Now it was a question of saving as much of the historic vessel as possible—in any way possible. The professionals decided to cut the _Cairo_ into three sections: bow, midship, and stern. Finally, on December 12, 1964, the derrick raised the last section and lowered it gently to the deck of the barge. It was 102 years to the day since the gunboat had sunk.
Even in fragments, the _Cairo_ proved a treasure. Experts from the Smithsonian Institution and the National Park Service found it a gold mine of information. It was, in fact, a century-old time capsule loaded with the everyday objects of naval life, some of them previously completely unknown. Studied _in situ_, they told of practices and customs no one had even dreamed about before. Even the vessel itself offered new information, for students quickly discovered that it had not been built according to the original specifications in some instances and that assumptions based on incomplete data were totally wrong. Museum models and drawings across the country had to be reworked, old concepts changed, new features added.
Many phases of life and organization on board a naval vessel developed according to tradition. No one ever wrote them down, and knowledge of them died with the veterans. In this field, the _Cairo_ helped bring the period back to life in a truly vivid manner.
Take the matter of food and drink, for instance. Evidence from the _Cairo_ shows that the sailors ate in messes of about 15 men, and each mess had a special chest to hold its gear: tin plates, cups, spoons, glass condiment bottles, scrub brushes, a washtub, and an earthenware jug of molasses. Every man took care of his own utensils, and he scratched his name or initials on each piece. Those who could not write at least could make an identifying mark. The glass condiment bottles bore embossed labels, “U S NAVY” on one side and “PEPPER” or “MUSTARD” on the other. No one had ever seen such bottles before, but there were more than 300 on board, some still holding their original contents.
[Illustration: _The _Cairo’s_ bow and stern sections being reassembled at Pascagoula, Miss._ Courtesy, Ingalls Shipbuilding Corporation]
The officers dined in a separate mess, and they had finer fare. The dishes were ironstone: the knives, forks, and spoons were made by Rogers and Brothers and the Hartford Manufacturing Company. Much of the ironstone had been broken, either in the mine explosion or in salvage, but a representative collection survived intact. These show that much of it had been made in England by J. Wedgwood and sold to the Government by J. J. Brown, Importer, New Albany, Ind. Cooks prepared the food for officers and men in big copper and iron pots on an iron cooking range ironically named “Southern Belle” but manufactured by S. A. Burton and Company of Cincinnati, Ohio; and the discovery of a rolling pin suggests that the fare sometimes included biscuits and pastry. The commissary storeroom yielded hundreds of barrels with bones inside—all that remained of the salt beef and pork that formed a major part of all naval diets during that period. Nearby stood the remnants of a butcher block, a two-handed meat cleaver, and several scales. Here, presumably, the boat’s butcher stood as he cut and issued the meat for the messes.