Muscogee County GaArchives Photo Place.....C.W. Ironclad ' Muscogee' 
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Christine Thacker http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00033.html#0008100 May 5, 2007, 11:22 pm

Source:             Sesquicentennial Supplement III, Ledger-Enquirer
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                    Naval Museum Battles Worse Than Its Ships
                                   By Ken Elkins
                                   Ledger Staff Writer

  Columbus' Confederate Naval Museum has had more battles than either of its 
two warships - the gunboat Chattahoochee or the Ironclad Muscogee could boast 
during their brief reign over the Chattahoochee River.
  The two river boats, finally scuttled and burned by their own crews as Union 
forces approached to capture Columbus, were fired upon by nothing larger than a 
muzzle-loaded rifle during the entire Civil War.
  The museum has survived something more deadly than gunfire - a funds cutoff 
and relatively low attendance over its 15 years of existence.
  But the museum, the only one of its kind in the world  housing two remnants 
of the Confederate Navy, has survived the war and there's peace forecast in the 
years to come, predicts its curator Robert Holcombe.
  Ten years will see a new land different activity at the Fourth Street museum 
which was officially renamed last year the James W. Woodruff Jr. Confederate 
Naval Museum, to honor the late Columbus communications industrialist who was 
instrumental in the salvage of the ships from their century-old river graves.
  Visitors there now see the charred wood and metal remains of two ships. It's 
hard for a spectator to visualize a 13O-foot, fully armed gunboat Chattahoochee 
from the 30-foot stern section on display. And a small section of ironclad 
Muscogee's tells sightseers little about the sleek ship.
  That will change in the coming decade, Holcombe said. There will be scale 
models of the two ships at the museum by then, he said. Then visitors can 
visualize the full-sized boats.
  Now's  the time for the museum to grow, Holcombe reasons. "The  museum has 
all the potential," he said.  
  The state cut off  funds  for the fledgling exhibit  three years ago only to 
have the city take over the responsibility.
  And attendance there has been climbing but still lags behind other museums. 
Holcombe estimated 14,000 will have visited the exhibits this year. But that 
number will grow when the museum is advertised, he believes.
  Besides, there is talk about salvaging the famed USS Monitor, of  Monitor-
Merrimac fame, which sank in a storm near Cape Hatteras, N. C.
   “And that will raise some interest in the museum," Holcombe forecasts.
   He has assembled an impressive catalogue of the Confederal Navy and answers 
demands often for information on what historians have called the "miracle of 
improvization." 


Special Sesquicentennial Supplement III 
Ledger-Enquirer, Sunday, April 30, 1978, pages S-20 



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