The Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley made history in the Civil War as the first combat submarine to sink an enemy ship, killing its eight-man crew with the same weapon that marked its success. This breakthrough discovery was just released from a far-reaching investigation by Rachel Lance, Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Duke University.
On February 17, 1864, the Hunley made its first and only combat mission: against the 1,200-ton Union warship USS Housatonic, offshore at Charleston Harbor in South Carolina. Using a 135-pound black-powder torpedo on the underside of the Housatonic, the Hunley was able to sink it in just five minutes. Although five seamen from the Housatonic died, the remainder of the crew escaped by climbing the rigging and launching lifeboats. The Hunley’s crew was only seen again well after the discovery of the submarine in 1995, some 300 meters from where the Housatonic lies today.
Raised in 2000, the Hunley is currently being studied and conserved in Charleston by a team of Clemson University scientists. Initial findings only deepened the mystery, as the crew’s skeletons were found at their stations along a hand crank that powered the submarine, with no sign of broken bones and the bilge pumps unused. Air hatches were closed except for minor damages to a conning tower and small window; the submarine was intact. Speculations about their deaths ran from suffocation to drowning.
A painstaking three-year study by Lance, who triggered blasts by a scale model and did detailed mathematical analyses, concluded that a powerful shockwave from the Hunley’s weapon killed the crew. According to Lance, for every member of the crew, the likelihood was at least 85 percent that the blast was sufficient to inflict immediately fatal lung trauma. The Hunley’s torpedo, a copper keg of gunpowder mounted on a 16-foot spar, exploded when it rammed into the Housatonic. The closest crewmember was only some 42 feet away from this explosion.
Lance explained that the crew died instantly from the shock wave, the force of the blast traveling through their soft tissues, the lungs, and brains. The crippled submarine drifted on the falling tide, taking on water gradually, then sinking. “This is the characteristic trauma of blast victims, they call it ‘blast lung,” Lance noted. The shockwave, going at different speeds in water and air produced a devastating effect when it crossed the lungs of the crewmen, slowing to about 30 meters per second, with severe damage to tissues.
That the Hunley was a precarious design was already known on the fact that it had sunk twice during development and testing, killing 13 crewmen, including its namesake, Horace L. Hunley. Still, Lance’s research into history showed that the designers of the powderkeg weapon were aware of the dangers of underwater blasts, as they conducted tests from a safe distance.
Much of Lance’s work in PLOS One relies on tests using a scale model of the Hunley, fitted with interior sensors and subjected to pressurized air blasts and scaled black-powder explosions. Her work included lengthy archival searches through testing in historically accurate iron plates, as well as expert consultations in both explosives and Civil War weaponry.
On April 17, 2004, the remains of the Hunley’s crew will finally be laid to rest with full military honors in Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, South Carolina. According to a South Carolina State official, “one of the great historical events of our lifetime,” this burial will be in memory of the bravery and sacrifice of that crew. A memorial period will precede the burial, during which personal information and facial reconstructions of the crew are to be released.
It is now that the crew will be able “to rest in peace, at last.” according to Warren Lasch, the Chairman of Friends of the Hunley. The crew will join other men who lost their lives on two prior missions in the Hunley. Tens of thousands of people will witness this historic event that has been tagged as the last Confederate burial.
The funeral procession will start with a ceremony at White Point Gardens in downtown Charleston and include a 4.5-mile procession to Magnolia Cemetery. The Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion 1861 prayer book will be used during the service, just as it was for the first crew’s burial.
Thus, the Hunley, discovered in 1995 by Clive Cussler and his organization NUMA, and raised in 2000, has been a time capsule, holding the remains and personal belongings of the crewmen alongside many valuables. Now, with the final burial, it will be the end of a long journey for the Hunley’s crew to finally come back to port and rest in peace on American soil.