News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Remains of the Hunley

Date: February 08, 2002

"Scientists Probe Civil War Submarine Crew's Remains

CHARLESTON (Reuters) - Scientists studying the remains of the crew from an excavated Civil War-era submarine said on Friday they were beginning to get a clearer picture of the men who died when the world's first successful attack sub mysteriously sank --and one surprise was how tall they were.

The Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, built to break through a Union blockade of Charleston Harbor, disappeared on Feb. 17, 1864 shortly after sinking the USS Housatonic. It was lost until 1995, when a dive team paid for by adventure novelist Clive Cussler discovered it four miles off Sullivan's Island, South Carolina.

The vessel was raised in August 2000 and excavated in 2001, and forensic anthropologists and genealogists have been studying the remains of the eight crew members.

"The forensics study of these men will write their biographies," said Dr. Doug Owsley, head of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. "I am surprised by how tall they were."

The captain of the 43-foot sub, Lt. George Dixon, was 6-feet tall and the others were also much taller than the scientists had expected.

The men ranged in age from 18 or 20 to their early 40s, were all white, and suffered back problems and torn rotator cuffs from cranking the sub's propeller.

While many riddles remained--including some strange red staining on a few of the bones--one puzzle scientists seem to have cleared up, at least partially, was that surrounding Ezra Chamberlin, a Connecticut Yankee in the Union Army whose identification medallion was found on one of the crew members.

War records indicate Chamberlin died in a battle outside Charleston a month before the Hunley arrived here. But when the medallion was found around the neck of the Hunley's first officer, other theories sprang up.

Some said Chamberlin was a defector, others speculated he was a spy, or even a prisoner of war forced to sail on the Hunley. At the time, scientists cautioned that the medallion may have been a souvenir picked up on a battlefield.

Owsley, speaking at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center, said the man wearing the medallion was between 30 and 34 years old. Union war records say Chamberlin would have been about 24, putting rest to the idea that he was on board the submarine.

Owsley and a team of scientists have spent the last week assembling the bones recovered from the sub in skeletal form. The anthropologists will return in May to start a detailed study of the remains.

Linda Abrams, a genealogist, has been trying to track down the history of the crew members. She said she had found descendants from possibly two crewmen, but still had not been able to find even the first names of some of the crew."