Battle of Valcour Island - Legacy

Legacy

In the 1930s, Lorenzo Hagglund, a veteran of World War I and a history buff, began searching the strait for remains of the battle. In 1932 he found the remains of Royal Savage's hull, which he successfully raised in 1934. Stored for more than fifty years, the remains were sold by his son to the National Civil War Museum. As of March 2009, the remains were in a city garage in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The city of Plattsburgh, New York, has claimed ownership of the remains and would like them returned to upstate New York.

In 1935 Hagglund followed up his discovery of Royal Savage with the discovery of Philadelphia's remains, sitting upright on the lake bottom. He raised her that year; she is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is designated a National Historic Landmark. The site of the battle, Valcour Bay, was declared a National Historic Landmark on January 1, 1961, and added to the National Register on October 15, 1966.

In 1997 another pristine underwater wreck was located during a survey by the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum. Two years later it was conclusively identified as the gundalow Spitfire; this site was listed on the National Register in 2008, and it has been named as part of the U.S. government's Save America's Treasures program.