Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kK0iUqGg5c The Corps of Engineers has been recovering the remains of the ironclad battery C.S.S. Georgia at Savannah over the last few months. It’s a big project, and one that hopes to answer a lot of questions about this vessel, that is relatively little-known. One particular focus of historical research, going on in parallel with the fieldwork, is trying to locate the original copy of an image of the vessel that was first reported thirty-some years ago. Although there are contemporary drawings of C.S.S. Georgia, the only known photograph of the ship is a photo-of-a-photo, supposedly snapped at a local garage sale. Now, it appears, it was all a teenage hoax that got out of hand:

When he was a teenager in Savannah, [John] Potter, his brother Jeffrey and a friend shot a short 8mm movie about the CSS Georgia. They built a 2-foot model.

At some point, Potter decided to test whether he had the skills to become a Hollywood special effects artist.

Potter’s younger brother put on a coat and straw hat and went out to a marsh with a cane fishing pole and Potter took a photo. He took another photo of the model. He glued the boat’s image onto the photo of his brother, then used dirt and glue to “age” the photo.

If you compare the purported historic image of the ship with what Potter says is a photo of the model he and his brother made, they do look very much alike:

Frustrating. __________