What if, biomechanical engineer Dale Bass suggested, the modeling software could virtually reconstruct the attack on the Housatonic and reveal insights into the fate of the Hunley? Lance, a history buff, was hooked: a historical mystery with a tantalizing lead to follow. Lance was modeling an underwater explosion at a computer in Duke’s Injury Biomechanics Lab, where she studied blast injuries, when her adviser had the epiphany that set her Hunley obsession in motion. “I’m taking you to the campus pond to see where we ran some of our experiments,” she thunders back. A blue, stonewashed T-shirt that reads Detroit rides up her pale, lanky arms.Īs we make our way off campus, the music keeps pumping. Lance just came from the gym, and her brown, shoulder-length hair is thrown up in an elastic. As I open the passenger door to introduce myself, I’m hit by a wall of thumping workout music. On a warm September Saturday, I’m standing outside the student center at Duke, a low-rise contemporary building accented with the university’s signature neo-Gothic stone, when Lance swings around the bend in a blue Pontiac Grand Prix straight out of Motor City where she grew up. Without collaboration or key pieces of data, could Lance’s account of the final moments of the Hunley and its crew be right? But how she made the discovery is almost as surprising as the discovery itself: she did it without access to the physical sub, which was excavated in 2000 without prior experience in archaeology or forensics and without help from the Hunley Project, a team of researchers and scientists at Clemson University in South Carolina that has been on the case full time for the past 17 years. If she’s right, the mystery of the Hunley may finally be put to rest. Photo by Mic Smith Photography LLC/Alamy Stock Photo Hunley, which is now held at Clemson University in South Carolina, had sunk twice during prior voyages before its mission to take down the USS Housatonic in 1864. After three years of sleuthing, Rachel Lance, a US Navy biomedical engineer who holds a PhD from Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering in North Carolina, concludes that the blast from the sub’s own torpedo sent blast waves through its iron hull and caused instant death for the eight men inside. Now, one maverick scientist is making the bold claim that she has cracked the case. Its demise has baffled scores of researchers and Civil War buffs for more than a century. Just after the brief moment of glory, the Hunley, which had just become the world’s first successful combat submarine, mysteriously sank. By 9:00 p.m., it was over: the Hunley had thrust its spar-mounted torpedo into the Housatonic’s hull and within seconds, 60 kilograms of black powder had caved in the ship. The crew hand-cranked the sub more than six kilometers toward its target-the Union blockader USS Housatonic-and surfaced like a leviathan for the charge. Hunley, a self-propelled metal tube attached to a bomb, and slipped quietly into the freezing black water off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. on February 17, 1864, eight men crammed into the Confederate submarine H. Listen now, download, or subscribe to “Hakai Magazine Audio Edition” through your favorite podcast app. This article is also available in audio format. Stream or download audio For this article Authored byĪug| 2,900 words, about 15 minutes Share this article Blasting Through the Hunley Mystery A maverick scientist claims she has done what scores of researchers before her failed to do: solve the century-old mystery of why a legendary Civil War submarine sank. Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, Department ofĭescription of 2017-001_final_complete.An oil painting by Conrad Wise Chapman, circa 1898, depicts the inventor of the ill-fated H. Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering While the investigation did not reach a firm conclusion the cause of the loss, the results further illuminate the operation of vessel and avenues for further technical study.įinal Report: Investigation into the Loss of the H.L. The vessel’s hullform, weights, stability are all discussed, along with model test for the vessel’s resistance and potential flooding rates. This work was conducted to support high-fidelity underwater explosion modeling of the attack at NSWCCD (not discussed here), but also sheds new light on the final mission and circumstances of the vessel’s loss. This report documents work on two ONR grants exploring the naval architecture of the submarine. However after a successful attack, the submarine disappeared with little evidence has to how it happened. Hunley carried out the first successful submarine attack in history.
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