Historic Sub Rises From Watery Grave

As cannons boomed along shore, the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley finally returned to port Tuesday, 136 years after it carved its name in history as the first submarine to sink an enemy warship.

The Hunley, which sank with its crew of nine on Feb. 17, 1864, after ramming a spar with a black powder charge into the wooden hull of the Union blockade ship Housatonic, was lifted from its watery grave about four miles off nearby Sullivans Island shortly before 9 a.m.

Cradled in straps, the barnacle-encrusted cigar-shaped vessel was raised intact by a barge.

“It’s a treasure and we got it all,” said Dave Conlin, a National Park Service employee serving as field director for the salvage project. “It’s a piece of world history. It’s the granddaddy of all submarines.”

Hundreds of pleasure boaters gathered near the barge Karlissa B to watch the recovery, and a noisy chorus of foghorns and cheers arose when the barge’s crane raised the Hunley above the water’s surface.

“We did it!” shouted Warren Lasch, chairman of Friends of the Hunley. “She’s just beautiful. It’s almost a contradiction to have a beautiful vessel like that also be a tomb.”

It was secured on a barge and taken to a conservation lab at the old Charleston Navy base.

“This is so incredibly exciting,” said Marc Ramsey of Richmond, Va., a Confederate Civil War reenactor who helped fire a cannon as word came the Hunley had broken the surface. “This was like the Stealth bomber of its time.”

The hand-cranked sub, which was 40 feet long, 4 feet wide, 4 feet high and fashioned from locomotive boilers, is expected to remain at the Navy base at least seven years before going on display at the Charleston History Museum.

Previous dives found that the vessel--named after New Orleans lawyer Horace Lawson Hunley, who financed it--was more technologically advanced than historical records indicated. Its spar, brought to shore earlier, could be tilted, perhaps making it easier to attach the powder charges or aim the spar when making an attack.

Historians had thought the spar was mounted on top of the submarine and was made of wood, but it actually was mounted in the middle of the sub’s bow and constructed of iron.

Scientists believe the Hunley was covered and filled with sand soon after it sank, preserving the metal and perhaps much of the remains of the crew and their personal effects. Divers found a hole in the side of the Hunley and a broken window in a low observation tower, allowing the sub to fill with sediment.

The crew will be buried with military honors after the inside of the sub is excavated.

The Hunley was found almost intact in 1995 by best-selling author and shipwreck hunter Clive Cussler, after four failed attempts in the previous 15 years. It took five more years of planning and arranging financing to lift the sub, which was covered by about 3 feet of sediment, from 30 feet of water.

South Carolina set aside $3 million to help bring the Hunley back to shore and start restoration work. The total cost of recovering and preserving the sub is estimated at $17 million.

To raise the vessel, divers slipped slings under the Hunley and attached them to a steel superstructure above the sub. The superstructure and the submarine were lifted together.

“I’m numb,” Cussler said. “It’s a great feeling.”

Before the cannons fired, Keith Purdy addressed his fellow Civil War reenactors in the Charleston Naval Squadron while Confederate flags flapped in the breeze, alongside the flags of South Carolina, Alabama and Virginia. The Hunley was built in Mobile, Ala., and several crew members were from that state.

“We’re giving tribute to some heroes,” Purdy said. “We will be proud of this day the rest of our lives.”

Once restored, the Hunley will go on display at the history museum, capping the 10-year project to recover the historic submarine.

The Hunley is one of two Civil War maritime relics to be raised from the depths this summer. Navy divers are seeking to retrieve the engine of the historic ironclad Monitor, which sank in heavy seas 16 miles off Cape Hatteras, N.C., in 1862.

The Monitor, a first-of-its-kind turreted ironclad, earlier had engaged the Confederates’ ironclad Virginia, also known as the Merrimack, off the coast of Virginia in the world’s first duel between armored warships.