Vicksburg, Mississippi

National Military Park
U.S.S. Cairo

Day 42: Sunday, September 23, 2001

Under Protective Cover

She went down in twelve minutes and not a soul aboard was lost.

The Cairo was the first armed vessel in the history of warfare to be sunk by a torpedo (today called a mine). Torpedoes had been placed in the Yazoo River by Acting Masters Zedekiah McDaniel and Francis M. Ewing of the Confederate Navy. They were detonated from the shore by volunteers placed in camouflaged torpedo pits behind the levee.