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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 ...
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Stupid should hurt.
The iron wasn’t thick enough to absorb the shock. Of course, it was cutting edge technology at the time and nobody knew that.
I remember some of the first images that had been published after the discovery. The ‘Reelect Strom Thurmond’ sticker was still readable.
They were just sitting there because they were dead. And a modern sub would be utterly spacious compared to that machine.
They died at their post. Braver men than me... looking at that machine, I just shake my head in awe at their guts.
It wasn’t “stupid”. It was a world first - at the absolute cutting edge of naval technology/warfare at that time. Nobody else had a submarine that was as advanced.
Without reading it...carbon monoxide poisoning?
Now I will go read the article...:)
Heh, okay, it was shock then.
Because it was impossible to stand up.
The Hunley killed 5 of 8 crewmen on a test run; then all 8 crewmen on a dive test. That was all before they sortied to attack the Union blockade. So 3 crews, 21 men.
Wasn't the sub also delivering Nancy Pelosi campaign literature?
I would have thought they’d have done a trial run, the crew would have died then
The crew got a big funeral in South Carolina in 2004, commonly referred to as the “last Confederate funeral.” Glad it was then and not in today’s woke era.
At least one escaped all the way to the African coast. I saw the documentary.
And how many crews had drowned during training in the Hunley prior to its first, and last, combat sortie? Two?
I don’t think you could have paid me enough to go aboard and submerge after that.
Come to think of it, I had always assumed that the Hunley’s crews were volunteers. Does anyone know if that’s true?
very old story - some years at least
Because they didn't want to open the hatch and drown? Because they couldn't see any way out of the situation? Because they were in agony with blood coming out of their ears? Because they were obeying orders, man your post?
yes they were!
Remember the CSS Hunley killed its inventor - Horace Hunley on a test dive.
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