The following excerpt is from a very interesting article by Phil Gast, posted at the February 15, 2014 edition of the CNN website. This weekend is the 150th Anniversary of the sinking of the Hunley during, allong with its adversary, the USS Housatonic.
(CNN) — Born and built amid gray-cloaked secrecy during the American Civil War, the H.L. Hunley — the first submarine to sink an enemy ship — has held tight to its murky mysteries.
The 150th anniversary of the Hunley’s daring and dangerous raid will be marked this weekend and Monday, but the overarching question remains: What caused the submarine and its eight-member crew to slip to the bottom of the sea on the moonlit evening of February 17, 1864, after it signaled to shore a success that changed naval warfare.
The Hunley, housed at a laboratory in North Charleston, South Carolina, has yielded its secrets slowly and sparingly, even to researchers armed with the latest in technology.
Was the loss of the Hunley the result of the torpedo’s detonation? An unsecured hatch? Or perhaps a lucky enemy shot that blasted a hole in the Confederate vessel’s viewing port?
And why were the crew’s remarkably preserved remains found at their stations, rather than jammed together near an escape hatch?
