Michael,

I'm not an authority on anything dealing with the Civil War, but I offer you the following bit of data:

I recently located my copy of the "Port of Mobile", August 1969, that contains an article "Tecumseh To Be Raised", pages 17-21. The idea of raising the Tecumseh has been discussed for years and years and years, as you probably know. Based on this article, the prospects were favorably. But....

"Salvage work actually began in February of 1967, when Weston Instruments, Inc., specialists in the recovery of underwater metallic objects, set its search team to work. They employed a sea recovery technique called "spontaneous potential", in which the bottom of Mobile Bay was probed with cables tipped with electodes. Sensitive to the electricity given off by metal objects in salt water, the cables confirmed the location of the wrecked vessel."
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"Salvaging the TECUMSEH requires the marshalling of many resources and precautions, not the least will be care in handling explosives known to be still on board. Her big 15-inch guns are still fully loaded.

"Another facet of the salvage procedure will the removal of the remains of the ninety-three men who drowned on board the TECUMSEH. The Navy has assigned an official of its Bureau of Medicine to supervise this phase, and it is assumed that a mass burial will be given in the National Cemetery in Washington, D. C."
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And thirty-two years later, she and her crew still sleep with the fish!

Margaret