Posted on 02/16/2009 12:19:27 PM PST by nickcarraway
Hunley closely guards it secrets
It could be one of the nation’s oldest cold case files: What happened to eight Confederate sailors aboard the CSS H.L. Hunley after it became the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship?
Their hand-cranked sub rammed a spar with black powder into the blockade ship USS Housatonic off Charleston on a chilly winter night in 1864 then disappeared.
The Hunley’s fate has been the subject of almost 150 years of conjecture and almost a decade of scientific research since it was raised in 2000. But the submarine has been agonizingly slow surrendering her secrets.
“She was a mystery when she was built. She was a mystery as to how she looked and how she was constructed for many years, and she is still a mystery as to why she didn’t come home,” said state Sen. Glenn McConnell, chairman of the S.C. Hunley Commission, which raised the sub and is charged with conserving and displaying it.
Scientists hope the next phase of the conservation, removing the hardened sediment coating the outside of the hull, will provide clues to the mystery.
McConnell, who watched the sub being raised more than eight years ago, thought at the time the mystery would easily be solved.
“We thought it would be very simple ... something must have happened at the time of the attack,” he said. “We would just put those pieces together and know everything about it.”
But what seemed so clear then seems as murky now as the sandy bottom where the Hunley rested for 136 years. When the Hunley was raised, the design was different from what scientists expected and there were only eight, not nine, crewmen, as originally thought.
The first phase of work on the Hunley consisted of photographing and studying the outside of the hull. Then several iron hull plates were removed allowing scientists to enter the crew compartment to remove sediment, human remains and a cache of artifacts.
Archaeologist Maria Jacobsen said the Hunley is like a crime scene except that, unlike on television shows, there is no smoking gun.
“If we compare this crime site investigation with, say, a tragic plane crash in the mountains, that investigation would be a lot easier,” she said. “You can go to the crash, you can see the metal pieces and they have the fingerprints of the crash site.”
In the case of the Hunley, some of those fingerprints may be covered with the encrusted sediment on the hull that scientists refer to as concretion.
When the sub was found, there was no window in the front conning tower, suggesting it had been shot out, perhaps by Union sharpshooters.
But no glass was found inside the sub and the remains of the captain, Lt. George Dixon, showed no injuries to his skull or body consistent with being shot while looking through the window, McConnell said.
The crewmen’s bodies were found at their duty stations, suggesting there was no emergency resulting in a scramble to get out of the sub. The controls on the bilge pump also were not set to pump water from the crew compartment, suggesting there was no water flooding in.
After the attack, Confederates on shore and Union ships reported seeing a blue light, believed to be the Hunley signaling it had completed its mission.
A lantern with a thick lens that would have shifted the light spectrum and appeared blue from a distance was found in the wreck.
But after the attack, the USS Canandaigua rushed to the aide of the Housatonic and there is speculation that the light could have come from that ship instead.
Could the Canandaigua have grazed the Hunley, disabling it so the sub couldn’t surface? A good look at the hull in the coming months may provide the answer.
Historians also know the Hunley needed to wait for the incoming tide to return to shore.
“Were they waiting down there and miscalculated their oxygen and blacked out?” said McConnell.
Then there is the mystery of Dixon’s watch, which stopped at 8:23 p.m. Although times were far from uniform in the Civil War era, the Housatonic was attacked about 20 minutes later, according to federal time, McConnell said.
One theory is the concussion of the attack stopped the watch and knocked out the sailors on the sub. Or the watch simply might have run down and was not noticed in the excitement of the attack. That could have led to a miscalculation of the time they were under water.
Union troops reported seeing the Hunley approaching and the light through the tower window “like dinosaur eyes or a giant porpoise in the water,” McConnell said.
If the Hunley crew members miscalculated and surfaced too close to the Housatonic on their final approach, they would not have had enough time to replenish their oxygen before the attack, he said.
The clues now seem to indicate the crew died of anoxia, a lack of oxygen, and didn’t drown.
“Whatever happened, happened unexpectedly, with no warning,” McConnell said.
Ping, if you didn’t see it.
Paging Clive Cussler!
visited the lab at the former Naval Base about 5 years ago where the sub is located and research is being done-fascinating stuff.
She has come home.
Thanks for the post!
Ping
I guess the only consolation might be that people were smaller back then. But I’d agree with you, after seeing how small that thing was I can’t imagine anyone over 5’6” fitting in it.
There are said to be some lost Confederate Subs in Mobile Bay and in the Red River. The One in Mobile Bay may have sunk a Union Ironclad before she herself sank. Lots of Lost History out there waiting to be found.
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Thanks ConservativeMind. Hunley update. |
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ping
Historians also know the Hunley needed to wait for the incoming tide to return to shore.
“Were they waiting down there and miscalculated their oxygen and blacked out?” said McConnell.”
Bingo! This answers all the mysteries of crew in place without signs of panic, etc.
At least one more in the bay, maybe two.
Do you have any links or sources? I have never heard that and would love to read up on it.
Read Union and Confederate Submarine warfare in the Civil War By Mark Ragan 1999. he lists the CSS Captain Pierce as the sub that sank the USS Tecumseh at the Battle of Mobile Bay Aug. 5, 1864. Up to five subs were built at Shreveport, LA one of them was sent by rail to Houston, Tx.
Fascinating! Thank you.
unfortunately his luck ran out that evening.
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