- (December 2006) COLUMBUS, Ga. - Many people scratch their heads when they hear that the National Civil War Naval Museum is in Columbus, Ga. It looks too far inland on a map to be a naval museum.

The key is to understand that Columbus is the northernmost navigable point on the Chattahoochee River from the Gulf of Mexico. A railroad hub and manufacturing center before the war, during the Civil War the Confederate Naval Iron Works and Navy Yard there were very busy.

The ironclad CSS Jackson (sometimes known as the Muscogee) was built there. A couple of weeks short of completion in April 1865, she was captured and set on fire by marauding Union troops. In 1963, the wreck was discovered and the wooden hull recovered. It was stored outside under a low shed, open on the sides.

The wooden steam-and-sail gunboat CSS Chattahoochee was built in Saffold, Ga., near the border with Florida to patrol its namesake river. Severely damaged by a boiler explosion in 1863, it was brought to the Columbus Navy Yard for repair and was destroyed to prevent capture as Union forces approached in 1865. A portion of it was recovered in 1964 and displayed outside under a shed, open on the sides.

These two recovered hulls became the nucleus of the Confederate Naval Museum when it opened in Columbus in 1964. A low, cramped and damp concrete building housed the rest of the collection.

The collection moved to a large new facility nearby in 2001. The vision for the museum expanded to include Union as well as Confederate naval exhibits, and it was renamed the National Civil War Naval Museum (it also goes by the shorter moniker Port Columbus).

The hull of the CSS Jackson was moved inside the new museum and placed in a climate-controlled room 234 feet long, 74 feet wide and 54 feet high. A "ghost" structure of aluminum poles and rods outlines the ship above the waterline, so one can easily imagine what the real Jackson's casemate, pilothouse and smokestack looked like. It's hard to describe the effect on visitors when they first see this immense, startling, eerie display.

The recovered portion of the CSS Chattahoochee was also placed inside the museum.

In addition, they have a full-scale model of a portion of the outside of the USS Monitor's iconic turret, 60 feet recreated of the berth deck of Admiral Farragut's USS Hartford, and an "ironclad simulator" where visitors can walk into the reconstructed armored casemate of the CSS Albemarle to see and hear naval action while inside.

Other exhibits include a Civil War naval timeline, ship paintings and models, and three huge murals showing almost 60 ships from the war. They have a collection of naval cannons outside, including a Brooke Rifle by the river, which they regularly fire.

Not be missed is the museum's distinctive collection of Civil War naval flags, including the U.S. flag the Confederates seized when they captured the Water Witch and the unbelievably large (24 by 16 feet!) flag from the CSS Atlanta, which dwarfs the rest.

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