The Cairo was a Union gunboat which was sunk Dec 12, 1862, after triggering two Confederate demijohn mines. There was no los of life when the 512-ton ironclad vessel sunk six fathoms deep to the muddy bottom of the Yazoo River north of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Edwin Bearss tells about the finding of the Hardluck a century later, still intact at the bottom of the Yazoo and how she was then salvaged and restored and returned to Vicksburg.