The discovery suggests two options: The crew may not have realized they were in danger, or not anticipated a need to surface quickly. The levers would have released 1,000 pounds of so-called “keel blocks,” bringing the submarine up to the surface and allowing the crew to swim away to safety. “It’s more evidence there wasn’t much of a panic on board,” Scafuri told the Associated Press. After removing layers of corrosion, silt and shells from the sub, his team of researchers found that the emergency levers were all locked in position. (Credit: De Agostini Picture Library/Getty Images)Īrchaeologist Michael Scafuri has been working on the submarine for 18 years. This suggests the crew may not have seen whatever sunk the sub coming. Researchers have found another piece to the puzzle: A hidden failsafe mechanism in the Hunley’s keel should have helped the crew escape the vessel, but it was never activated. The discovery has generated a raft of possible theories as to why it sank, and why the crew aboard didn’t seem to make any attempt to escape. Inside, all eight crew members were eerily in position at their stations, around a giant hand-crank that ran down the middle of the sub. Five years later, it was brought to the surface. Over 130 years after it sank, the submarine was found on the seabed in 1995. LISTEN: The Hunt for the Hunley on HISTORY This Week (It was recovered twice.) Its final sinking, shortly after it plunged a live torpedo into the hull of the Union warship USS Housatonic, has long mystified maritime and military historians. In a career of just eight months during the Civil War, between July 1863 and February 1864, the sub sank three times, killing nearly 30 men-including its inventor. But despite its claim to fame, it was a dangerous vessel to be inside. Hunley was a Confederate submarine with a crew of eight. Made out of 40 feet of bulletproof iron, the H.L. "Their spar was only 16 feet long, so they were actually very close to the 135 pound charge, especially since the spar was at a downward angle," Lance said.It was the first submarine in history to successfully sink an enemy ship. Instead, it was a copper keg of gunpowder attached in front of the sub by a short pole called a spar that was rammed into the enemy ship by the advancing sub, with the crew inside. Unlike a modern-day torpedo, the Hunley's weapon couldn't be fired into the water and away from the sub. Lance solved the mystery by creating a 2-metre-long scale model made of mild steel, fitting it with sensors, and setting off a series of blasts intended to recreate the torpedo explosion. Still, some scientists had proposed that the crew may have suffocated or drowned. The exit hatches were closed and the bilge pumps that would have been used if the sub started to take on water were not set to pump, suggesting that the crew never tried to save themselves as the sub sank. But there was no actual damage found to have happened from the blast itself," she said in an interview with Duke University. "There were some holes in the hull that were the result of time under the sea. It had been undamaged by the blast and the crew's skeletons were still at their stations. The sunken submarine was found in 1995 and raised from the bottom in 2000.
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