Clamoring for the future, Savannah has to first deal with the wreck of the CSS Georgia

Before Savannah, Ga., realizes its dream of becoming a world-renowned tanker port, it’s having to deal with tough reminder of its past, in the form of a scuttled Civil War battleship rotting in the Savannah River.

The dredging of the Savannah River has become one of the biggest economic and political footballs in the South, pitting Georgia and South Carolina interests against each other over how to deepen the river that splits the two states where the lowcountry meets the Atlantic’s tidal estuaries....

The CSS Georgia is now complicating the $653 billion project further, as the project will have to become a fullscale, $42 million underwater archeological dig before massive dredgers can begin deepening the port.

Built with money raised from a local women’s club, the CSS Georgia became a testament to the South’s industrial weakness compared to the North – its steam engines were too weak to push the prow through the river’s current. Meanwhile, it was the approach of an icon of that industrial superiority – General William Tecumseh Sherman – that caused Confederates to quickly scuttle and sink the CSS Georgia upon the Union Army’s approach....