Long-Lost Ship May Surrender Civil War Secrets

By: KEITH MORELLI
Media General News Service
Published: May 23, 2008

TAMPA — On an October night 145 years ago, the Kate Dale, a sleek sloop made of live oak and pine, lay at anchor beneath the cypress trees in the Hillsborough River just north of what is now Lowry Park, its hold full of cotton for a stealthy voyage to Cuba.

The Confederate States used the boat, owned by Tampa maritime pioneer Capt. James McKay, to ship stores to Caribbean ports to fund the Confederacy, which a few months earlier had suffered a crippling defeat at the small Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg.

While Tampa did not play a large part in the cause, rebel actions here did not go unnoticed by the Union.

So, in the dead of night on Oct. 16, 1863, while the Yankees shelled Fort Brooke near downtown Tampa as a diversion, a kind of special operations force of about 100 federal troops was put ashore near Ballast Point.

They made their way north along the river to where the Kate Dale and another blockade runner named the Scottish Chief were moored. A skirmish ensued and the two vessels were overrun, burned and sunk.

A lot of murky water has passed over the Kate Dale’s remains since that night, but not enough to dim the attention of Billy Morris, an archaeologist in charge of researching the wreckage. On Thursday, Morris, dressed in a black wetsuit, barked orders to a handful of divers treading water.

For years, mystery has surrounded oak ribs of the 19th century sloop, reaching as they have for the surface, sometimes poking through during low tide. Most people only ever imagined they were the remains of an old dock. Now, Morris is betting they are not.

“I would never say that I’m 100 percent sure,” he said, “but it’s probably the blockade runner Kate Dale.” That’s about definitive as he will get on the record, but the way he says it lets you know what he thinks.

Of course, for river rats who have lived here for generations, the revelation that there is a sunken Civil War-era ship at the Lowry Park site is nothing new at all.

The Tampa Tribune wrote in 1982 about Calvin “Poppa” Taylor, a treasure hunter of sorts who claimed to have gotten inside information from a descendent of McKay, revealing the location of sunken treasure. The story includes a photo of Taylor posing with a steering wheel he says was from the Kate Dale or the Scottish Chief.

Taylor said he got the wheel during a dive he made in the 1960s, and for years told everyone he had found the Scottish Chief.

“You’ll find them out there, sunk deep in the mud and the silt,” Taylor told the Tribune at the time. “The hulls are still there, buried along the bank. But it’s just too damn dirty to see.”

Researchers were aware of Taylor’s claims and used that information, along with information from people living along the river and data collected from sophisticated sonar equipment, to pinpoint where the ship’s wreckage lies, said Tom Wagner, spokesman for The Florida Aquarium, which is coordinating funding for the archaeological project.

Beams Seen Before

The Kate Dale and the Scottish Chief belonged to Capt. McKay, for whom McKay Bay is named, and both were in the business of smuggling, most likely cotton, to help operate and provision the confederacy, Morris said.

Nobody knows for sure, but legend has it that the Scottish Chief was towed downriver to the bay where its steam engine was pulled and installed in another ship. The Kate Dale, burned hull and all, was left behind to begin its long descent into the muck of the river bottom, less than a half mile north of the Sligh Avenue bridge.

About a third of the 80-foot-long vessel is there, lying across the bottom in depths from just a few feet along the banks to about 15 feet in the middle. The rest of the vessel could have rotted away, or been carried away by the currents, or been salvaged by residents, Morris said.

The find is significant because it’s the only blockade runner ever found in Florida’s waters. Federal warships hovered around prominent southern ports during the war, trying to strangle the South’s economy by attacking merchant ships and seizing cargo or sinking them.

“It shows that there was Civil War activity going on around here,” he said. “This is pretty significant.”

For years, rivergoers and people living along the banks noticed beams sticking up during low tide, but thought nothing of it. Two years ago, as part of an archaeology grant, The Florida Aquarium launched an underwater mapping project that included researching any sunken vessels of historical significance.

Archaeologists mapped much of the bay and the Hillsborough River up to the spillway near Rowlett Park, Morris said. This was the only find, he said. From the beginning, he suspected it was the Kate Dale.

It was where available records said it was sunk and the submerged hull shows evidence of burning, he said.

Boat Will Remain In River

During the next two weeks, divers will map the vessel in excruciating detail, taking tedious-but-exact measurements. Thursday, they were vacuuming silt from one section to see what was underneath. Visibility in the river at that spot is zero, Morris said.

Divers have to measure beams with tapes and then surface to see exactly what the dimensions are. It’s demanding, often boring work, but they’re buoyed by uncovering something of historical significance, he said.

There are no immediate plans to pull the delicate rotting hull out of the muck. After taking measurements, recording information and checking historical and nautical records, the archaeologists will replace the mud, Morris said. The hull will remain where it has been for nearly a century and a half.

But the story of the Kate Dale will live on, most likely in a colorful exhibit at the aquarium two to three years from now, said spokesman Tom Wagner.

“We are going to leave it where it is,” Wagner said. “It’s too costly to pull it up and maintain it.”

The display will tell the tale of the Kate Dale and other boats that gave Tampa a wartime reputation as a port for blockade runners. The exhibit will also feature the USS Narcissus, an 82-foot Union tugboat-turned-warship that sank near Egmont Key less than a year after the Civil War ended. A boiler exploded and 29 people died.

It could be a new chapter for the aquarium, he said.

“This will show the historically significant role of Tampa during the Civil War.”

KEITH MORELLI is a staff writer for The Tampa Tribune