Before government engineers can deepen one of the busiest seaports in the US to accommodate future trade, they first need to remove a US$14 million obstacle from the past – a Confederate warship rotting on the Savannah River bottom for nearly 150 years, the Post Courier reports.

Confederate troops scuttled the ironclad CSS Georgia to prevent its capture by General William T Sherman when his Union troops took Savannah in December 1864. It’s been on the river bottom ever since.

Now, the Civil War shipwreck sits in the way of a government agency’s US$653 million plan to deepen the waterway that links the nation’s fourth-busiest container port to the Atlantic Ocean.

The Post Courier said the ship’s remains are considered so historically significant that dredging the river is prohibited within 50ft of the wreckage.

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