Up from a watery grave

Since sinking on Feb. 17, 1864, the Confederate sub H.L Hunley with its nine crewmen rested on the ocean floor. On Tuesday, it was raised.

Compiled from Times wires

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 9, 2000

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- The Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley finally returned to port Tuesday, 136 years after it carved its name in history as the first submarine to sink an enemy ship.

The Hunley, which sank on Feb. 17, 1864, after ramming a spar with a black powder charge into the wooden hull of the Union blockade ship Housatonic, was lifted from its watery grave about 4 miles off nearby Sullivans Island shortly before 9 a.m.

Securely cradled in foam-filled slings, it was gingerly placed on a barge. Then, the slender, barnacle-encrusted vessel returned to Charleston, its iron hull still intact and its sand-packed innards presumably holding the remains of its nine crew members.

Tuesday's work ended more than a century of searching by shipwreck hunters and herculean efforts to raise one of the world's great relics.

"I am numb," said best-selling author Clive Cussler, who financed the diving operation that found the Hunley in 1995 after 15 years of looking. "I thought I'd be dead before they found it. Now here it is.

"This is beyond belief. That boat is an incredible piece of history, and it's coming up in one piece," he said.

Scientists think the sealed submarine, buried in silt, created an environment that may be amazingly free of the decay of time. They hope to find an unusually intact interior, including the sailors' remains, their uniforms and equipment, and even personal items.

They also hope to find answers to the mysteries of the Hunley, questions that have fascinated history buffs for decades: What caused the experimental craft to sink a third and final time on Feb. 17, 1864? What would it have been like to be a crew member cramped inside the vessel, which was only 4 feet in diameter and 40 feet long, knowing the sub had already sunk twice with fatal results?

"I think a lot of the public fascination has to do with the fact that the story has not had an ending. . . ," said Dawn Hammer, a park ranger with the Fort Sumter National Monument. "I think some of it, too, is wondering about the men going out in the submarine, the mentality involved to go try again in something so untested, just the courage and the valor. You have to think, "If I had been them, would I go, too?' "

It took just four minutes for the crane to lift the Hunley 30 feet to the surface, divers and scientists handling the boat delicately.

The boat was secured in a steel truss. Once in the air, the crane dangled it to give everyone who had ventured out to sea under a blazing sun a good look. A flotilla of 400 boats -- many flying Confederate flags -- served as an escort. Thousands of people lined the beaches and Charleston's waterfront to get a view.

Scientists battled time and certain corrosion to the iron hull to get the boat up the Cooper River to the laboratory and tank built especially for the Hunley at the old Charleston Navy Yard. They covered the boat in burlap and kept it bathed in a saltwater mist.

Once at the lab, it took three hours to immerse the Hunley into a tank of fresh water, chilled to 50 degrees, where conservators will spend the next eight to 10 years preserving it.

From 20 feet, the grayish vessel looked remarkably intact. Bolts could clearly be seen from the starboard stern.

South Carolina Rep. Chip Limehouse said, "The story of the Hunley is an American success story of American ingenuity, pride and courage. I hope the world pays attention today. This is a milestone in history."

The Hunley took its name from its inventor, Horace L. Hunley, whose original intent was making money -- collecting the bounty the Confederate government offered to blockade-busters who could disable Yankee ships clogging Southern harbors, said Michael Zeigler of Charleston, a maritime history buff who volunteers on the project. Hunley himself would die in the vessel's second sinking; he never made a dime from his sub.

The French already had developed a submarine for the U.S. government in 1862-63, Zeigler said. Hunley's final version of his contraption was made from a locomotive boiler and was propelled by manpower; a crew of eight men operated the hand cranks and a ninth served as its captain. It could remain under water for just over two hours at a time.

Five men died and four escaped in the first sinking of the Hunley in 1863, after the Confederate Navy had taken over the vessel, maneuvering it through the waters outside Charleston. It was retrieved from the sea, and Hunley led a civilian crew on a test run in October 1863. Again, the sub sank, and the eight crew members aboard this time, including the inventor, perished. And again, the Hunley was brought back to the surface.

On that final February night in 1864, the submarine managed to ram a 90-pound black powder charge into the side of the USS Housatonic, sending the ship to the bottom of the sea. But something -- no one is quite sure what -- also happened to the Hunley.

"We always thought she was run over by a vessel that was coming to the aid of the Housatonic," Zeigler said. "After the explosion, she was above water and the hatch was open and somebody sent the blue-light signal, the signal to shore that she had succeeded. She wasn't sinking at that point."

Another theory is that the Hunley may have been hit by answering fire from the Housatonic, Warren Lasch, chairman of Friends of the Hunley, a fundraising group for the $17-million recovery and restoration project, said.

The names of the nine Confederates who died on the final Hunley outing are known, Lasch said.

Now begins the meticulous and humane process to find and identify their remains; the Smithsonian plans to help reconstruct who they were.

Eventually, the remains will be buried at Magnolia Cemetery, where the other Hunley casualties have been laid to rest, and the sub will go on display in the Charleston Museum.

"We will treat them with the utmost respect they deserve," Lasch said.

- Information from the Charlotte Observer, the Washington Post and the Associated Press was used in this report.

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