Speaker 1: I'm Happy Saturday everyone. Coming up on the show, we
Speaker 1: have an interview with Dr Rachel Lance, author of the
Speaker 1: book In the Waves, My Quest to Solve the Mystery
Speaker 1: of a Civil War Submarine. That book recounts her pH
Speaker 1: d research into the disaster aboard the h L. Hunley,
Speaker 1: And since the interview is more focused on her research
Speaker 1: than on the greater story of the Huntley and what happened,
Speaker 1: we wanted to replay that earlier episode is a Saturday
Speaker 1: classic for folks who may not know or may not
Speaker 1: remember the details. Um we briefly discuss her research from
Speaker 1: back before the book was published. At the end of
Speaker 1: the episode. One thing to note, there's discussion about one
Speaker 1: of the Hunley's predecessors, the Pioneer in this episode, which
Speaker 1: her research uncovered different information about, and we're gonna leave
Speaker 1: that for the upcoming interview, but when you get to
Speaker 1: that part, just know that we will be revisiting it
Speaker 1: in a couple of days. This episode originally came out August.
Speaker 1: Well Come to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. We have
Speaker 1: a past podcast subject that has been in the news lately,
Speaker 1: that is the c s S. H L. Hunley, and
Speaker 1: that's following a newly published paper on the cause of
Speaker 1: death for the people who were inside that Confederate submarine
Speaker 1: when it was lost. And typically it's the sort of
Speaker 1: news that we would cover with an episode update, where
Speaker 1: we would either play the previous episode first and talk
Speaker 1: about the new developments afterward, or the other way around.
Speaker 1: But that previous appearance of the Hunley on our show
Speaker 1: is from the episode More Shipwrecks Stories Battleships, so it's
Speaker 1: only about eight minutes of an episode that also covers
Speaker 1: several other shipwrecks as well. So instead of doing a
Speaker 1: normal episode update that we might do typically in another circumstances,
Speaker 1: we're going to give the h L. Hunley the full
Speaker 1: treatment today. And huge, huge thanks to Rachel Lance, who
Speaker 1: dropped us a note about the Hunley a few days
Speaker 1: before we recorded this. She's one of the authors on
Speaker 1: this paper that just came out about it, which actually
Speaker 1: grew out of her pH d research, So we will
Speaker 1: be talking about that some more later in the episode,
Speaker 1: and the story of the h L. Hunley really begins
Speaker 1: with the Union blockade of the Confederacy during the Civil War,
Speaker 1: which was ordered less than a week after the fall
Speaker 1: of Fort Sumter in South Carolina. So for a quick recap.
Speaker 1: After multiple Slave states, including South Carolina, seceded after the
Speaker 1: election of Abraham Lincoln, Major Robert Anderson of the U.
Speaker 1: S Army occupied Fort Sumter and refused to hand it
Speaker 1: over to the Confederacy, and after a couple of skirmishes,
Speaker 1: a Confederate force attacked the fort on April twelfth, and
Speaker 1: the Union surrendered it on The attack on Fort Sumter
Speaker 1: is generally marked as the official beginning of the war.
Speaker 1: Almost immediately after this, the United States government started working
Speaker 1: on a plan to cut off the Southern ports from
Speaker 1: international shipping. The goal was to prevent the South from
Speaker 1: exporting its goods, including cotton and produce, and to prevent
Speaker 1: Southern states from importing trade goods, weapons, and other material
Speaker 1: that would be needed for the war. This was all
Speaker 1: part of a military strategy called the Anaconda Plan, meant
Speaker 1: to choke off the South and bring a speedy end
Speaker 1: to the conflict. There is some debate about how effective
Speaker 1: this was. It definitely made things tougher on the South,
Speaker 1: but the war was definitely not brought to a remotely
Speaker 1: speedy end by putting it into place. The government had
Speaker 1: two main options for stopping commerce at the southern ports.
Speaker 1: President Lincoln could issue an executive order closing them, or
Speaker 1: a blockade could prevent ships from entering or leaving them.
Speaker 1: Either way, though, cutting off the Southern states to shipping
Speaker 1: would have a negative impact on international trade, which meant
Speaker 1: other nations were likely to object, so the likely international
Speaker 1: response had to be part of that decision, and there
Speaker 1: were pros and cons to each of these two strategies.
Speaker 1: An executive order closing the ports would be simpler it
Speaker 1: would not require a massively huge navy to enforce, but
Speaker 1: it would also be difficult to enforce. This was especially
Speaker 1: true since violators would need to be tried in the
Speaker 1: state where they'd violated the order, which at that point
Speaker 1: would have been a state under Confederate control. That would
Speaker 1: make such a proceeding highly unlikely, so it was really
Speaker 1: easy to imagine someone just ignoring the order knowing that
Speaker 1: it wasn't likely or even impossible that they would be
Speaker 1: prosecuted for it. A blockade, on the other hand, was
Speaker 1: an internationally recognized wartime action, and standards for blockades had
Speaker 1: been outlined in the eighteen fifty six Declaration of Paris.
Speaker 1: Although the US was not a signatory of the declaration,
Speaker 1: it could expect other nations to respect the blockade as
Speaker 1: long as it was implemented and maintained in a way
Speaker 1: that followed international law. The only exception would be if
Speaker 1: other nations were willing to officially take the Southern side
Speaker 1: in the conflict, which would put them at war with
Speaker 1: the United States, but at the same time, implementing a
Speaker 1: blockade would shift the framing of the war. You might
Speaker 1: remember how in our podcast on nuclear close Calls, the
Speaker 1: United States presented its blockade of Cuba during the Cuban
Speaker 1: Missile crisis as a quarantine rather than as a blockade,
Speaker 1: because a blockade assumed a state of war, and the
Speaker 1: United States was not at war with Cuba at that time,
Speaker 1: so this was similar Blockading the Southern States meant that
Speaker 1: the Union was recognizing the Confederacy as an opposing belligerent.
Speaker 1: This meant the war was no longer an insurrection or
Speaker 1: a rebellion or some kind of internal matter. It was
Speaker 1: a war between two separate opposing entities. On April nineteen,
Speaker 1: President Lincoln issued a proclamation ordering the blockade of the
Speaker 1: entire Confederate coast, with the exception of North Carolina and Virginia.
Speaker 1: He issued a second proclamation eight days later which added
Speaker 1: those two states to the plan. In the words of
Speaker 1: his Shill proclamation, quote for this purpose, a competent force
Speaker 1: will be posted so as to prevent entrance and exit
Speaker 1: of vessels from the ports aforesaid. If therefore, with a
Speaker 1: view to violate such blockade, a vessel shall approach or
Speaker 1: shall attempt to leave, any of the said ports, she
Speaker 1: will be duly warned by the commander of one of
Speaker 1: the blockading vessels, who will endorse on her register the
Speaker 1: fact and date of such warning. And if the same
Speaker 1: vessel shall again attempt to enter or leave the blockaded ports,
Speaker 1: she will be captured and sent to the nearest convenient
Speaker 1: port for such proceedings against her and her cargo as
Speaker 1: prize as maybe deemed advisable. This was a colossal undertaking.
Speaker 1: The plan involved not only blocking the twelve major southern ports,
Speaker 1: but also guarding its entire coastline. This is about three thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred miles or five thousand, six hundred kilometers, and
Speaker 1: although leaders hoped that it could be done with about
Speaker 1: thirty warships, it became clear really quickly that there was
Speaker 1: not nearly enough. Small vessels dodged the warships guarding the
Speaker 1: ports by traveling along inland waterways, and commerce continued essentially unimpeded.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was harder to do, but like they
Speaker 1: didn't make much of a dent, and getting done continued
Speaker 1: at the southern ports for months. Gideon Wells, Secretary of
Speaker 1: the Navy, then established a Blockade Strategy Board, which convened
Speaker 1: at the Smithsonian Institution and made an extensive study of
Speaker 1: Southern waterways to try to figure out how to bolster
Speaker 1: this blockade. Their research stretched from July to September of
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty one, and they ultimately issued ten total reports
Speaker 1: on how to make the blockade more effective. The number
Speaker 1: of blockading ships would grow well into the hundreds, and
Speaker 1: by the end of the war, the United States would
Speaker 1: have the largest navy on earth. Meanwhile, the Confederacy worked
Speaker 1: out a number of strategies to try to get around
Speaker 1: this blockade. For a time, the Confederate government tried issuing
Speaker 1: letters of mark to privateers to operate from the southern
Speaker 1: ports and try to take prizes from the Union trade ships.
Speaker 1: This was particularly effective at distracting the United States Navy
Speaker 1: for the first several months of the war, but as
Speaker 1: the blockade got tightened, privateers stopped being able to sneak
Speaker 1: out and into the Southern ports, so their usefulness declined,
Speaker 1: and eventually their use in the war really waned. Another
Speaker 1: technique was blockade runners, small lightweight sailing vessels and steamers,
Speaker 1: most of them civilian vessels that largely operated at night.
Speaker 1: Blockade runners would sneak in and out of Southern ports
Speaker 1: and carry goods to and from neutral ports like Bermuda
Speaker 1: and Nasau. Charleston, South Carolina was a hot spot for
Speaker 1: blockade runners until early eighteen sixty three, when the Union
Speaker 1: significantly reinforced the blockade there. Then most blockade running activity
Speaker 1: moved to Wilmington, North Carolina. Small vessels ran the blockade
Speaker 1: all through the Gulf Coast throughout the war as well.
Speaker 1: Having grown up in North Carolina and spent a fair
Speaker 1: amoun of time in the Wilmington's and Rightsful Beach areas
Speaker 1: in the summer, blockade runners they have kind of a
Speaker 1: folk hero quality in this like they're kind of a
Speaker 1: nod to the very romanticized idea of how the Civil
Speaker 1: War went down, have kind of a sticking it to
Speaker 1: the man running the blockade like spirit. Uh So, I
Speaker 1: have always found the story of the Blackade Runners kind
Speaker 1: of fascinating, um from that point of view and life experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's certainly like conjurors images of just sort
Speaker 1: of some interesting stealth moving and yeah, and I can
Speaker 1: see where it gets romanticized. I think they're they're even
Speaker 1: you know, hotels and restaurants and things like that named
Speaker 1: with the Blockade runner or or nods to famous blockade runners.
Speaker 1: To me, those words will always mean star wars. So
Speaker 1: of course there were not just efforts to run the Blackade,
Speaker 1: but also to destroy the ships in the blockade themselves.
Speaker 1: And that is what brings us to the c s S. H. L. Huntley,
Speaker 1: which we will talk more about after a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: The H. L. Hounley is named for Horace Lawson Hunley,
Speaker 1: who was born in Tennessee on June three. He got
Speaker 1: a law degree from the University of Louisiana which is
Speaker 1: now to Lane University in eighteen forty nine, and he
Speaker 1: opened a law practice in New Orleans. He also worked
Speaker 1: at the New Orleans Customs House, and he'd previously served
Speaker 1: in the Louisiana legislature. In eighteen fifty nine or eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty he bought a plantation, and in addition to the
Speaker 1: enslaved labor that worked on the plantation, according to the
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty census, he enslaved eight people for domestic work
Speaker 1: at his home in New Orleans. By eighteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: he was doing pretty well financially, but he was always
Speaker 1: interested in finding new ways to bring in additional income,
Speaker 1: and one of these was the development of a submarine
Speaker 1: vessel to be used in the Confederate war effort. This
Speaker 1: really seems to have in a scheme that was driven
Speaker 1: more by money and by pride than by patriotism. Although
Speaker 1: Hunley himself was a slave owner and he supported the
Speaker 1: institution of slavery, he also thought it was really foolish
Speaker 1: and shortsighted for the South to be going to war
Speaker 1: over it. But businessman and the Confederate government had offered
Speaker 1: substantial prizes to anyone who could sink a Union warship,
Speaker 1: and Huny really hoped to get himself one of those prizes,
Speaker 1: and he was also wanting to make his own mark
Speaker 1: on history and establish a legacy for himself. In his
Speaker 1: pursuit of a workable submarine, Hunley teamed up with other
Speaker 1: financial backers and went to James McClintock, an engineer who
Speaker 1: was living in New Orleans who had also been working
Speaker 1: on a small underwater craft with Baxter Watson, and once
Speaker 1: they were all working together, their first attempt at a
Speaker 1: submarine was the Pioneer, which was a thirty five ft long,
Speaker 1: roughly cylindrical vessel with tapered ends. It was powered by
Speaker 1: two men turning a crank while a commander controlled the
Speaker 1: depth and used fins to steer. Although the Pioneer essentially
Speaker 1: worked and it was authorized for privateering with a letter
Speaker 1: of mark, it wasn't particularly refined. It moved slowly, and
Speaker 1: it leaked, and it never saw combat. When the Union
Speaker 1: captured New Orleans in April of eighteen sixty two, the
Speaker 1: team intentionally scuttled it so that it would not fall
Speaker 1: into enemy hands. This might be where things like privateers
Speaker 1: get romanticized, because you have to have nerves of steel
Speaker 1: to be like it's essentially a big barrel. I think
Speaker 1: I'll take it under water and pull a crank. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this whole they talked about in the prior episode, which
Speaker 1: I think was from Sarah and Bablina, about how nerve
Speaker 1: racking it must have been to be in any of
Speaker 1: these vessels. I mean, at this point, being in a
Speaker 1: submarine is still a pretty closed in, tight quarters experience.
Speaker 1: But these were just basically metal tubes that you had
Speaker 1: to crawl into and then crouch. Yeah. Yeah, Like, here's
Speaker 1: the submarine I built in my backyard, Go take on
Speaker 1: the war effort in it. That would be scary. And
Speaker 1: from there, Hunley, Watson and McClintock fled to Mobile, Alabama,
Speaker 1: where they met Thomas W. Park and Thomas B. Lions
Speaker 1: of the Park and Lions Machine Shop, and it was
Speaker 1: there that these five men, along with William A. Alexander,
Speaker 1: worked on another submarine, American Diver. Their efforts with the
Speaker 1: Diver weren't nearly as successful as they had been with
Speaker 1: the Pioneer, though McClintock spent months trying to develop an
Speaker 1: engine that could power the sub rather than using the
Speaker 1: power of human beings turning cranks, because moving fresh air
Speaker 1: into a submersible craft was a tricky proposition. Using an
Speaker 1: engine rather than than human exertion for propulsion would give
Speaker 1: it a greater range and more power, but he couldn't
Speaker 1: get an engine that was small enough to fit, so
Speaker 1: he ultimately gave up after having spent months trying, and
Speaker 1: then went back to the crank method that they were
Speaker 1: using before, and he wound up with a design that
Speaker 1: was slightly larger than the Pioneer and had two additional
Speaker 1: crew to power that crank. Uh It performed well enough
Speaker 1: in tests in the lake, but even with two more
Speaker 1: men working the crank, once the American Diver was launched
Speaker 1: into the sea, it wasn't powerful enough to overcome the
Speaker 1: pull of the tide. The crew had to struggle just
Speaker 1: to make it back to port, and once they did,
Speaker 1: for reasons that aren't entirely clear, the vessel was immediately
Speaker 1: swamped and sank, and it has never been recovered. So
Speaker 1: not only had the team spent months working on a
Speaker 1: vessel that didn't work in real world conditions and then
Speaker 1: lost it, they also sunk all of their capital into
Speaker 1: that venture. They would have been out of the submarine
Speaker 1: game entirely had they not found a new investor that
Speaker 1: was Edgar C. Singer of Texas, who was an expert
Speaker 1: in torpedoes and Singer arrived in Mobile in the spring
Speaker 1: of eighteen sixty three and was impressed enough with their
Speaker 1: progress that he funded work on another submarine, which took
Speaker 1: place over that spring and summer, and the result was
Speaker 1: the h L Hunley, which was originally named the fish Boat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not clear to me exactly when they changed it
Speaker 1: to the HONLY Um, but the Homely was longer than
Speaker 1: the Pioneer or the American Diver, with a total length
Speaker 1: of fort or twelve meters that included a five ft
Speaker 1: long or seven point six meter main compartment, and then
Speaker 1: running all through that compartment was the crank connected to
Speaker 1: a propeller by a series of gears that would be
Speaker 1: operated by a crew of seven. Space inside of the
Speaker 1: scrap was very tight. Those men would basically, one at
Speaker 1: a time, crawl or sort of sidle their way in
Speaker 1: and then cunch over this central crank. Uh An eighth
Speaker 1: man who was the one in the in command of
Speaker 1: the vessel controlled the depth and the direction. I'm so
Speaker 1: claustrophobic just hearing that description. Tracy's watching me wins and squirm,
Speaker 1: and the artwork for this episode on that will be
Speaker 1: on our website is like a diagram of what the
Speaker 1: thing looked like. It is very it's very it's very
Speaker 1: tight and there. Out of the water, the hunley looked
Speaker 1: like a giant metal tube with tapered ends and fins
Speaker 1: and a couple of domes on top. But in the
Speaker 1: water it was pretty easy to mistake for a porpoise
Speaker 1: or a dolphin. Bellows and snorkel tubes were used to
Speaker 1: move fresh air into the craft, with a lit candle,
Speaker 1: providing an early warning system for oxygen getting too low.
Speaker 1: It's one of the things that previous hosts remarked on
Speaker 1: as being little nerve racking to have to keep an
Speaker 1: eye on a candle to know if you had enough air.
Speaker 1: The craft's buoyancy and depth were controlled through a pair
Speaker 1: of ballast tanks, one four and one aft, and each
Speaker 1: of them was equipped with its own pump. The pumps
Speaker 1: were also capable of removing water out from the crew compartment,
Speaker 1: which was somewhere it should not be. The vessel's buoyancy
Speaker 1: was a very delicate balance, and too much water collecting
Speaker 1: in the main compartment would cause the vessel to sink.
Speaker 1: They began testing the Hunley in the Mobile River in
Speaker 1: July of eighteen sixty three, working the bugs out before
Speaker 1: inviting Confederate military officials to observe. They conducted a successful
Speaker 1: demonstration on July thirty one, which involved approaching a barge
Speaker 1: in the river while towing a mine, and when it
Speaker 1: got close to the barge, the Hunley submerged, passed under it,
Speaker 1: and resur fist farther up the river. Meanwhile, once the
Speaker 1: Mind came in contact with the barge, it exploded and
Speaker 1: sank it. This demonstration was a clear success, but it
Speaker 1: was not met with the unanimous approval among the Confederate Navy.
Speaker 1: Submarine technology in general was viewed with some suspicion, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people thought it was dishonorable or underhanded
Speaker 1: to sneak up on an enemy and attack it in
Speaker 1: a way that had no hope at all of defense.
Speaker 1: Uh The whole the whole collection of torpedoes and mines
Speaker 1: and things like that that exploded in the water were
Speaker 1: all known as infernal machines at this point in history.
Speaker 1: Um The counter argument to the idea that it was
Speaker 1: dishonorable to be using these things to blow up a
Speaker 1: ship when people had no way of defending themselves. Was
Speaker 1: basically that, as underdogs with fewer naval resources than the
Speaker 1: Union the Confederates, that you basically had to use whatever
Speaker 1: tools they had at hand. Rear Admiral Franklin Buchanan, commander
Speaker 1: of the Naval District of the Gulf, was one military
Speaker 1: figure who not entirely trust submarines. Yet he was the
Speaker 1: one who contacted Flag Officer John Randolph Tucker, who was
Speaker 1: in command of the Confederate Navy and Charleston, to unreservedly
Speaker 1: recommend the Huntley's use against the blockade there. Tucker passed
Speaker 1: the recommendation on to General p. G. T. Beauregard, who
Speaker 1: immediately requested that the Hunley be sent to Charleston. Tucker
Speaker 1: had apparently been confident enough that Beauregard would want to
Speaker 1: take this infernal submarine off of his hands that he
Speaker 1: had already made arrangements to transport it to Charleston before
Speaker 1: he actually got that permission. The Hunley went to Charleston
Speaker 1: by train, where it arrived in August. Soon the Confederate
Speaker 1: Navy took control of it, feeling the civilian team's progress
Speaker 1: was too slow, but on August twenty nine, eighteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: while at the dock being prepared for a training mission,
Speaker 1: the Hunley sank and five of the eight crew aboard
Speaker 1: were killed. Horace Hunley then demanded that the control of
Speaker 1: the submarine be returned back to him from the Confederate military,
Speaker 1: and this was granted, but it did not end well
Speaker 1: for him either. On October fifteenth, he planned a demonstration
Speaker 1: and in which he would dive under a Confederate vessel
Speaker 1: and then surface again on the other side, with himself
Speaker 1: in command of the vessel. But after the dive, the
Speaker 1: Hunley did not come back up again. Hunley himself, along
Speaker 1: with the rest of the crew were all killed, and
Speaker 1: due to bad weather, the vessel wasn't recovered for weeks.
Speaker 1: When it was recovered, it turned out a valve on
Speaker 1: the ballast tank was open, which had allowed water from
Speaker 1: the sea into the crew compartment, which had sunk the
Speaker 1: vessel and killed everyone aboard, although they had managed to
Speaker 1: raise the h L. Hunley from the sea floor. After
Speaker 1: both of these incidents, General Beauregard was understandably reluctant to
Speaker 1: allow the vessel to be used again, but Lieutenant George Dixon,
Speaker 1: who had previously lived in Mobile and had worked at
Speaker 1: the Parking Lions machine shop when the Hunley was built,
Speaker 1: asked to be put in charge of it. Dixon was
Speaker 1: finally given permission to target the U. S. S. Housa Tonic,
Speaker 1: which was part of the Union blockade at Charles Sston
Speaker 1: Fix and carried out this operation on February eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: four after about two months of training and practice for
Speaker 1: the crew, and we will talk about the mission and
Speaker 1: how it went both well and poorly. After a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: When the h L. Hunley embarked on its mission to
Speaker 1: destroy the unionship He's a Tonic, it was no longer
Speaker 1: towing a mind behind it as it had done in
Speaker 1: that initial demonstration in the Mobile River. Instead, it was
Speaker 1: equipped with a black powder torpedo attached to the end
Speaker 1: of a twenty ft spar so for the sake of clarity.
Speaker 1: Torpedoes at this point generally did not have any kind
Speaker 1: of propulsion or guidance like they do today. They were
Speaker 1: a lot more like mines than modern torpedoes. They usually
Speaker 1: had to just be rammed into their target in some
Speaker 1: physical way. The plan for The Hunley was to do
Speaker 1: exactly that and then raise a blue phosphorus lamp to
Speaker 1: signal at the mission was complete, and after seeing the signal,
Speaker 1: men on shore would light a fire that the Hunley
Speaker 1: could use to navigate home. The Hunley approached the Housatonic
Speaker 1: at about eight pm on February eighteen sixty four. Robert F. Fleming,
Speaker 1: one of the few black men stationed aboard, spotted something
Speaker 1: odd in the water. He alerted Acting Master's mate Louis
Speaker 1: a Compwait, who observed the object and so that it
Speaker 1: was a log. Fleming did not agree with this assessment,
Speaker 1: given the objects shape and the fact that it was
Speaker 1: traveling quickly across the tide instead of with the tide.
Speaker 1: He alerted another sailor on watch that there was a
Speaker 1: torpedo incoming. The Housatonic was prepared for a submarine attack.
Speaker 1: Thanks to word carried by Confederate deserters, the Union knew
Speaker 1: that the Confederate Navy had a vessel that could approach
Speaker 1: ships while partially or entirely submerged. The semi submersible David
Speaker 1: had also attacked the U s s New Iron Sides
Speaker 1: the previous October, so all the blockade ships in the area.
Speaker 1: It took the precaution of anchoring in fairly shallow water
Speaker 1: and keeping the boilers ready to move if necessary. Even so,
Speaker 1: the response aboard the Housatonic was kind of sluggish. Fleming's
Speaker 1: observations weren't readily heated, leading him to say he was
Speaker 1: going to slip the anchor chain himself if he had to.
Speaker 1: It was only after Compway took a second look with
Speaker 1: binoculars that he actually sent word up the chain of
Speaker 1: command that an incoming vessel was on the way. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Acting Master John Crosby alerted the Captain Charles Pickering. As
Speaker 1: the rest of the crew began trying to take evasive action.
Speaker 1: Pickering began firing on the Hunley with his shotguns, since
Speaker 1: the Hunley had already gotten too close for them to
Speaker 1: hit it with a cannon. In spite of the efforts
Speaker 1: aboard the Housatonic, the Hunley successfully deployed its torpedo, blowing
Speaker 1: a huge hole in the side of the ship and
Speaker 1: causing it to rapidly sink since it had been in
Speaker 1: shallow water with the hope of deterring a submarine attack.
Speaker 1: It came to rest with its rigging above the waterline line,
Speaker 1: and those crew not able to make it to lifeboats
Speaker 1: were able to cling to the rigging while waiting for
Speaker 1: rescue by other ships in the blockade. Although the Housatonic
Speaker 1: sank and very little aboard was salvageable afterward, most of
Speaker 1: the crew did survive, five were killed out of a
Speaker 1: total of about a hundred and fifty five. Fleming reported
Speaker 1: that while awaiting rescue, he saw a blue light on
Speaker 1: the water, presumably the Hunley signal of success, and there's
Speaker 1: some debate about what he might have seen them. He
Speaker 1: wouldn't have had knowledge of the Hunley signal plans, and
Speaker 1: he wouldn't have had reason to make it up, but
Speaker 1: it seems likely that the only light actually burning aboard
Speaker 1: the Hunley was the candle that was used to monitor
Speaker 1: the oxygen level. Fumily also never made it back to
Speaker 1: port due to elapse in communication there on. Shore officials
Speaker 1: in Charleston didn't actually realize the ship was missing for days,
Speaker 1: and with no surviving witnesses on their side, it took
Speaker 1: the Confederate Navy a while to confirm that the Housatonic
Speaker 1: had been sunk as well. The Confederate Navy try to
Speaker 1: keep the word of the Hunley's loss from spreading. It
Speaker 1: would have been impossible to try to locate or raise
Speaker 1: the ship, since it had gone down in the vicinity
Speaker 1: of the blockade and no one aboard had survived to
Speaker 1: give its precise location, But it was useful to the
Speaker 1: Confederacy for the Union to believe it still had the
Speaker 1: capability of a surprised submarine attack, and believing the Hunley
Speaker 1: or at least the crew, were still out there was
Speaker 1: also a boost to flagging Confederate morale. Once it was
Speaker 1: clear that no one had survived, theories abounded about what
Speaker 1: might have happened that night aboard the Huntley. Perhaps too
Speaker 1: much water had gotten into the Huntley when the hatch
Speaker 1: was open to raise that blue light and it had sunk.
Speaker 1: Perhaps the explosion had damaged the vessel, or gunfire from
Speaker 1: the ship had pierced the hull. Or maybe in the
Speaker 1: thrill of the moment, that candle had burned out and
Speaker 1: nobody had noticed. Since the captain of the vessel was
Speaker 1: the only one who could really control its direction or
Speaker 1: its depth, if he had been killed or injured somehow,
Speaker 1: then his loss would have doomed the whole crews. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of speculation, but no one had any idea.
Speaker 1: The Hunley stayed in its place on the sea floor
Speaker 1: long beyond the end of the Civil War in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty five. More than a hundred and thirty years later,
Speaker 1: on May third, an expedition by the National Underwater and
Speaker 1: Marine Agency, which you'll see abbreviated to NUMA spearheaded by
Speaker 1: author Clive Cussler, discovered it in the Charleston Harbor. It
Speaker 1: was raised from the seafloor on August eighth, two thousand,
Speaker 1: but when it was open, things became even more mysterious.
Speaker 1: The entire crew were still at their stations, apparently having
Speaker 1: made no effort at all to escape, and showing no
Speaker 1: evidence of serious injury among what remained of their corpses.
Speaker 1: Dixon's pocket watch was stopped at eight three, leading to
Speaker 1: questions of whether it had been running slowly and had
Speaker 1: stopped at the moment of impact, or if it had
Speaker 1: just run down and the time was a coincidence in
Speaker 1: terms of it being close to the time of day
Speaker 1: that they attack the housa Tonic Dixon's lucky twenty dollar coin,
Speaker 1: which he had held onto you after it partially deflected
Speaker 1: a musket ball that struck him in the leg, and
Speaker 1: the Battle of Shiloh was recovered from the wreck as well.
Speaker 1: Apart from the condition of the crew, the vessel itself
Speaker 1: was also intact, with nothing to indicate that it had
Speaker 1: been taking on water or incapacitated in some way. There
Speaker 1: were two large holes in its sides and missing glass
Speaker 1: panes from one of the viewports, but this was eventually
Speaker 1: determined to have happened long after the Hunley came to
Speaker 1: rest on the ocean floor. And this all brings us
Speaker 1: to the new research that made headlines in August. While
Speaker 1: doing work on a PhD dissertation about injury and trauma
Speaker 1: patterns from underwater explosions, Rachel Lance looked at data from
Speaker 1: several famous historical battles that involved underwater explosions, and one
Speaker 1: of these was the h L. Hunley. This eventually led
Speaker 1: to a paper published in Plus one on augusten entitled
Speaker 1: quote air last injuries killed the crew of the submarine
Speaker 1: h L. Hunley. Since the Huntley was on the seafloor
Speaker 1: for more than a hundred years, coming to this conclusion
Speaker 1: required construction of a one six scale model of the ship,
Speaker 1: which they nicknamed the CSS Tiny. The CSS tiny was
Speaker 1: exposed to a variety of underwater blasts in a pond
Speaker 1: in St. Louis, North Carolina, with the data from all
Speaker 1: those explosions collected and analyzed. You can read this entire
Speaker 1: paper online and we will link to it in the
Speaker 1: show notes. But to sum it up, quote, the blast
Speaker 1: produced likely caused flection of the ship hall to transmit
Speaker 1: the blast wave. The secondary wave transmitted inside the crew
Speaker 1: compartment was of sufficient magnitude that the calculated chances of
Speaker 1: survival were less than six for each crew member. The
Speaker 1: submarine drifted to its resting place after the crew died
Speaker 1: of air blast trauma within the hull. The blast wave
Speaker 1: wasn't enough to physically throw the crew around or damage
Speaker 1: their skeletons, but it was enough to cause massive lethal
Speaker 1: pulmonary trauma, which either killed the crew instantly or incapacitated
Speaker 1: them beyond the ability to try and escape. This paper,
Speaker 1: of course, does have some limitations. No matter how accurate,
Speaker 1: a scale model is still a scale model, and the
Speaker 1: analyzes required proportionately scaled down blasts to be done in
Speaker 1: that lake. There's also some debate about exactly how large
Speaker 1: the payload of the Hunley's black powdered torpedo was, and
Speaker 1: also to confirm these findings, a modern autopsy would have
Speaker 1: needed to have been performed on the bodies of the
Speaker 1: crew when they initially died more than a hundred years ago.
Speaker 1: Obviously that's not gonna happen. So when time travel gets invented,
Speaker 1: we are going to sess this out. We have so
Speaker 1: many terrible uses of time travel that come up on
Speaker 1: our show and I'm like, could you maybe have like
Speaker 1: prevented this from her? Oh? No, We're just going to
Speaker 1: figure out what happened. But given all the other factors
Speaker 1: about how the event transpired and all the other unanswered
Speaker 1: questions and how the crew was found, it does make
Speaker 1: a lot of sense as an explanation. Today, d H. L.
Speaker 1: Hunley has been through a massive conservation that has removed
Speaker 1: more than one thousand, two hundred pounds, or about five
Speaker 1: of concretion from the vessel, and it's at the War
Speaker 1: and Lash Conservation Center in North Charleston, South Carolina, where
Speaker 1: conservation work is still ongoing. Tours are available, but only
Speaker 1: on the weekends to allow for conservation work. During the week.
Speaker 1: The Hunley's crew were also given a funeral and buried
Speaker 1: on April seventeen, two thousand four, in the same cemetery
Speaker 1: as the men killed in its prior sinkings had been
Speaker 1: laid to rest. The next successful attack by a submarine
Speaker 1: during wartime would be on September five, when the German
Speaker 1: U twenty one hit the British Pathfinder with a torpedo,
Speaker 1: sinking it and killing two hundred and fifty six. So
Speaker 1: that as the h L Hunley. We've gotten several requests
Speaker 1: for the h L Hunley over the years, and it
Speaker 1: was only more recently than I realized that that it
Speaker 1: had been in that one eight minute segment earlier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So thanks again to Rachel Lampce for sending us a
Speaker 1: note about this yeah, where we will link to the
Speaker 1: paper which does have other authors in addition to her
Speaker 1: as well. We will link to that from the show
Speaker 1: notes for folks who want to read it. It It is
Speaker 1: very interesting. Thank you so much for joining us today
Speaker 1: for this Saturday classic. If you have heard any kind
Speaker 1: of email address or maybe a Facebook you are l
Speaker 1: during the course of the episode that might be obsolete.
Speaker 1: It might be doubly obsolete because we have changed our
Speaker 1: email address again. You can now reach us at history
Speaker 1: podcast at i heart radio dot com, and we're all
Speaker 1: over social media at missed in History and you can
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