Inside the CSS Hunley

[Isgrimnur]

The psuedo-steampunk relic was finally found at the bottom of the Atlantic resting on its side at a 45-degree angle about 11 years ago, and it's been in a South Carolina lab, held in the exact same position in slings ever since. Until now. Last week, the Hunley was rotated to an upright position for the first time since Abraham Lincoln was still breathing--how's that for old-school heavy metal?
...

In fact, it wasn't just the propeller that was hand-cranked--ballast water was also pumped in and out manually to make the Hunley dive or head for the surface. That's an awful lot of hand-pumping left to a tiny, apprehensive, and cramped crew with little room for error, which is perhaps why the first two times the Hunley attempted to attack the Union's naval blockade of Charleston, it promptly sank, killing everyone aboard.


Yet somehow a team was recruited for a third try. This time the Hunley succeeded in ramming the USS Housatonic, and detonating the resulting torpedo lodged in her hull. Both vessels ended up at the bottom of Charleston Harbor, but the Hunley was stuck so deep in the mud that it was not discovered until 2000 by a team led by author Clive Cussler. Interestingly, the bodies of the crew appeared to be at their stations as if nothing had happened, and studies show they died of lack of oxygen rather than drowning.

[Holman]

Shouldn't it be full of dead Rebel submariners?

[Grundbegriff]

This was found in the captain's log:

float: right !important;

[Enough]

More info on the Hunley.

[Isgrimnur]

Hull revealed

A century and a half after it sank and a decade and a half after it was raised, scientists are finally getting a look at the hull of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, the first sub in history to sink an enemy warship.

What they find may finally solve the mystery of why the hand-cranked submarine sank during the Civil War.
...
Last May, it was finally ready to be bathed in a solution of sodium hydroxide to loosen the encrustation. Then in August, scientists using small air-powered chisels and dental tools began the laborious job of removing the coating.

Now about 70 percent of the outside hull has been revealed.

Mardikian said the exposed hull indeed has revealed some things that may help solve the mystery of the sinking.

"I would have to lie to you if I said we had not, but it's too early to talk about it yet," he said. "We have a submarine that is encrypted. It's like an Enigma machine."

[msduncan]

The H.L. Hunley was filled with the remains of the Confederate soldiers who piloted her.

I stood Honor Guard over the remains while they were studied at the same location where the H.L. Hunley is being restored (complete with changing of the guard ceremonies).

I also marched 6 miles behind one of the caissons carrying Miller (as a member of his Honor Guard). I stood at the funeral ceremony with gloved hand resting on his casket, which was draped with the second Confederate national flag called the "Stainless Banner". I also stood at attention over his internment at the cemetery after the 6 mile march.

I was given this at the end:

[Apollo]

That's awesome, MSD! How did you get chosen for the Honor Guard?

[em2nought]

Maybe the skipper just needed his dad swimming with a mask and snorkel beside the Hunley https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qET7_uqOE8c

[msduncan]

That's awesome, MSD! How did you get chosen for the Honor Guard?

Crazy story.

Wife worked with a guy that was into reenacting. He needed help one day (warm bodies) to dress in Union attire and stand in a church flanking him for hours and hours as a production company adjusted lighting (this is how filming is done). It was TLC or some similar channel doing a documentary on the emancipation and he was playing a commander that was delivering the message to slaves in Georgia.

Fast forward a few months -- he thanks me by telling me that the museum in Charleston was studying the remains of the sailors in the Hunley. His group was standing honor guard (complete with changing of the guard ceremonies) the whole time they were there. He asked me if I'd like to do it. He provided me with a confederate uniform and I did it for a day. Crazy feeling. Here I was standing guard over the last bodies recovered from the Civil War.

Fast forward another month and he asks me to join his group that was going to be marching in the funeral. There were going to be 12,000 to 20,000 reenactors participating in this procession. Our group was just one of many. I suited up and went to Charleston. When we got there, the organizers (Friends of the Hunley) came up to us and said the honor guard for Miller failed to show. They offered Rick the chance. He came up to our group and said "guys, you are not going to believe this, but we are going to be honor guard!"

The police actually came up to us before the ceremonies and march started to tell us if there was any disruptions or people charging at the caisson that we were empowered and instructed to surround the coffin and protect it until authorities intervened. We had bayonets fixed as per funeral standards.

So there I was.... hand on coffin while they did the ceremonies down by the battery on the water. We then left and marched the 6 miles right behind his caisson to the cemetery where we stood guard as they interred him.

It was surreal. Over 10 thousand "confederate" soldiers marching down this broad avenue through Charleston. Interstate traffic was snarled to a stand still as the flyover bridge looks right down on that street. I wondered at the time what people thought looking down and seeing this literal army of confederate soldiers marching through the city.

Everyone was silent and respectful the entire way. It has been properly called the last funeral of the Civil War.

That night there was a ball at The Citadel. 1800's style with a procession showing off the women's dresses and everything. Citadel cadets in attendance as well.

[Daehawk]

Strangely I have a memory of a bigger topic on this. I posted about the coin the commander carried and how it saved his life once and stuff. Yet this is the only thread I see.

New stuff.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/08/travel/ci ... mpartment/

A tooth was found embedded in sediment on one of the crank handles. Officials say it wound up there "post mortem," after decomposition of a body.

Inside they also found remnants of textiles and a thin metal wrap around the hand crank -- showing how the crew operated the sub.
"When you're turning an iron bar in front of you or below you, you're going to need something to keep your hands from chaffing or rubbing them raw," archaeologist Michael Scafuri told WCIV.

[Rip]

http://counton2.com/2017/06/07/historia ... submarine/

It is no secret that the crew compartment of the H. L. Hunley, the world’s first successful combat submarine, was small. Conservators working to save the pioneering vessel have a new understanding of just how cramped and intimidating it must have been for the eight-man crew in 1864 when they cranked the Hunley into world history. Working in the small confines of the roughly 4-foot tall hull, scientists are slowly breaking off the concretion – a layer of sand, sediment, shells and corrosion products – that built up slowly over time while she was lost at sea for over a century.

The concretion completely maske the original surface of one of maritime lore’s greatest artifacts as well as many of its finer operational features. “The work can be exhausting, but I love this job. I get to watch the submarine come out of its shell and be one of the first people to actually see the crew compartment in over a century. It is really very exciting,” said Clemson University’s Warren Lasch Conservation Center’s Associate Director and Senior Conservator Liisa Nasanen.

[Max Peck]

Science may have solved the 150-year-old mystery of a sunken Civil War submarine

Cheers erupted when the H.L. Hunley broke the ocean's surface for the first time in more than a century. Since it vanished during a 1864 naval battle, the Confederate submarine had lain on the seafloor off the coast near Charleston, S.C., its heavy iron hull gathering barnacles and rust. In 2000, when the vessel was recovered, scientists and historians expected to be able to solve the mystery of why it sank.

But when they ventured inside the boat, they found not a single clue. Its 40-foot-long iron hull was barnacle-encrusted but not broken. The skeletons of eight members of the crew were found still in their seats at their respective battle stations; their bones bore no evidence of physical harm. The bilge pumps hadn't been activated. The air hatches were closed. There was no sign that anyone had tried to escape.

“There was nothing on the boat that could explain the deaths,” said Rachel Lance, a biomedical engineer at the University of North Carolina.

In a paper published this week in the journal PLOS ONE, Lance and her colleagues report it was something in the water that led to the submarine's demise, something the crew had put there themselves. They were killed by their own weapon.

Lance and her colleagues constructed a six-foot scale model of the Hunley out of historically accurate sheets of iron, and dubbed the vessel CSS Tiny. They placed it in a pond on Duke's campus, then pumped a puff of compressed gas into the water near the little ship to replicate the effects of a bomb exploding. Sensors located on every surface of the Tiny indicated that the waves hit the underside of the hull and were deflected, setting off a secondary pressure wave that bounced around the vessel's interior.

Next they replicated the experiment using real blasts of black powder — the world's most ancient explosive, which was the active ingredient in the Hunley's torpedo. This phase was conducted in an off-campus pond, where it wouldn't harm any hapless undergrads. But it gave the same results: The pressure along the Hunley's keel was about 1,100 pounds per square inch, or psi — equivalent to being beneath 2,400 feet of water. Inside the ship, the pressure jumped to at least 28 psi after the explosion — similar to diving down to 64 feet below the surface.

That may not sound like much, but remember that this increase happened almost instantaneously. “It is the rapid rate of increase that causes the trauma,” Lance said. She and her colleagues calculated there was an 85 percent chance that the crew of the Hunley died of pulmonary problems caused by this dramatic wave of pressure. They could have died before they knew what was happening.

[Grundbegriff]

This was found in the captain's log:

float: right !important;

This joke deserved more love.

[Isgrimnur]

[Daehawk]

Strange. Never knew of that part.