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Hi All,
I saw the Hunley today! Very interesting boat. I had just
planned to go down to Channel Islands Harbor take a quick look and then turn
around and come back and work on a couple of projects, I ended up staying half
the day.
The sub was set up outside the maritime museum with local civil war
re-enactors in full civil war garb. However there happened to be one
fellow that had a blue jump suit on with a very distinct southern drawl who
seemed to know quite a bit about the boat, I come to find out he built the
replica.
Not only did he build the replica but apparently he was the first one they
called when they actually opened the Hunley up. He described in detail how
they went about removing the rivets on the rounded panels.
Luckily he didn't mind talking about the sub, in fact he was one hell
of a storyteller / welder and a proud southerner to boot.
I'm sure many of y'all already know the whole story of how the boat sunk
twice before it's final mission when it sunk the Housatonic. All of
the first two crews where lost. When they recovered the boat they had a
little problem.
The bodies had been in there a while and they were all bloated.
They couldn't get the bodies out thru the hatches so a guy had to climb
down in there and cut the bodies into chunks that were big enough to get out
thru the hatches.
I learned stuff I didn't even want to know !!
Anyway John filled me in on all the gory details, I tried to
steer the topic back to the operation of the sub and he was more than willing to
oblige me!
The sub is really a very sound design. It is very interesting how
they work the ballast tanks, they had pumps to pump the water out so they
could surface, and they also had a depth gage tube which was calibrated to
66 ft . The ballast tanks were actually open to the interior of the
sub. They had valving to pump water out of the tanks or out of the bilge
if they needed. They had a snorkel that was worked with a bellows.
The 7 crank handles were each off set by 51 degrees so as to balance out
thrust of the muscle power. It was truly a 1 atm sub even though the air
would get compressed somewhat when water was let in to make the thing negative
buoyant.
The ballast tanks were in each end of the boat where the sub
tapers, and they were open to the inside. Only partitioned off by a steel panel
with the top of the panel open at the top curved portion of the sub.
Brian Cox
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