Baton Rouge’s underwater mystery
A Civil War submarine found near New Orleans is a centerpiece of the Capitol Park Museum
Baton Rouge is not known as a submarine town. Yet inside the Capitol Park Museum is a 20-foot iron vessel that looks less like a weapon and more like a fat cigar with rivets.
Believed to have been built in 1861, the Confederate submarine is among the oldest ever made and, by one count, the second-oldest on public display anywhere. Only the Brandtaucher, launched in 1850 and now displayed in Dresden, is older, according to MuseumShips.com.
Its story is suitably muddy. Workers dredging Bayou St. John in New Orleans found the craft in Lake Pontchartrain in 1878. It later sat at Spanish Fort amusement park, where Civil War technology became a sideshow. From there it passed to Camp Nicholls Soldiers Home, then to the Louisiana State Museum, which displayed it in Jackson Square until it became a centerpiece of the Capitol Park Museum in 2006.
Whether it was ever used in war is unclear. One account says Confederate troops sank it before Union forces entered New Orleans, denying the enemy a prize that may not have worked especially well in the first place.
No matter. The submarine’s afterlife is its best part of the story. Built for secrecy, found in mud, displayed for amusement, it now rests in Baton Rouge as one of the strangest relics of the Civil War.