New image of Clyde-built ship used in American Civil War

A new image has been created of the wreck of a Scottish ship used in the American Civil War.

Confederate forces acquired hundreds of Clyde-built boats because they were fast, making them ideal for evading Union ships blockading Southern ports.

The shipwreck off Oak Island, North Carolina, is a blockade runner called Agnes E Fry.

The image, called a sonar mosaic, was made following work by divers, sonar experts and archaeologists.

North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources has also released photographs of a deck light and what is thought to be the handle of a homemade knife recovered from the wreck.

The sonar mosaic will help archaeologists plan for further exploration of the wreck site.

Specialist divers from the Charlotte Fire Department and sonar experts from Nautilus Marine Group assisted archaeologists with the department of natural and cultural resources and the International Institute of Maritime Research to record the entire wreck site with a digital, sector-scanning sonar.

Agnes E Fry was launched on the Clyde under a different name, Fox.

It sank after running aground on 27 December 1864. Confederate soldiers defending the entrance of the nearby Cape Fear River were not thought to have salvaged the ship's cargo.

Union forces blockaded Confederate ports in an effort to keep supplies from reaching the South, and to prevent the Confederacy from exporting cotton and other marketable items.

Other Clyde-built ships acquired for blockade running included the Iona I.

It operated on a Glasgow to the Highlands passenger route before it was purchased by Confederate agents.

But it never reached the war as it sank in the Clyde near Gourock following a collision with another ship in 1862.