CSS Hunley’s hull being revealed

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. - A century and a half after it sank and more than a decade after it was raised, scientists are finally getting a look at the hull of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, the first sub in history to sink an enemy warship. What they find may finally solve the mystery of why the hand-cranked submarine sank during the Civil War. "It's like unwrapping a Christmas gift after 15 years," said Paul Mardikian, senior conservator on the Hunley project. Last May, it readied for a sodium hydroxide bath to loosen encrustation. In August, scientists used air-powered chisels and dental tools to begin the task of removing the coating. Today, about 70 percent of the outside hull has been revealed. Hunley sank the Union blockade ship USS Housatonic off Charleston in February 1864; but the sub and its eight-man crew never made it back to shore. CSS Hunley was discovered off the South Carolina coast in 1995, raised in 2000 and brought to a conservation lab in North Charleston. (Source: The Associated Press, 01/30/15) Gulf Coast Shipbuilding: After the start of the American Civil War in 1861, Horace Lawson Hunley joined James R. McClintock and Baxter Watson in building the submarine Pioneer at New Orleans - before falling to U.S. Navy forces in 1862. The trio later constructed two submarines at Mobile, Ala., the second of which was named H.L. Hunley. This sub was originally built in Mobile by Park and Lyons Machine Shop from a cylindrical steam boiler.