Confederate submarine about to rise again

A diver prepares to observe the H.L. Hunley in its "semi-preserved state"

June 9, 2000
Web posted at: 10:58 p.m. EDT (0258 GMT)

CHARLESTON, South Carolina (CNN) -- Divers, engineers and archaeologists are on a mission this month to resurrect the first submarine to ever sink an enemy warship. It will help bring an end to a 136-year mystery.

During the U.S. Civil War, the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, armed with a torpedo at the end of a 20-foot iron pipe attached to her bow, rammed the USS Housatonic, sinking the vessel.

But sometime afterwards, the 40-foot iron submarine mysteriously sank in the waters off Charleston, South Carolina, where the vessel remained hidden until recently.

A dive team funded by author Clive Cussler found the Hunley in 1995, intact, save for some minor damage.

South Carolina has earmarked $3 million, with $2 million more from a Defense Department program, to help bring the Hunley back to shore and start restoration work. The total cost of recovering and preserving the sub is estimated at $17 million.

	VIDEO
CNN's Brian Cabell explains how the vessel will be brought to the surface after spending 136 years on the ocean floor. QuickTime Play Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K

Every day divers are getting a better look at the Hunley. The sub is covered by a thick rock-like coating, but divers say it appears to be in remarkably good shape. They believe the bodies of the ship's nine-man crew -- along with their possessions -- remain inside, possibly in a semi-preserved state.

But visibility 30 feet below the surface of the ocean is limited, slowing the efforts by divers.

"It goes everywhere from having two or three feet of visibility to being in a coal mine with the lights out," said Hunley Recovery Project director Robert Neyland.

The Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley was designed to break the Union blockade of Charleston harbor. That was its mission on February 16, 1864, when the hand-cranked sub rammed the Union warship and sank it.

Underwater images of the submarine H.L. Hunley

Two previous crews had lost their lives on the experimental vessel and were buried in Charleston.

Each time the sub was pulled from the water; eventually a third crew ignored the danger and set off, hand-cranking the propeller to do battle against the enemy.

"Fear was just an element they put aside," said Hunley Commission Chairman Glenn McConnell. "They were focused on breaking the blockade, their duty, as they saw it, to the state, and that's all that mattered to them."

Now a dive and engineering crew intends to bring the submarine and its crew back up. Workers are currently vacuuming about three feet of sand and silt off the vessel.

Once that is completed, the crew will use an elaborate truss with heavy duty straps to gingerly lift the Hunley from the water.

"I guarantee I'll cry. I will," said Warren Lasch of the group Friends of the Hunley. "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 cry."

The mission is emotional for some, intellectual curiosity for others.

Not only can the Hunley be called a time capsule, it was a naval vessel ahead of its time. It took another half century before another submarine sank an enemy ship.

Correspondent Brian Cabell and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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