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Science may have solved the 150-year-old mystery of a sunken Civil War submarine
Source: Washington Post
Science may have solved the 150-year-old mystery of a sunken Civil War submarine
By Sarah Kaplan August 24 at 10:00 AM
Cheers erupted when the H.L. Hunley broke the ocean's surface for the first time in more than a century. Since it vanished during a 1864 naval battle, the Confederate submarine had lain on the seafloor off the coast near Charleston, S.C., its heavy iron hull gathering barnacles and rust. In 2000, when the vessel was recovered, scientists and historians expected to be able to solve the mystery of why it sank.
But when they ventured inside the boat, they found not a single clue. Its 40-foot-long iron hull was barnacle-encrusted but not broken. The skeletons of eight members of the crew were found still in their seats at their respective battle stations; their bones bore no evidence of physical harm. The bilge pumps hadn't been activated. The air hatches were closed. There was no sign that anyone had tried to escape.
“There was nothing on the boat that could explain the deaths,” said Rachel Lance, a biomedical engineer at the University of North Carolina.
In a paper published this week in the journal PLOS ONE, Lance and her colleagues report it was something in the water that led to the submarine's demise, something the crew had put there themselves. They were killed by their own weapon.
-snip-
By Sarah Kaplan August 24 at 10:00 AM
Cheers erupted when the H.L. Hunley broke the ocean's surface for the first time in more than a century. Since it vanished during a 1864 naval battle, the Confederate submarine had lain on the seafloor off the coast near Charleston, S.C., its heavy iron hull gathering barnacles and rust. In 2000, when the vessel was recovered, scientists and historians expected to be able to solve the mystery of why it sank.
But when they ventured inside the boat, they found not a single clue. Its 40-foot-long iron hull was barnacle-encrusted but not broken. The skeletons of eight members of the crew were found still in their seats at their respective battle stations; their bones bore no evidence of physical harm. The bilge pumps hadn't been activated. The air hatches were closed. There was no sign that anyone had tried to escape.
“There was nothing on the boat that could explain the deaths,” said Rachel Lance, a biomedical engineer at the University of North Carolina.
In a paper published this week in the journal PLOS ONE, Lance and her colleagues report it was something in the water that led to the submarine's demise, something the crew had put there themselves. They were killed by their own weapon.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/08/24/science-may-have-solved-the-150-year-old-mystery-of-a-sunken-civil-war-submarine/
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Related: Air blast injuries killed the crew of the submarine H.L. Hunley (PLOS ONE)
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