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The cut away model at the Hunley display is full size, and IIRC the seat for the crank is a six inch shelf at about the 10 o'clock position on the round hull. The crank pins are offset about 120 degrees from each other. Because the the pin has to be within arm's length from each man at the furthest point in its rotation, the is no room for one man to move past another. It must have been difficult to get in or out under the best of circumstances, and impossible in an emergency.

As you walk into the display area, there is a cabinet with eight or ten heads on two shelves,forensic reproduction made from skulls of the crew. Below each severed head is a little bio. It's interesting how most of the crew were ordinary people, and some of them recent immigrants, and not native born southerners.

I'm a Charter Member of Friends of the Hunley, and am quite familiar with the displays you describe.

Yep, that crank makes entry/exit from the bench problematical. As I said, I expect the center seat was "FILO" (First In and Last Out). Probably the easiest way to make the trip was to spin the crank several degrees as you pass each station to ease passage. But, that is only effective for, at most, two people at a time (one from each end of the vessel -- and that would take a lot of coordination.

Doing an exit under panic conditions would definitely be a "CFD" demo...

But as Mike Scafuri first pointed out in the Clemson Lab, there was zero evidence of panic.

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One factor that hasn't been discussed much publicly is that, immediately following the attack, the crew would have been exhausted, with high lactic acid buildup in their muscles, and an accelerated need for oxygen. At the same time, the sealed air volume in the Hunley would have been depleted in oxygen and loaded with carbon dioxide. Their lungs would have been struggling.

Add shockwave lung damage, and -- no one would have had the energy to move from where they collapsed...

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With that scenario, we can only wonder about the validity of that reported sighting of the "Blue Light" signal by troops on Sullivan's Island...

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If you're really interested in the Hunley -- and, in my "insider's view", it might be worth your while to check out my (illustrated) posts #s 52, 55, 60, 62, 68, & 71 on this earlier thread: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3580098/posts...

FWIW, I infrequently do presentations on the Hunley that address the surprising makeup of the crew -- and also cover the romance and Maria Jacobsen's finding of Queenie Bennet's coin in Dixon's pocket. (Those were a few of my "slides" I posted on the other thread.)