She used the downtime to grab some water and a quick snack out of the cooler they’d brought along. Rehydrated and feeling energized after the quick sugar rush, Annja prepped the underwater camera she’d be using to take pictures of their incursion inside the vessel and then changed out her previous breathing tank for a new one. When Garin was finished going over his own gear, they decided they’d been cautious enough and got ready to dive.

Annja explained their intentions to Mitchell.

“We’re going to use the dive line to get us back to the wreck, but after that we’re going off of it. I don’t want to take the chance of having the line get held up on something inside the wreck and end up with one of us trapped down there.”

Mitchell nodded. “Got it.”

“We shouldn’t be down there for more than an hour. If we run into any trouble we’ll signal with a red strobe. You’re not to leave the boat, though. Call for help if you think we’re having difficulty.”

“Roger that. Stay out of trouble and we won’t have to worry about any of that,” he replied, not knowing that trouble had a tendency to find Annja and not the other way around.

She smiled, gave him a thumbs-up and disappeared over the side of the boat.

Garin was waiting for her just beneath the surface. She swam by him, knowing he’d follow her down as planned. The strobe light she’d placed near the wreck had started to dim but was still strong enough for her to focus as she descended. Minutes later she was hovering just outside the opening, Garin at her side.

The dive line was attached to her belt with a carabiner. She unclipped it and then hunted around for a moment until she found a spot on the wreck where she could attach it. That way they would maintain a link to the boat above, but still be free to move around inside the wreckage without worrying about the line getting snagged on a piece of equipment or preventing them from getting through a tough spot.

Garin flipped on the handheld spotlight he carried, then signaled that he was ready. Annja did the same with her own light, then slipped through the opening and led the way inside the wreckage.

Most of the Confederate ironclads had nearly identical interior layouts, with three decks running throughout the structure. The first deck, known as the gun deck, was the portion of the main deck that was located inside the protective casemate armor. The guns were located there and, as one would expect, it was also where the crew spent most of their time. Meals were taken on foldaway, tables and hammocks were slung between the guns for sleeping.

The berthing deck, just below the gun deck, was a mezzanine-style deck, with its aft compartment fitted around the engine and its accompanying boiler. The forward compartment was divided into several areas, including additional crew quarters, the galley, paymaster’s office, wardroom, sick bay and the captain’s cabin.

The third and final deck, the orlop deck, housed all the stores. Dry provisions were near the bow, the magazine at midships and the wardroom stores usually near the rear. Just aft of this deck were the water tanks, boiler room and engine room, with all the machinery you would expect in such an area.

Shining their lights around the interior, it was clear that the ship was resting on her side. The “floor” they were hovering over was actually the port side of the vessel and anything that had not been bolted down at the time of the hurricane had been strewn about the chamber in a tangled mess. Most of it appeared to be the smashed remains of wooden furniture, which puzzled her for a moment until she remembered that the ship had been used as a regional headquarters in the months before the hurricane.

She glanced around, orienting herself with her mental understanding of the expected layout and then pointed to her left, indicating they were to move in that direction.

Garin nodded to show he understood.

Parker’s second clue instructed them to find the Lady in distress, which they had determined was the CSS Marietta,and to then “take Ewell’s Rifle from her crest.” A ship’s crest, also known as a coat of arms, was usually located in the captain’s cabin so it made sense to start there given they didn’t have any indication that it would be found elsewhere. That meant they had to go down one more deck and then move forward, toward the bow of the vessel, until they located the right cabin.

They moved through the open space of the gun deck until they came to a square opening in the “wall” on their right that Annja recognized as a ventilation shaft. Once covered by a metal grate, the shaft would have allowed cool air from above to filter down belowdecks where it was desperately needed.

It was wide enough to allow them to pass through without difficulty and they used it now like a doorway to swim from the gun deck to the berthing deck just beyond.

They found themselves staring at a large metal tank that filled most of the space from the floor to the ceiling.

Boiler room, Annja thought to herself.

She shone her light beyond it, where she could see a convoluted series of metal shafts, pipes and gears, marking that space as the engine room. Garin had already turned his back on the equipment and was moving toward the open doorway at the other end of the room, so Annja had no choice but to follow, despite her desire to poke about and examine the engine. If she started, she knew she’d be there all day.

They passed through the wardroom, with its officers’ bunks, and the galley with its tangled heap of cookware, before coming to a narrow corridor with open doors on either side. The second room they checked turned out to be the captain’s cabin.

It was bigger than the others they’d seen, with a bunk bed built against the bulkhead and a narrow desk nailed to the floor just beyond.

The ship’s crest, a large wooden plaque cut into the shape of a shield, hung above the desk.

Her excitement growing, Annja swam over to it.

Up close, it was unlike any crest she’d seen before. Most crests were carved from a single block of wood, so that each of the items that made up the crest were actually part of the whole. In this case, however, the flat surface of the shield was one piece of wood, with each of the adorning items making up the coat of arms having been carved separately and added one at a time.

At the top of the crest were two crossed rifles, in this case a pair of Enfield muskets, one of the most common weapons carried by Confederate soldiers throughout the war. A cavalry saber ran vertically through the space behind the center of the crossed rifles, the tip of its blade pointing at the object beneath them, which happened to be the statue of a horse rearing up on its hind legs. Underneath that, at the bottom of the crest, was a ship’s wheel. A linked chain, perhaps representing a ship’s anchor chain, ran around the edge of the entire device.

Garin followed her over, waited patiently for Annja to finish her examination, and then reached up to remove one of the rifles from the top of the crest, only to have Annja put out a hand to stop him.

Even through his face mask she could see him giving her an impatient look.

We came for the rifle, so that’s what I’m taking with us, his eyes seemed to say.

But Annja knew better.

Motioning for him to wait a moment, Annja turned her attention back to the crest and ran her fingers over the statue of the horse.

Take Ewell’s Rifle from her crest…

Richard S. Ewell had been a Confederate general who fought well under Stonewall Jackson and had taken command of Second Corps when the former fell in battle. He’d made a fateful mistake at Gettysburg, failing to push for the heights of Cemetery Hill despite the discretionary orders he’d received from Robert E. Lee telling him to engage if he found it to be “practicable.” The second day of fighting at Gettysburg might have been radically different if he’d done so.