The Modern Greece: Wreck That Built a Science

A few hundred yards offshore lies the iron hull of the Modern Greece, a British-built Confederate blockade runner that ran aground here in June eighteen sixty-two. The vessel was attempting to slip past Union warships into the Cape Fear River when gunfire from the USS Cambridge and the USS Stars and Stripes drove her ashore. Fort Fisher then fired on the wreck to prevent her cargo from falling into Union hands.

The ship sat undisturbed for a century until a storm exposed the site in nineteen sixty-two, during the Civil War centennial. The salvage operation that followed recovered thousands of artifacts and helped inspire North Carolina to establish one of the nation's first state underwater archaeology programs.