SHIPS' GRAVES TO REMAIN UNDISTURBED

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 25, 1993                   TAG: 9303250278
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C3   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS                                LENGTH: Medium
SHIPS' GRAVES TO REMAIN UNDISTURBED
The remains of three Confederate ironclads on the bottom of the James River just south of Richmond will not be disturbed by a dredging project, the Army Corps of Engineers says.
State Historic Resources Department officials had said corps officials should have told them about plans to dredge the James near remains of the ships. Ethel R. Eaton, an archaeologist with the department, said Tuesday her department has never opposed the dredging project but wanted assurances that the ships' remains will be protected.
"We are cooperating now," Ronald G. Vann, chief of the corps' civil programs branch, said after a meeting Tuesday of the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. "That's the message we want to get across."
The commission granted the corps permission to dump sand and mud in designated areas along the James as it dredges the main shipping channel between Richmond and Hopewell.
The corps did not need permissionto dredge, but was required to get permission to dump dredged materials on the river's banks.
The ironclads CSS Richmond, the CSS Fredericksburg and the CSS Virginia II protected southern and eastern Richmond from the Union Army during the Civil War.
On April 3, 1865, as Union troops advanced toward Richmond, Confederate troops burned the ships so federal forces couldn't seize them. Much of what remained after those fires either was removed by salvage crews in 1871 or 1872 or destroyed by previous dredgings, corps records show.
Scattered debris from the ironclads still litters the river bottom. Corps divers this week found a metal object that could be part of a boiler from the CSS Richmond. The Richmond is in the shipping channel, but not in a part of the channel to be dredged.
State historians and archaeologists believe the debris can help them discover more about the ironclads, which were built in Norfolk and Richmond. However, little money is available for an archaeological survey, they said.
Corps officials say the shipping channel between Richmond and Hopewell has been dredged several times since the Civil War - and at least 10 times since the 1930s, when it was deepened to 25 feet.
The channel was last dredged in 1988, said Gene Whitehurst, chief of the corps' project management section. At that time no one expressed concern about the Confederate ships, he said.
Martin J. Moynihan, executive director of the Port of Richmond, said dredging the James is critical to the port's future. If the channel isn't dredged, larger ships might go to other ports rather than risk getting stuck in the James, he said.
The dredging project is expected to begin as early as July.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB