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- The Hunley, a Confederate warship and the first submarine
in history to sink an enemy vessel, is due to return home tomorrow, 136
years after she sank crippled by her own torpedo.
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- Weather permitting, a crane four miles from shore will
gently hoist the vessel, cocooned in supports, and load her on to a barge
for the long-delayed return to Charleston in South Carolina.
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- The project will cost an estimated £10.5 million.
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- As she approaches port, church bells will ring across
the city. Men in Confederate uniforms will fire a 21-gun salute to honour
the crew of eight or nine who died on board the vessel, which was 50 years
ahead of its time.
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- In 1864 the Civil War was going badly for the South.
Charleston was blockaded and under attack by the Union navy. So the Confederates
turned to the Hunley, one of the first workable submarines ever developed.
She was named after Horace L. Hunley, a wealthy New Orleans lawyer who
was one of its biggest investors.
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- Even before her fateful mission, the submarine had sunk
twice during trial runs, killing 13 men, including Hunley. Undeterred,
an all-volunteer crew ventured forth on the night of February 17.
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- The Hunley was little more than a 40ft boiler with a
hand-cranked propeller and a torpedo attached to her harpoon-like bow.
Inside she was lit by a candle and conditions were so cramped that each
man had to crouch sideways.
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- Stealthily, the submarine approached the USS Houstanic,
a Union blockade ship. The crew was trained to ram the torpedo into her
wooden hull. Then the Hunley was to withdraw as a 150ft rope was payed
out. When she stopped unspooling, the rope would tighten, activating the
torpedo's 90lb explosive charge.
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- It worked. The Houstanic sank with a hole blown in her
side, killing five of her astonished crew of 155. It was not until the
First World War that any other submarine sank a ship in battle. The blast
also crippled the Hunley.
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- Clive Cussler, the multimillionaire novelist who has
led the hunt for this icon of naval and Civil War history, said: "I
think the crew paddled like hell and just didn't make it."
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- Mr Cussler has sold 70 million books around the world
and his fans know him best for his fictional character and alter ego, Dirk
Pitt, a dashing adventurer and archaeologist, who hunts for Inca gold,
sunken treasure ships and a lost city in his latest novel, Atlantis Found.
Mr Cussler started looking for the Hunley in 1980.
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- Neither that effort, nor others in 1981, 1985 and 1990
yielded a glimpse of the wreck in the murky waters.
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- It was not until 1995 that his dive team found her, silted
up and slumped to starboard, off Sullivan's Island and 1,000 yards from
the Houstanic.
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- For a vessel that has been under water for 136 years,
the submarine and the men on board are fairly well preserved. But the human
remains, and anything else organic, will start to deteriorate as soon as
they reach the air.
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- That is why the recovery team will hurry their cargo
to a special laboratory in the old Charleston naval shipyard. There the
Hunley will be submerged for preservation in a large fresh-water tank.
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- Marine archaeologists will clean, study and restore her.
They hope to answer a number of questions: Did the Hunley sink because
of torpedo damage or was she scuttled in keeping with the crew's alleged
suicide pact? How many were in the crew exactly and who were they? And,
apart from what is already known from drawings, just how did the vessel
perform?
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- In time, the little sub could be ready for exhibition
in the Charleston Museum.
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- Eight forensic science specialists from the Smithsonian
Institution will oversee the handling of the bodies. They will be taken
to Old Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston, where they will receive a traditional
Confederate funeral.
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- Official HL Hunley website http://www.hunley.org/hunley.html
Official HL Hunley Project website http://hometown.aol.com/litespdcom/index.html
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