Hello David, If I'm understanding you correctly you are saying the hull of the Kearsarge as at Mobile around the 1920's? How could you explain the following from Wikipedia?

Kearsarge was recommissioned on 2 November 1888 and largely spent her remaining years protecting American interests in the West Indies, off Venezuela, and along the Central Americas. She departed Haiti on 20 January 1894 for Bluefields, Nicaragua, but she wrecked and on a reef off Roncador Cay on 2 February; her officers and crew made it safely ashore.

Congress appropriated $45,000 to tow Kearsarge home, but a salvage team of the Boston Towboat Company found that she could not be refloated. Some artifacts were saved from the ship, including the ship's Bible. The salvaged items, along with a damaged section of her stern post with an unexploded shell from CSS Alabama still embedded in it, are now stored or on display at the Washington Navy Yard.