CLEMSON, SOUTH CAROLINA—According to a report in Nature News, Rachel Lance of Duke University suggests the sailors on board H.L. Hunley, the Confederate combat submarine which rammed USS Housatonic in Charleston Harbor with a torpedo affixed to a spar, were killed by the shockwave of the explosion. The remains of the eight men were found at their hand-crank stations within the 40-foot-long vessel, and none of them had suffered broken bones. Lance and her team simulated explosive forces on a one-sixth scale model of the submarine submerged in a pond, and measured the pressure inside the vessel. They also tested the effect of authentic weapons on iron plate, the transmission of blast energy, and calculated rates of human respiration. The researchers concluded the force of the blast would have damaged the sailors’ lungs and brains, and either killed them or knocked them unconscious, leaving the submarine to drift out on the tide and slowly fill with water. For more, go to “History's Greatest Wrecks: USS Monitor and H.L. Hunley.”
