Mad Max wrote:You mean the one that failed? Hahaha! I forget the name, but if it's what I'm thinking of... they planted it on the hull but it didn't explode.
Actually the mine did explode and the mission was a success, the men on shore saw the red lantern, signaling success. The submarine dissapeared shortly thereafter without a trace and for no good reason. It was recently discovered and salvaged by a team of ocean archeoligists. It was called the
H.L. Hunley
CHARLESTON, South Carolina -- It's been 136 years since the submarine H.L. Hunley broke the water's surface
On Tuesday, salvage crews using an elaborate truss carefully loosened the U.S. Civil War submarine from its encrusted resting place near Charleston Harbor and brought it to the surface about 8:40 a.m. Salvagers believed the bodies of the sub's nine crew members were still inside, perhaps in a preserved condition.
As a shipload of onlookers watched, the 39.5-foot-long Confederate submarine was set on the deck of a barge. People applauded, ship horns sounded, sirens blared, and Civil War cannons boomed from shore.
The sub was to be secured to the barge deck with spot welding and bathed in a continuous spray of saltwater before being taken to a specially built laboratory at the old Charleston Naval Shipyard.
The recovery was the culmination of years of effort by millionaire novelist Clive Cussler, whose crew discovered the sub in 1995.
"I'm numb," Cussler said upon seeing the submarine. "It's a great feeling."
"It's just a sight to behold," said state Sen. Glenn McConnell, chairman of the state Hunley Commission. "It's an incredible sight. The sub -- it looks as sleek and everything as we thought."
Searching for answers
The Hunley sank on February 17, 1864, after ramming an explosive torpedo into the hull of the Union blockade vessel Housatonic. It was the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship.
The sunken Hunley remained four miles off Sullivan Island, untouched and unaccounted for, until 1995. It was then that divers funded by Cussler discovered the vessel largely intact, and plans for its recovery began to take shape.
To lift the vessel, divers slipped slings attached to a steel superstructure beneath the sub. The superstructure and the submarine were lifted together.
The expedition to raise the vessel began in May but was delayed for about a month after a crane mounted on a barge proved unwieldy. Officials later obtained a crane with legs that could be sunk into the ocean floor.
The conservation of the submarine is expected to take about seven years. It will then go on display in a new wing at the Charleston museum.
Hunley facts:
The Hunley was built from an iron boiler and ran on human power. The Confederate sub sank February 17, 1864, after successfully torpedoing the Housatonic, which had been part of a Union blockade at Charleston Harbor in South Carolina.
Weight: 7.5 tons
Length: 39.5 feet
Width: 3 feet, 10 inches
Hull height: 4 feet, 3 inches
Surface speed: 4 knots (4.6 mph)
Crew: nine
Distinction: First submarine to sink another warship.
Source: Atlanta Journal and Constitution
A ship powered by hand
The Hunley was fashioned from an iron steam boiler and designed for a crew of nine -- eight to work a long, hand-powered crank and one to pilot the craft. The vessel was named for wealthy New Orleans lawyer H.L. Hunley, who was one of its largest investors.
It had two ballast tanks at either end that could be flooded using valves or emptied using hand pumps. Iron weights were affixed to the underside of the hull for added ballast, and these could be released in an emergency by unscrewing bolts from inside the vessel.
The Hunley carried a spar torpedo that was filled with explosives and placed on the end of a long pole attached to its bow. But after ramming its torpedo into the Housatonic, an 1,800-ton sloop-of-war with 23 guns, the Hunley sank. Historians hope to discover why.
Crew's final mission
Salvagers said they believe the bodies of the sub's crew -- along with their possessions -- remain inside the vessel, possibly in a semi-preserved state.
"I guarantee I'll cry, I will," Warren Lasch of the fund-raising group Friends of the Hunley told CNN in June. "I get tears in my eyes once in a while when I think about the bravery of those men, and to bring them home after all these years and get them out of that cold sea bed, I'm going to cry."
Prior to the Hunley's final mission, two previous crews aboard the vessel had lost their lives. Their graves can still be found at a Charleston cemetery.
The first crew drowned in the fall of 1863 when water from the wake of a passing ship flooded the sub near its mooring on nearby James Island. A few weeks later, nine members of a second crew, including H.L. Hunley, died during a testing accident.
Elaborate welcome planned
Pealing bells and the thundering cannons were to greet the vessel as it makes its way into Charleston Harbor and up the Cooper River to the conservation facility at the old Charleston Naval Shipyard.
Sea cadets waving a blue-lensed lantern were then to lead the Hunley back to shore. The lantern is similar to one the Hunley crew used to signal that it had sunk the Housatonic. But the signal was the last that Confederate sentries saw of the Hunley, said Gary Dowe, who helped organize the welcome home for the vessel.
At the conservation lab, a bugler was to play taps, and ministers were to bless the sub and the remains of its crew.
