Scientists solve mystery of US Civil War submarine

Abstract

R esearchers say they've solved one of the most enduring mysteries of the American Civil War: what caused the puzzling demise of the H. L. Hunley, the first combat submarine in history to sink an enemy warship. The Confederate craft famously disappeared with all its crew on 17 February 1864, just after destroying the USS Housatonic in Charleston Harbour. The Hunley's wreck was not found until 1995. When the submarine was raised from the seabed in 2000, the skeletons of its eightman crew were still at their stations, with no evidence of escape attempts. Since then, archaeologists and conservationists have pored over the submarine, which is kept at the Clemson University Restoration Institute in North Charleston, South Carolina, for clues to its destruction. Popular theories have suggested that the crew of the Housatonic managed to shoot holes in the craft; that the Hunley accidentally collided with another ship; or that its crew were incapacitated, and perhaps instantly killed, by a blast from the submarine's own torpedo. The latter theory now seems correct, says Rachel Lance, a graduate student in injury biomechanics at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. "The pressure wave from the explosion was transmitted into the submarine. It was sufficiently large that the crew were killed, " she says. Lance and other researchers simulated the explosive forces the crew would have experienced by blowing up a scale model dubbed the USS Tiny, one-sixth the size of the Hunley, while it was submerged in a farmer's pond. They published their findings on 23 August in PLOS One