The officers dined in a separate mess, and they had finer fare. The dishes were ironstone: the knives, forks, and spoons were made by Rogers and Brothers and the Hartford Manufacturing Company. Much of the ironstone had been broken, either in the mine explosion or in salvage, but a representative collection survived intact. These show that much of it had been made in England by J. Wedgwood and sold to the Government by J. J. Brown, Importer, New Albany, Ind. Cooks prepared the food for officers and men in big copper and iron pots on an iron cooking range ironically named “Southern Belle” but manufactured by S. A. Burton and Company of Cincinnati, Ohio; and the discovery of a rolling pin suggests that the fare sometimes included biscuits and pastry. The commissary storeroom yielded hundreds of barrels with bones inside—all that remained of the salt beef and pork that formed a major part of all naval diets during that period. Nearby stood the remnants of a butcher block, a two-handed meat cleaver, and several scales. Here, presumably, the boat’s butcher stood as he cut and issued the meat for the messes.
Officers overcame the monotony of their diet with the help of spirits as well as condiments. From their section came bottles for whiskey, rum, still wines, and champagne, some of them unopened.
Other bottles offered evidence on medical care, for many contained the remains of their original contents. These included potassium chlorate (a drug prescribed for many complaints of the period), blue mass for syphilis, quinine, rhubarb, ammonia, sulphur, zinc chloride (used as an antiseptic and astringent), and ferric chloride, often prescribed as an iron tonic. Most of these bottles required professional analysis for identification, but others are so familiar that a smell was enough to know that they held iodine, castor oil, camphor, turpentine, or linseed oil.
Only a few surgical items remained. Some may have been carried off the sinking vessel and others may have been lost in salvage. Among those that remained were silver ear syringes, buckles for tourniquets, a metal bedpan, and rubberbands for suturing arteries. These bands still retained their elasticity after 100 years of submersion!
Students of ordnance and weapons had a field day with the Cairo’s contents. Apparently the vessel carried no cutlasses, for none was found. Instead there were Army foot artillery swords of the “Roman” model of 1832 with their handsome cast-brass hilts reflecting the cultural interest in classical objects that had been so popular when they were adopted. Perhaps the use of Army swords instead of Navy patterns reflected the conflict over control of the river gunboats, or perhaps it meant that weapons were scarce just then and any usable type was welcome. The latter is the more probable explanation, for the muskets found on board were smoothbore model 1842’s instead of the rifled models of 1855 and 1861.
The Cairo’s “Southern Belle” cooking range is brought ashore. In the background are the ironclad’s boilers.
Courtesy, Vicksburg Post
The Cairo’s bell.
Courtesy, Vicksburg Post
But the discoveries related to the cannon told much, much more. All the guns had been ready for action when the ironclad went down. They came up the same way—fully loaded, sights in place, and percussion locks mounted for firing. Here military historians noted the first significant new information. Each cannon had a white sighting line painted down the top of its barrel. No surviving ordnance manual or document mentions this practice. Yet it was an obviously sensible thing to do. It gave the gunner a quick visual line that he could pick up easily in the dark casemate. It would have been just as helpful in the enclosed gundecks of traditional warships, so now scholars wonder how long it had been done. All guns boasted two sets of sights: the new adjustable and precise brass patterns and the older strap-on tubes for quick point-blank firing. Further discoveries showed that the Civil War ordnance men had anticipated at least one modern efficiency technique. They had color-coded the wooden boxes that held the artillery projectiles—red for explosive shells, white for solid shot—so that the proper round could be identified quickly and easily.