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Privately invented by Horace Lawson Hunley and built in 1863 by Park and Lyons of Mobile, Alabama, Hunley was fashioned from a cylindrical iron steam boiler, which was deepened and also lengthened through the addition of tapered ends. The Hunley was designed to be hand powered by a crew of nine: eight to turn the hand-cranked propeller and one to steer and direct the boat. As a true submarine, each end was equipped with ballast tanks that could be flooded by valves or pumped dry by hand pumps. Extra ballast was added through the use of iron weights bolted to the underside of the hull. In the event the submarine needed additional buoyancy to rise in an emergency, the iron weight could be removed by unscrewing the heads of the bolts from inside the vessel.
The Confederate Navy seized the boat from its private builders and owners a few weeks after its arrival in Charleston, South Carolina.
Three of the Hunley's night missions failed against the Union ironclads blockading the harbor. On August 29, 1863 five of a crew of nine were killed during an attempted attack when the skipper accidentally dived with the hatches still open. On October 15, 1863 the Hunley failed to surface during a trial dive, killing its inventor Horace Lawson Hunley and seven other crewmen. In both cases, the Confederate Navy salvaged the vessel and returned it to service.
Although it had never launched a successful attack, on February 17, 1864, the Confederate submarine made a night attack on the USS Housatonic, a 1800-ton sloop-of-war with 9-11 guns, in Charleston Harbor off the coast of South Carolina in an effort to subvert the naval blockade of the city. Lt. George Dixon and a crew of seven volunteers rammed the H.L. Hunley into the Housatonic with 90 pounds of explosive powder attached to a 22-foot long spar on its bow. The explosives were embedded in the sloop's wooden side and were detonated by a rope as the Hunley backed away. The resulting explosion sent the Housatonic with five crew members to the bottom of Charleston Harbor. The Hunley also sank, probably because of the blast, although this is not certain. The entire crew died, but the H.L. Hunley earned a place in the history of undersea warfare as the first submarine to sink a ship in wartime.
The search for the Hunley ended in 1995, 131 years later, when best-selling author Clive Cussler and his team from the National Underwater and Marine AgencyThe National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) in the United States is dedicated to "preserving maritime heritage through the discovery, archaeological survey and conservation of shipwreck artifacts. (NUMA) discovered the submarine after a 14-year search. At the time of discovery, Cussler and NUMA were conducting this research in partnership with the South Carolina Institute of Anthropology and ArchaeologyThe South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology (SCIAA) was established in 1963 as a University of South Carolina research institute and a state cultural resource management agency. South Carolina. (SCIAA). The team realized that they had found the Hunley after exposing the forward hatch and the ventilator box (the air box for the attachment of a snorkel). The submarine rested on its starboard side at about a 45-degree angle and is covered in a 1/4 to 3/4-inch encrustation of ferrous oxide bonded with sandSand is an example of a class of materials called granular matter. Sand is a naturally occurring, finely divided rock, comprising particles or granules ranging in size from 0. 063 to 2 mm. An individual particle in this range size is termed a sand grain . and shell particles. Archaeologists exposed a little more on the port side and found the bow dive plane on that side. More probing revealed an approximate length of 34 feet with most, if not all, of the vessel preserved under the sediment.
Archaeological investigation and excavation culminated with the resurrection of the Hunley from its watery grave on August 8August 8 is the 220th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (221st in leap years), with 145 days remaining. Events 1585 John Davis enters Cumberland Sound in quest for the North West Passage. 1588 Battle of Gravelines ends Defeated by the English duri, 2000This page is about the year 2000. See 2000 AD for the UK comic book, Number 2000 for other uses. 2000 is a leap year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar), and also the International Year for a Culture of Peace''. Events Y2K passes without the seri. A large team of professionals from the Naval Historical Center's Underwater Archaeology Branch, National Park Service, the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, and various other individuals investigated the vessel, measuring and documenting it prior to preparing it for removal. Once the on site investigation was complete, harnesses were slipped underneath the sub one by one and attached to a truss designed by Oceaneering, Inc. After the last harness had been secured, the crane from Clarissa B began hoisting the submarine from the mire of the harbor. On August 8 at 8:37 a.m. the sub broke the surface for the first time in over 136 years, where it was greeted by a cheering crowd lining the shore and in hundreds of nearby watercraft. Once safely on its transporting barge, the Hunley finally completed its last voyage back to Charleston. The removal operation reached its successful conclusion when the submarine was secured inside the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in a specially designed tank of freshwater to await conservation.