Restoring the Hunley

North of Charleston on the Cooper River is a museum dedicated to researching and preserving a tiny nineteenth century submarine.     It was privately built in Mobile, Alabama to a design of H L Hunley and named after him.    Manned by Confederate soldiers it was used in the Civil War to sink a battleship in Charleston Harbour.

The single mission of the Hunley took place in 1864 but tragically the crew of eight  did not survive and the submarine remained at the bottom of the bay until, having been rediscovered by divers in 1995, it was carefully lifted in 2000 and taken for conservation.

The body of the submarine was covered with concretion both inside and out and this is gradually being removed.  All the above photos are from the Hunley archive.

These photos show the current - almost final - stages of cleaning the metal shell, which is kept in a chemical solution in a large tank within the museum to prevent further rusting.

The method of propulsion of the submarine was by a single cranking handle turned by the eight men to drive the propeller.  Below is a reconstruction being tested by David - this is 10% larger than the original which must have been dark, airless and extremely cramped.

This poster in the museum shows the challenge faced by this tiny craft - which was the third of its kind, the previous two having been lost with their crews in trials.  Although it's single 'missile' is described as a torpedo, it could not be fired but was pushed into the hull of the ship on a long spur and then detonated.

The most important initial part of the recovery process was of course to remove and identify the bodies of the eight crew members from the layers of silt that had built up inside the submarine.

When this DNA analysis and facial reconstruction work was completed their remains were buried in the Magnolia Cemetery outside Charleston with full military honours.  

The funeral was in 2004 - almost 150 years after the lure of a huge bounty to sink the Union ship led eight young men, mostly not from the South (several were Europeans) to a rapid demise in 30 feet of water.