H.L. Hunley…
‘David’ receives first unobstructed view
at North Charleston conservation lab

It was the Civil War’s David-Goliath moment. Now, for the first time in nearly 150 years, viewers will get an unobstructed view of David.

David was the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, which, in 1864, sank “Goliath,” the Union ship Housatonic. In early January, the raised sub was in full view as a massive steel truss used to lift the vessel was removed.

The truss, weighing more than eight tons, had shrouded the sub since it was raised off the coast of South Carolina almost a dozen years ago.

During the recovery, slings were snaked underneath the sub and attached to the truss. A crane lifted the truss and the hand-cranked Hunley onto a barge and then brought the sub to a conservation lab in North Charleston where it has been undergoing preservation ever since.

In the summer of 2000, an expedition led by author-adventurer Clive Cussler raised the Hunley and delivered it to the conservatory on Charleston’s old Navy base, where it sat in a 90,000-gallon tank of fresh water to leech salt out of its iron hull.

Considered the Confederacy’s stealth weapon, the Hunley sank the Housatonic and then disappeared with all eight Confederate sailors inside.

On the night of Feb. 17, 1864, the Hunley’s captain and seven crew left Sullivan’s Island near Charleston and hand-powered the sub to the Union warship four miles offshore. From a metal spar on its bow, the Hunley planted a 135-pound torpedo in the hull of the ship, which burned and sank.

The narrow, top-secret “torpedo fish,” was built in Mobile by Horace Hunley from cast iron and wrought iron with a hand-cranked propeller. It arrived in Charleston in 1863 while the city was under siege by Union troops and ships.

In the ensuing few months, the sub sank twice after sea trial accidents, killing 13 crew members including Horace Hunley, who was steering. The Confederate Navy hauled the sub up twice, recovered the bodies of the crew, and planned a winter attack.

After sinking the Housatonic, some historians say the submarine showed a mission-accomplished lantern signal from its hatch to troops back on shore before it disappeared.

Paul Mardikian, senior conservator for the recovery project, has the lantern, which archaeologists found in the submarine more than a century later.

At the lab, scientists removed 10 tons of sediment from the sub, along with the bones, skulls and even brain matter of the crew members, Mardikian said. They also found fabric and sailors’ personal belongings.

Facial reconstructions were made of each member of the third and final crew and are displayed along with other artifacts in a museum near the submarine. In a nearby vault is a bent gold coin that archaeologists also found in the sub. It was carried for good luck by the vessel’s captain, Lt. George Dixon, after the coin stopped a bullet from entering his leg during the Battle of Shiloh in 1862.

The Hunley Project is a partnership among the South Carolina Hunley Commission, Clemson University Restoration Institute, the Naval Historical Center and the nonprofit Friends of the Hunley. The nonprofit group reportedly raised and spent $22 million on the project through 2010.

The next phase of the project will be to remove corrosion on the iron hull and reveal the submarine’s skin, Mardikian explained. The skin then will be preserved with chemicals and, eventually, the sub will be displayed in open air.

Scientists have found the vessel to be a more sophisticated feat of engineering than  first thought, according to Michael Drews, director of Clemson’s Warren Lasch Conservation Center.

“It has ballast tanks fore and aft, counterbalanced dive planes and a shrouded propeller,” Drews said. “It’s got all the elements that modern submarines have updated.”

There were previous submarines, Drews said, but the Hunley, designed to sail in the open ocean and built for warfare, was cutting-edge technology at the time.