During the Civil War, the Confederate Navy operated a large and well-guarded shipyard on the east bank of the Pee Dee River at Mars Bluff in Marion County. The largest vessel built there was the 150-foot wooden gunship CSS Peedee, constructed to patrol the river against Union forces and, if necessary, defend Confederate territory along the Atlantic seacoast. As the war neared its end and General William T. Sherman’s army advanced through South Carolina, Confederate authorities ordered the destruction of the CSS Peedee so its three massive guns could not be used by Union forces against the Confederacy. For decades, remnants of the sunken vessel lay buried on the river bottom. After nearly 150 years underwater and 20 years of search efforts by multiple agencies, the guns of the CSS Peedee were recovered in 2015 by the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology. The cannons then underwent years of extensive conservation at Clemson University’s Warren Lasch Conservation Center in Charleston, South Carolina, where they were cleaned and prepared for exhibition.