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The CSS HL Hunley Civil War Submarine On February 17th, 1864, the Confederate submarine HL Hunley was sent on a secret mission to attack and destroy a Union Naval ship called the USS Housatonic,- anchored just outside of Charleston Harbor.
Under the cover of darkness, the crew of the Hunley glided the sub just beneath the surface of the water towards the Housatonic and rammed a torpedo into the ships side, lodging it there.Then they backed away with a rope attached to the torpedo. After backing away a short distance the crew of the Hunley detonated the torpedo, and as the Housatonic burned and slowly sank, the name of the Hunley was etched into history forever. She had become the first submarine to successfully attack and destroy an enemy warship. The Hunley Damaged? But what happened next is a mystery. The ship and crew of the Hunley apparently surfaced to signal their comrads with a blue magnesium lamp that the mission was a success, but that was the last ever seen of them. They never made it back to shore. What caused the sub to sink? Was it damaged during the explosion? Many theorists have suggested that the sub was too close to the Housatonic when she detonated the torpedo, and began taking on water when she resurfaced. Other theorists suggested human error and operational mistakes were to blame. After all, two previous crews had perished in simple training exercises. The Mystery Endures Following the end of the Civil War, marine salvagers and treasure seekers searched the sandy bottom around the fallen Housatonic for years in search of the vanished Hunley. The businessman P.T. Barnum, of the famed Barnum and Bailey Circus even offered a reward of 100,000 dollars for the discovery of the Hunley, a huge sum of money today but especially huge in that day and time. But it was to no avail. The mystery of the Hunley was to lay shrouded in the silt and sand around the Charleston Harbor, which would keep it's secret hidden for over 100 years. The Raising of the Hunley But the mystery of the Hunley proved to be no match for the superior mapping abilities and advanced technologies possessed by modern researchers. The precise location of the sub remained a mystery,- that is, until recently. The subject of an investigation by the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), and after being lost at sea for 137 years, the Hunley was revealed on August 8, 2000, seen for the first time in her entirety, from bow to stern and top to bottom. She has been re-discovered, raised, and is currently under a process of conservation and study, as researchers seek to unravel the mysteries inside! From the NUMA Expedition Page "A thousand feet
southeast of the Housatonic's boiler, Ralph, Wes Hall, and
diver/archaeologist Harry Pecorelli struck a 650 gamma target that had
somehow been overlooked during previous searches. Pecorelli went down
and probed the silt since no object was protruding above the sea floor.
The object was long and narrow. Then Wes Hall went down with a three
inch dredge and sucked away two feet of the silt. Fortune smiled as Wes
peered through the murk and drifting sand into the excavated hole and
recognized the hatch cover of the Hunley."
Interesting links for further reading: The Friends of the Hunley The NUMA Hunley Expedition
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