A Confederate Civil War Submarine Was Lost 150 Years Ago. Its Reappearance Was An Unsolved Mystery...Until Now

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2020

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One of the most mysterious submarine disasters in history was the sinking of the HL Hunley, a Confederate Civil War submarine. This 40-foot-long tin can was the first to successfully attack another ship—but the results were as disastrous as they were historic. Shortly after its torpedo exploded, the Hunley disappeared off the coast of Charleston. The mystery of what happened to the Hunley and its crewmembers persisted for over a century, until the sub was finally recovered in 2000. But the discovery of the sub only led to a more puzzling mystery—the skeletons of all eight crew members were found in the cramped interior, each seated at their stations with no indication they ever tried to escape.

Those mysterious deaths piqued the interest of today’s guest Rachel Lance, the leading underwater blast trauma specialist in North America, who found the case so fascinating that she banked her PhD career on solving it. Lance, the author of the new book In the Waves, provides a definitive answer to what happened to the submarine and its crew on that fateful night. During three years of investigation, she went through archives, delved into previously unknown aspects of blast and shock science and built her own mini-submarine and explosives.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The History of North America podcast is a sweeping historical saga of the United States,
0:09.4	Canada, and Mexico from their deep origins to our present epoch.
0:13.9	Join me, Mark Vinet, on this exciting, fascinating epic journey through time, focusing on the compelling,
0:20.7	wonderful, and tragic stories of North America's inhabitants, heroes, villains, leaders,
0:27.1	environment, and geography.
0:29.5	I invite you to come along for the ride.
0:44.5	History is in just a bunch of names and dates and facts.
0:47.7	It's the collection of all the stories throughout human history that explain how and why we got here.
0:53.1	Welcome to the History and Plug podcast, where we look at the forgotten, neglected, strange,
0:58.0	and even counterfactual stories that made our world what it is.
1:02.1	I'm your host, Scott Rank.
1:13.1	One of the most interesting stories out of the Civil War is the CSS Hunley.
1:18.3	This was the first combat submarine to sink a warship, the USS Usatonic, and this thing was basically a tin can.
1:25.0	The Hunley was only 40 feet long, there were eight crewmen crammed into it, was made out of solid iron,
1:31.1	and there was a tiny little snorkel inside with bellows used to oxygenate the submarine.
1:35.9	Five members of the crew were killed in 1863 on the Hunley during a test run,
1:40.4	and then it sank again in 1863, where all eight members of the second crew were killed.
1:44.7	But in 1864, the Hunley sunk the 1240 displacement tonn USS Usatonic.
1:51.4	However, right after that, the Hunley itself disappeared.
1:55.0	When it was finally recovered in 2000, here's what was strange.
1:58.6	The skeletons of all eight crew members were found in the cramped interior,
2:02.5	each was seen at their station with no indication they ever tried to escape.
	...

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