Crew of Civil War Submarine Found
By BRUCE SMITH, AP
CHARLESTON,
S.C. (AP), Archaeologists dug beneath a football stadium for a month and found the remains
of 27 Confederate soldiers, including four thought to be the first crew members on the
Hunley, the first submarine to sink an enemy war ship. ``The mission is
accomplished,'' state Sen. Glenn McConnell said Tuesday. ``We have the Hunley crew.''
The Hunley, a submarine made of old locomotive boilers and operated by
hand cranks, made history in February 1864, when it sank the Union blockade ship
Housatonic.
It never returned, sinking with its nine-man crew. The ship was found a
few miles of the South Carolina shore in 1995 and is scheduled to be raised in 2001.
Its original crew of five was lost in 1863, when the sub sank at its
moorings. They were buried in a sailors' cemetery, but because of a clerical error, their
headstones were removed and their remains were left behind.
In 1947, The Citadel's Memorial Stadium, later renamed Johnson Hagood
Stadium, was built on the site.
Last month, archaeologists and volunteers began working 12-hour days to
recover the remains from 5 feet under the stands and a room used by a school booster club.
At times they had to dig by hand, out of fear that tools would damage the brittle remains.
Jon Leader, deputy state archaeologist, said the remains of four Hunley crewmen
were found in oversized coffins. The bodies, bloated after the victims drowned, had to be
dismembered to remove them from the narrow submarine.
It was gruesome work, he said, probably accomplished with hatchets or
knives. The remains were found in coffins placed one on top of the other, he said.
``I don't think there is any question that what we have here ... are the
remains of the first crew of the H.L. Hunley,'' he said. The whereabouts of the
remains of a fifth crewman is still a puzzle.
Six years ago, 13 Confederate dead were found under the stadium parking
lot. Some of them may be members of the Hunley's second crew, who also died aboard the sub
before its successful mission. The original Hunley crew will be reinterred next
spring following a period military procession through Charleston's historic district,
McConnell said. A similar procession was featured in the TNT cable network movie ``The
Hunley,'' which premiered this month.
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