Civil War submarine rotated to upright position

The H.L. Hunley, a Confederate submarine, sealed its place in history on a February night in 1864 when it became the world's first sub to sink an enemy warship in combat. Then its own fate was sealed when it sank mysteriously to the bottom of the ocean off the coast of Charleston, S.C., killing its crew of eight.

There the Hunley rested on its starboard side at a 45-degree angle until it was lifted from the ocean floor at that exact angle in 2000. Late last week, preservationists finished two painstaking days of work that allowed them to rotate the Hunley to its upright position.

Starting Wednesday, conservation specialists at Clemson University's Warren Lasch Conservation Center in Charleston began the process of rotating the 7-ton, 40-foot submarine to expose a side of its hull never before seen in the post-Civil War era.

The process wasn't tried until now because preservationists first had to sift for artifacts in sediment within the submarine and deal with the eight sets of human remains, says Kellen Correia, executive director of Friends of the Hunley. "We kept it at that angle so as not to disrupt that internal environment," she says. Looking at the sub just from the inside could not give them all the answers they needed as to why it sank, Correia says.

The Hunley conservation team spent nearly two years planning the rotation of the 19th-century artifact, performing advanced simulations on a three-dimensional replica.

"The submarine is a hallmark of technological advancement," says Maria Jacobsen, head archaeologist for the Hunley project, "and we have taken the utmost precaution in rotating the vessel."

Once archaeologists examine the entire keel, or structural component of the Hunley, the submarine will undergo a complete preservation treatment designed to remove a corroded layer of iron from its exterior. Archaeologists and historians will then begin piecing together an explanation as to how the Hunley went down.

"It is too soon to tell how the Hunley was forced to the bottom of the ocean along with her crew, but we are confident that we will eventually identify a cause now that the entire submarine is exposed," Jacobsen says.

The Hunley made its mark in 1864 when it sank the USS Housatonic in the north entrance to Charleston Harbor. The Hunley, commanded by Lt. George Dixon, set off an explosive charge against the Union ship and punctured a hole on its starboard side. After the conflict, the Hunley failed to return to its port, which placed its disappearance as a mystery in the history books.

Clive Cussler's National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) located the submarine in 1995, and once the Hunley was brought into the Warren Lasch restoration center in 2000, scientists searched inside the submarine for any clues as to what caused it to sink.

What they found were the skeletal remains of the crewmembers, some remnants of clothing and a gold coin, but nothing that would have provided insight into the cause of the sub's demise. So the researchers set out to examine the hidden underside of the submarine.

"The process to rotate the sub was at times slow and tedious and others nerve-racking," according to Raegan Quinn, spokesperson for the Hunley Project. Scientists were able to successfully rotate it by the end of the day Thursday.

"Aside from minor technical issues, the rotation went according to plan with the sub remaining completely safe and intact," Mike Drews, director of the Warren Lasch Center, says in a statement.

The rotation of the Hunley marks a historic point in the journey of the submarine. Once the preservation treatment is complete and archaeologists are able to study the entire surface hidden underneath the corrosion layer, the submarine will be placed in a Charleston Civil War naval museum.