![]() ![]() For the first dozen or so years she was kept under water, which was drained regularly to allow work on her, but for the last five years she has been bathing in a solution of sodium peroxide – nasty toxic stuff! The glass is as much for our protection as the Hunley‘s. You are free to wander around the museum displays at your own pace, then visitors are guided into the lab end of the building where the Hunley sits in her tank, behind a glass wall. I was lucky to visit in a small group private tour which I organised with the director, Kellen Correia, but the format is standard. The Friends of the Hunley expect to be at the Conservation Center for another five years before, hopefully, moving into a dedicated museum, probably at Patriot’s Point, which would be a logical location for her… but, as usual, everybody wants a piece of her and politics abound. Nevertheless the Hunley is drawing between 38-40,000 visitors annually. Hunley is still a conservation project, so the museum is only open to the public on weekends. She’s in a solution of sodium hydroxide to preserve her iron hull It was only three years ago that they created the museum displays to give visitors an understanding of what they were seeing. So the opportunity for the public to visit her has been limited. Although made of wrought iron not wood, like Mary Rose & Vasa she has spent years being saturated with water & chemicals, while the slow and painstaking archaeological work was carried out. Rather like the Mary Rose in the UK, and the Vasa in Sweden, the first priority has been to arrest the decay of her hull and to recover the remains of her crew and the historical artifacts & evidence still inside her. No surprise then that people wanted to see her. In Charleston everybody knows what they were doing on that day.” “It was one of those days when everybody stopped. “Charleston came to a standstill,” says Kellen Correia, the President & Executive Director of the Friends of the Hunley. The raising of the Hunley almost two decades ago caused quite a stir. ![]() Once out of the water, she was taken to a special tank in the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in North Charleston, and put back under water to preserve her. The ‘Friends of the Hunley’ organisation was formed in 1997 and she was finally lifted to the surface (only 28 ft above her resting place) cradled gently in a frame, on 8th May 2000. However the US Navy, who owns her, awarded her recovery & preservation to Charleston. Once again, everybody wanted a piece of her and there was a strong claim from her birthplace, Mobile in Alabama, that she should go there. Whoever found her, it was only after the Cussler discovery that plans began to be drawn up & funds raised to recover her. Lee Spence claimed to have found it in 1970 and lawsuits started flying. Cussler is not the only person to claim her discovery. Unfortunately, nothing is ever straightforward with the mysterious Hunley, and everybody wants a piece of her. This time they looked to seaward of the USS Housatonic wreck and when diver Harry Pecorelli III checked out an anomaly on the sea floor, he felt the ridge of the Hunley‘s conning tower. Cussler first started looking for the Hunley in the seventies, and then returned for a third and final survey in 1995. His lead character, Dirk Pitt, works for the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), an organisation founded by Cussler that actually exists and has discovered over 60 shipwrecks… including, possibly, the Hunley. Unfortunately, nothing is ever straightforward with the mysterious Hunley, and everybody wants a piece of her.For author, Clive Cussler, fiction and real life are closely intertwined. The Hunley and her crew were never seen again. The explosion from the 135lbs of black powder wasn’t powerful by today’s standards, but it was enough to sink the Housatonic, with the loss of 5 crew. Conrad Wise Chapman painting of the Hunley 1863 (Public Domain)Īfter what must have been a long and exhausting passage at 2-3 knots (max 4 knots) they eventually reached the USS Housatonic, planted their barbed torpedo and withdrew to detonate it. Dixon, steered the sub towards its target, the ships of the Union Navy blockading the port of Charleston. Seven of the men hunched over the hand crank that turned the propeller, while the skipper, Lt George E. Wading into the sea, they climbed on board the “fish torpedo boat” as it was known, and down into the extremely cramped hull. In the quiet of the night on 17th Feb 1864, eight men from the Confederate Army gathered on the beach on Sullivan’s Island outside Charleston, South Carolina. Hunley was the world’s first combat submarine to sink a ship. ![]()
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