Spirek recently dived in Charleston Harbor to examine the wreck of the Housatonic, but sediment made the water too dark to search. So maybe they just overestimated how much oxygen they had, and then just sort of fell asleep and then all died,” Spirek theorized, before adding the scientist’s universal caution: “At this point there’s still open for speculation on what happened.” “The last crew died peacefully, at their station. “The crew died at their spots, unlike the other previous two crews, who, as soon as the vessel sank, immediately panicked and tried to get to the hatches. “Obviously it was lack of oxygen,” he said, explaining why that is a common conclusion. State underwater archeologist Jim Spirek of USC’s Institute of Archeology and Anthropology also has examined the evidence, and cited a leading hypothesis. “What we usually tend to do is figure out what didn’t happen.” Let’s take it off the table.’ Try and narrow down our explanation of what happened. ‘Okay, we found this information, so this theory is less and less likely. And as we get more evidence, we start to pull some of those theories off the table. “We come up with a lot of ideas, lot of hypotheses, test it against the evidence, come up with theories, and then we’ll have a number of theories on the table. “We make meaningful theories based on the evidence,” he said.
Scafuri explained the process of generating ideas on what may have happened to the submarine that night. And even a healthy Hunley submarine would have a hard time cranking back to shore in ideal conditions,” much less the cold, windy, choppy wave-filled harbor that it had to navigate. However, following the attack, “it got colder and it got windier,” said Mock, meaning higher waves would have been whipped up, “and the winds definitely got stronger. And my little theory about the Confederate Navy, when they had raiders that went out, they wanted to be aided by the wind in their back.” “What happens with these cold fronts is you get these northwest winds. According to these records, “earlier that day a big cold wave came through,” he said. One factor that may have contributed to its loss was suggested by University of South Carolina geography professor and climatologist Cary Mock, who studied the weather logs of every ship in the harbor that night (with the notable and obvious exception of the Housatonic), in addition to other records. Ideas on why the sub never returned range from becoming tangled in the Housatonic’s wreckage to a broken pipe letting in water and drowning the crew. So they really had to work with the available currents and tides in the area to get to where they wanted to go.” “They had steam engines, but those required air. Hunley submarine was that it was hand-powered,” the archeologist reiterated.
The power to drive its propeller was provided by the muscles of the crew with a hand crank that ran the length of the craft’s interior. Scafuri said while Civil War-era surface ships could be propelled by steam engines, the Hunley, confined to running in water, even at the surface, did not have that luxury. Hunley disappeared and was lost for 136 years.” The Lasch Center has worked on the craft’s preservation since its raising. So Hunley was able to sail in and detonate its torpedo, sinking Housatonic in less than 10 minutes. They were seen approaching when they got close, but Housatonic didn’t have enough time to respond. “The attack took place at night according to the U.S. Mike Scafuri, senior archeologist at the Lasch Center, said that after the second accident, the Hunley was ordered to run only on the surface to avoid losing a third crew when it went out against the Housatonic.
It was raised in 2000 and is undergoing conservation at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in Charleston, where it can be seen by visitors on weekends. Hunley.Īfter eluding discovery for more than 130 years, the actual submarine was found in Charleston Harbor in 1995 by writer and shipwreck explorer Clive Cussler. Two crews were killed in training for its attack, and the dead included the sub’s namesake, builder Horace L. The Hunley was built in 1863 in Mobile, Alabama and shipped by rail to Charleston to try to break the Union blockade of Charleston Harbor. 17, 1864, the submersible ship never returned to port, and its fate remained an enigma – for more than a century. After its historic sinking of the USS Housatonic Feb. Hunley, the first submarine to sink an enemy ship in combat. In South Carolina, one of the biggest is the disappearance of the Confederate submarine H.L.