when it was on the market last summer. Hopefully it ends up in a library or a museum.

I am surprised that a full biography has not been done on Admiral Walke.

I have one of his scrapbooks that I picked up a few years ago-- it's the one I'm certain that he used as one of his sources for Naval Scenes and Reminiscences. While I've stalled on my transcription of it, once I'm done with it I plan to donate it to the Ross County (Ohio) Historical Society. :smile:

I've been working on a full bio, too... but that is similarly stalled. Gotta get moving again on it...
 
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