The daylong ceremonies began at the Confederate Monument at the southernmost point of the Charleston peninsula, the spot where the first shots of the Civil War were fired, and ended four miles away at Magnolia Cemetery. They came to celebrate the lives of the crew of the Confederate submarine Hunley. They came in gleaming Lexuses and pickups flying the Confederate flag. – The crowd stretched for blocks along Charleston Harbor, some arriving as early as 3:30 a.m. Dixon at The Battery in downtown Charleston, S.C., before the burial of the crew of the H.L. Prior naval research has concluded that “neither phase of the explosion was severe enough … to have significantly impacted Hunley.Claude Turberville holds a Confederate States of America Medal of Honor for Lt. The organization maintains and researches the original submarine. “Something traumatic – perhaps water, a shock wave, or some other intervening force – caused it to stop at that precise time.”įriends of the Hunley – part of the Hunley Project, which was not involved in the new research – declined to comment on the research. “Most importantly, it appears it didn’t wind down naturally,” according to a 2007 update by a research partnership known as the Hunley Project. The watch had stopped at 8:23, about the time of the Hunley’s attack, historians believe. There was another piece of evidence that stood in her favor: a gold pocket watch that belonged to the Hunley’s captain, Lt. “These types of injuries are not subtle,” she added. ![]() “Any explosive we’ve seen in the field … would definitely create a lethal wave,” Lance said. She concluded that the shock wave would have instantly killed those aboard the Hunley, based on her calculations and a wealth of prior air blast experiments on large animals. So Lance lowballed it, testing several blasts in the process. Replicating the black powder explosion, Lance said, was the trickiest part of the experiment. ![]() ![]() The blast can also change with how tightly the powder is packed and how fine the grains are, according to the Naval History and Heritage Command. It is virtually impossible to know how powerful the Hunley’s torpedo blast was, even with the amount of black powder used. Some speculated that it was the Hunley crew signaling that they’d accomplished their mission.īut Lance, who is working on a book about the Hunley, said that she has doubts about inconsistencies in these testimonies. Witness accounts from the night of the Hunley’s sinking claimed that there was a blue light coming from the ocean. It is possible to survive a blast wave from far enough, according to Chiffelle’s accounts. “The man or animal may be killed outright, without external signs of injury, but often with blood-tinged froth or frank blood appearing in the nose and mouth.” Thomas Chiffelle, a pathologist from Albuquerque, New Mexico, wrote in a 1966 report for the US Department of Defense. “It was … noted that men could be killed or disabled at considerable distance” from an explosive, Dr. The end result: The blood vessels in the lungs can rupture, known as a pulmonary hemorrhage. The wave slows as it hits the lung, Lance said, and “that energy has to transmit somewhere.” Shock waves, like sound waves, travel quickly in water and solids but not air. “The issue is when it’s passing through (the tissues) and it suddenly hits air,” she said. But the real damage, Lance said, probably occurred when the pressure wave reached their lungs. That wave then traveled through the cabin, hitting each of the eight crewmembers, traveling through their bodies. Who were they? Drawing a clearer picture of doomed Hunley crew The study authors say the torpedo is the key – but many have wondered how an explosion could’ve killed the entire crew without leaving a trace.įacial reconstructions of the crew of the Hunley. It sank the enemy ship with a 135-pound torpedo, which was filled with black powder and attached to a pole 16 feet from the ship’s hull. The Hunley became the first sub to sink an enemy ship in battle: the USS Housatonic. Maybe a bullet made through a porthole, killing the captain and leaving a beleaguered crew adrift at sea.īut in research published Wednesday in the journal Plos One, one group of scientists thinks they’ve finally cracked the case of what killed the crew so swiftly. Maybe a nearby ship collided with the sub, throwing it off balance into chaotic waters. More human remains, clues found in Civil War submarine's conservationĪ number of theories have tried to explain the mystery of the Hunley: Maybe the crew went too deep, misjudged their oxygen supply and got trapped by the current.
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