Thanks for the link!
Posted on 04/03/2026 12:17:01 PM PDT by Twotone
The submarine, launched by the Confederate Army in the last full year of the Civil War, made history when it became the first combat submarine to ever sink a warship. But on the same night when the H.L. Hunley’s torpedo sent the USS Housatonic, along with two of its officers and three of its enlisted crew, to a watery grave in the depths of Charleston Harbor in South Carolina, the Hunley itself—along with its eight-man crew—was also claimed by the waves.
snip
In a study published in PLOS One in 2017, a team of researchers affiliated with Duke University announced that they had solved the mystery of the H.L. Hunley’s crew. Indirectly, the men aboard the Hunley may have been felled by the very same weapon they deployed to take down the USS Housatonic. The torpedo they used to sink the ship was not “launched” the way we in the modern world envision submarine warfare. Instead, the 135-lb. black powder torpedo was attached to a pole 16 feet from the Hunley’s own bow.
By constructing a 1/6th scale model of the Hunley, graduate student Rachel M. Lance was able to measure “black powder and shock tube explosions underwater” as well as “propagation of blasts through a model ship hull.” The data she and the team gathered, in tandem with archival experimental data, allowed them to determine what exactly had killed the Hunley’s crew. When the torpedo that felled the Housatonic exploded, it sent a secondary blast wave through the Hunley, causing a “flexion of the ship hull” on the submarine. By the team’s calculations, that blast wave was of such a magnitude that the chances of survival were “less than 16% for each crew member.”
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
The delivery was successful, but when the sub backed away, the trigger line didn’t pay out as planned, but hung up and triggered the mine immediately.
Lol
I looked it up to see how long ago that was. Wow, 25-30 years ago. A complete generation already.. may not even have heard of Strom.
Those were the days.
>>>
The H.L. Hunley was found on May 3, 1995, by author Clive Cussler and his National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) team after a 15-year search. The Civil War submarine was discovered buried in silt off the coast of Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, and was later raised on August 8, 2000
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James Strom Thurmond Sr. (/strɒm ˈθɜːrmənd/;[2] December 5, 1902 – June 26, 2003) was an American politician who represented South Carolina in the United States Senate from 1954 to 2003.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strom_Thurmond
Just amazing how brave these crews were
I don't know if they do them anymore, but during the Halloween season, Magnolia Cemetery used to hold tours that included stops at the gravesites of well-known Charleston residents, where actors would portray a scene from that person's life. They were always well-done, and worth the price of the ticket. I went twice over a period of years. The last one I went to, they stopped at the graves of the recovered Hunley crew, and recreated their stories.
I did a search and found out that Bulldog Tours conducts walking tours at the cemetery during the rest of the year, but if they are still doing the Halloween tours with the actors in period costumes, it is well worth the visit. I had never seen anything like it before. The first year I went, they had cannon set up in the cemetery and fired them off during one story.
Thanks for the link!
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