On June 10, 1863, the troop transport Maple Leaf steamed away from Fort Monroe, Virginia, carrying 97 captured Confederate officers who were to be sent, after a layover at Fort Delaware, to Johnson's Island prison in Ohio. Two hours later, the prisoners overpowered the 12-man guard, took over the ship, and escaped in small boats. About 70 officers went ashore near False Cape and trekked south down the beach to a salt works, and Edmond McHorney and other local residents ferried them across Currituck Sound, where they split into smaller groups while avoiding Currituck Court House and Union soldiers there. Four hours after the escape, Maple Leaf returned to Fort Monroe and sounded the alarm, and Federal cavalrymen rode in pursuit while Union gunboats searched Currituck Sound for the fugitives. Confederate Capt. Willis B. Sanderlin of Co. B, 68th North Carolina Infantry, a local defense force, and local residents helped conceal and care for the former prisoners, and B.F. McHorney led into the Great Dismal Swamp. Maple Leaf continued to function as a troop transport until it struck a Confederate floating mine near Jacksonville, Florida, on April 1, 1864, and sank in the St. John's River with its cargo, including the baggage of three Union regiments. In the 1980s, archaeologists located the wreck, one of the great treasure troves of the Civil War, and salvaged thousands of artifacts.