he sea, not the US Navy,
eventually destroyed the
Modern Greece. Commander
Parker of the USS Cambridge reported
on August 4, 1862, that the ship was
already a “total wreck.” She rests to this
day in her watery grave half a mile north-east
of Fort Fisher, in approximately
20 feet of water about 300 yards offshore.
The Modern Greece was only the
third blockade-running steamship to
attempt to run the Union blockade of
Wilmington, and the first one lost.
But that was only the beginning of
steam blockade running there. By the
following summer, Wilmington was the
Confederacy’s most important seaport
in receiving foreign supplies through the
blockade, and by late 1864 was its most
important city.
General Robert E. Lee stated: “If
Wilmington falls, I cannot maintain my
army.” Thus Wilmington became known
as the “lifeline of the Confederacy.”
A severe spring storm in March 1962
uncovered the wreck of the Modern
Greece. Two local scuba divers —
Andrew “Punkie” Kure and Andy
Canoutus — who knew the location
of the derelict, informed a group of
divers from the Naval Ordnance
School in Maryland on vacation in the
Wilmington area. The Navy divers
discovered that the storm had cleared
away much of the sand from the ship’s
cargo hold and that artifacts were both
plentiful and intact.
Military artifacts found on the Modern Greece include, clockwise from left, a
12-pounder Whitworth bolt, .577 caliber British Enfield bullets with wood plugs,
a British Enfield rifle-musket butt plate and British Enfield rifle-musket hammer.
Over the following two years, the US Navy and the North Carolina Division of Archives and History worked
together to survey and excavate the Modern Greece. In the process they salvaged more than 11,000 artifacts, which
led to the creation of one of the nation’s first underwater archaeology and marine artifact conservation programs,
based at the Fort Fisher State Historic Site. In January 2013, North Carolina erected a highway historical marker
on Fort Fisher Boulevard in Kure Beach to commemorate the wreck of the Modern Greece and blockade running
during the Civil War.
This story is an excerpt from Chris Fonvielle’s forthcoming book, Faces of Fort Fisher, 1861-1864.
T modern greece X military artifacts
COURTESY OF FORT FISHER UNDERWATER ARCHAEOLOGY BRANCH
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