The USS Cairo had been a commissioned federal warship less than a year when Lt. Cmdr. Thomas O. Selfridge Jr. guided the gunboat on the Yazoo River 148 years ago today, aiming to clear the channel of mines and attack Confederate batteries on shore.

After helping capture Memphis, the Cairo had been dispatched to Helena, Ark., from where it was sent to the Vicksburg theater. The gunboat made it 16 miles from the Mississippi north of the city when two mines, or torpedoes, ripped open the hull.

No lives were lost, but the Cairo sank in 36 feet of muddy water in just 12 minutes.

Just over 100 years later, in 1964, the Cairo was raised from the mud, restored and moved to its current site at the Vicksburg National Military Park, where it attracts about 300,000 visitors a year.

The famed gunboat will receive another kind of lasting recognition in 2011 when it is depicted on Mississippi’s coin in the U.S. Mint’s “America the Beautiful” set, one of five state quarters that will be issued next year.

The Cairo’s selection is particularly appropriate, said Tim Kavanaugh, supervisor of the Interpretive Ranger Division and licensed tour guide for the military park.

“Every battlefield has monuments,” he said, “and everybody has an arch, too. Even the French have an arch. Only Vicksburg has the Cairo.”

“The Cairo through time has come to be a fantastic symbol of Vicksburg’s involvement in the war,” said VNMP Superintendent Mike Maddell. “It was originally involved in the campaign and has become an icon of our park since it was raised a few years back.”

The VNMP, created in 1899, was the seventh national park created by Congress and the fifth Civil War battlefield to be set aside in perpetuity, said park historian Terry Winschel.

Another, Gettysburg National Military Park, will be depicted on Pennsylvania’s America the Beautiful quarter, also in 2011.

The Mississippi coin was designed by AIP Master Designer Thomas Cleveland, sculpted by U.S. Mint Sculptor-Engraver Joseph Menna and reviewed for accuracy by VNMP staff.

The Cairo was actually on the floor of the Yazoo River when Grant’s troops laid siege to Vicksburg and won the surrender, Kavanaugh pointed out. But its sinking shows the Navy was involved “from the get-go,” Kavanaugh said.

The joint Navy-Army operation “makes Vicksburg almost unique,” said Winschel. “Grant would be the first to admit that he could not have taken Vicksburg without the help of the Navy,” he said.

Reached at his Virginia home, former VNMP historian Ed Bearss, who was involved in the raising and restoration of the Cairo, agreed. “Its symbolic significance is very high,” he said. “The role of the Navy has never been really appreciated in the Vicksburg Campaign.”

The Cairo was one of several sites in the military park considered by the U.S. Treasury for the Mississippi coin, including the Memorial Arch at the entrance to the park, the African-American monument and the Mississippi Memorial.

“It’s quite an honor for the Vicksburg National Military Park and for the city of Vicksburg to have been chosen to represent Mississippi,” Winschel said.

Park officials also had recommended a number of the bronze monuments there, such as the “Spirit of the Republic” on the Missouri monument, the “Statue of Peace” on the Minnesota monument and the flag bearer on the Rhode Island monument, he said.

The Cairo is the most complete city class ironclad from the Civil War era on display in the country, said Winschel. Many artifacts — well-preserved by its century spent in river mud — are on display in the Cairo Museum, next to the ironclad at the park.

One of seven city class Union ironclad gunboats named for cities along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, the Cairo, commissioned in January 1862, was built for river battles, equipped with cannon and plated with inches-thick iron.

The paddlewheel was mounted at mid-ship, Kavanaugh said, to try to limit its vulnerability to enemy fire.

A brief story published Dec. 22, 1862, in the New York Times reported that the Cairo had been part of a expedition of five vessels assigned to steam up the Yazoo River to clear it of explosives.

“They had already raised two of the monsters and were proceeding cautiously — the Cairo, Marmora and Signal abreast, and Louisville and Queen close in the rear — when a torpedo discharged under the port bow of the Cairo, tearing a hole in her 12 feet square,” the report reads.

Everyone aboard was knocked down, but no one was injured, and the crew was safely taken aboard the Queen of the West.

The Army failed late in 1862 in an attempt to capture Vicksburg via Holly Springs and Chickasaw Bayou.

In April 1863, Grant, camped across the Mississippi from Vicksburg, asked Adm. David Dixon Porter to run a small fleet of gunboats and transports past Vicksburg to Bruinsburg to ferry his men across the river to mount the land campaign, said Kavanaugh.

“We have no details about their conversation, but Porter obviously agreed,” he said. “History often turns on the smallest of details and on personal relationships.”

Just one boat was lost in the effort. After battles and a lengthy siege, Vicksburg surrendered about three months later.

“What Grant accomplished was the largest amphibious operation in the history of the modern world, bringing 400 units behind enemy lines,” Kavanaugh said. “Without that naval involvement, Vicksburg would never have happened.”

After watching the Union flag be raised over the courthouse in 1863, Winschel said, Grant headed straight for the waterfront to thank and congratulate Porter, who was on the deck of the Benton.

Bearss said the secretary of the Navy during the Civil War, Gideon Welles, tends to be more known for the effort and expense he expended trying to penetrate Charleston harbor and win a surrender there. “This is recognition I think Mr. Welles would be very delighted the Navy is getting, to be represented on a coin.”

But a Union gunboat and symbol of the victory of the North over the South representing Mississippi?

“It’s not a Southern coin,” Kananaugh answered. “It’s a United States coin. If it wasn’t for the Cairo and ships like her, they would not be distributing a U.S. coin in Mississippi.”