News of the H.L. Hunley...

[Wolferz]

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — A century and a half after it sank and a decade and a half after it was raised, scientists are finally getting a look at the hull of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, the first sub in history to sink an enemy warship.
What they find may finally solve the mystery of why the hand-cranked submarine sank during the Civil War.
"It's like unwrapping a Christmas gift after 15 years. We have been wanting to do this for many years now," said Paul Mardikian, senior conservator on the Hunley project.
The Hunley sank the Union blockade ship USS Housatonic off Charleston in February 1864 as the South tried to break the Union blockade strangling the Confederacy. But the sub and its eight-man crew never made it back to shore.
The Hunley was discovered off the South Carolina coast in 1995, raised in 2000 and brought to a conservation lab in North Charleston.
It was covered with a hardened gunk of encrusted sand, sediment and rust that scientists call concretion.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/aft...led/ar-AA8McoV