Greenwood author and historian Mary Carol Miller will present a lecture Tuesday night at the Museum of the Mississippi Delta on the Star of the West, a Civil War-era steamship that figured prominently in the Battle of Fort Pemberton in March 1863.
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be at 6:30 p.m. at the museum, located at 1608 U.S. 82 West.
“Mary Carol had done an article in a Civil War magazine several years ago about the Star of the West. She tells exactly what happened to the ship and its ‘unromantic fate’ in the Mississippi Delta,” said Cheryl Taylor, executive director of the museum.
Miller is the author of several books including “Lost Landmarks of Mississippi,” “Lost Mansions of Mississippi” and “Lost Mansions of Mississippi, Volume 2.”
The lecture is part of the museum’s “War Comes to the Mississippi Delta” exhibit, which celebrates the sesquicentennial of the Civil War in the Delta. The exhibit runs through Aug. 31.
A symposium featuring several Civil War scholars is scheduled for April 6.
Miller is the immediate past president of the Mississippi Historical Society.
Her lecture will delve into the history of the ill-fated Star of the West, which was deliberately sunk in order to prevent a Union flotilla from reaching Vicksburg during the failed Yazoo Pass Expedition of March 1863.
The Star of the West was not a warship but a captured merchant vessel that at one time had been owned by Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt.
It was the first ship fired upon while attempting to supply federal forces at Fort Sumter, S.C., on Jan. 9, 1861. In that engagement, it was fired upon by cadets from the Citadel while in Charleston harbor. Later it was captured by Confederate cavalry officers.
The ship was then brought up the Mississippi River to Vicksburg and then Yazoo City before being scuttled in the Tallahatchie River at hastily constructed earthworks known as Fort Pemberton, which is just outside Greenwood.
For more information on the lecture or on the entire exhibit, call the museum at 453-0925 or visit the museum’s website at www.museumofthemississippidelta.com.
•Contact Bob Darden at 581-7239 or bdarden@
gwcommonwealth.com.
