Sub's fate is a cold case - Hunley closely guards it secrets

On 17/02/2009
In Famous Wrecks
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By Bruce Smith

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.