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New York Times - Ships and Shipping

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Tuesday 5 February 2013

Mystery over what sunk Civil War submarine may 

rest with device that helped it sink warship


The H.L. Hunley, built by the Confederates, was the first submarine to 

successfully sink an enemy’s ship. It then mysteriously vanished, and 
its wreckage was not discovered until 1995.



The Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley sits in a conservation tank at a lab in North Charleston, S.C. Scientists say a pole on the front of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley designed to plant explosives on enemy ships may hold a key clue to its sinking during the Civil War.

The Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley sits in a conservation tank at a lab in North Charleston, S.C. Scientists say a pole on the front of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley designed to plant explosives on enemy ships may hold a key clue to its sinking during the Civil War.

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — Scientists say a pole on the front of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley designed to plant explosives on enemy ships may hold a key clue to its sinking during the Civil War.
The experts are to release their findings Monday at a North Charleston lab where the hand-cranked sub is being preserved and studied. The Hunley was the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship.
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BRUCE SMITH/AP

The spar of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley is displayed at the conservation lab in North Charleston, S.C..

The pole, called a spar, was once placed at the front of the sub and used to plant a powder charge into the Union blockade ship Housatonic in 1864. The Housatonic sank, while the Hunley and its eight-man crew never returned.

The sub was found in waters off South Carolina in 1995 and raised five years later. It’s been in the laboratory 
ever since.

Source: Daily News, New York, USA.

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