She had met with project members to discuss collaboration, but they wouldn’t share their calculations with her (and, later on, would ask Lance to sign a non-disclosure agreement, which she’d decline). Lance, however, didn’t have access to the actual data. Their data suggests the crew had enough air for little more than two hours. After hauling up the sub, the Hunley Project conservators calculated how much air was likely available.
It wasn’t clear how much oxygen there was to begin with, though. So, she dug up the data and used it to calculate how much oxygen the crew would have used while cranking their way toward the Housatonic. With the navy, she had researched the phenomenon of how much oxygen people used while operating hand-pedal ergometers requiring the same type of motion as the Hunley’s hand-cranked propulsion system. Navy since 2009 and has expertise in breathing system dynamics and, more specifically, rebreathers-the closed-circuit breathing systems divers use to recycle breathing gas underwater.Īs her investigation got underway, Lance noticed there was very little, if any, published research on the crew’s oxygen consumption during the mission. It was exactly the type of theory she was poised to tackle: she’s been a civil service engineer with the U.S. One prevailing idea was that the crew ran out of oxygen and suffocated. She began reading theories about why the Hunley went down.
Hunley submarine model software#
Eventually she’d abandon the software for a more hands-on experimental approach, but Bass’s idea was the catalyst she needed. What if, biomechanical engineer Dale Bass suggested, the modeling software could virtually reconstruct the attack on the Housatonic and reveal insights into the fate of the Hunley ? Lance, a history buff, was hooked: a historical mystery with a tantalizing lead to follow. Lance was modeling an underwater explosion at a computer in Duke’s Injury Biomechanics Lab, where she studied blast injuries, when her adviser had the epiphany that set her Hunley obsession in motion. “It’s quiet there so we can talk.”Īn oil painting by Conrad Wise Chapman, circa 1898, depicts the inventor of the ill-fated H. “I’m taking you to the campus pond to see where we ran some of our experiments,” she thunders back. A blue, stonewashed T-shirt that reads Detroit rides up her pale, lanky arms.Īs we make our way off campus, the music keeps pumping. Lance just came from the gym, and her brown, shoulder-length hair is thrown up in an elastic. As I open the passenger door to introduce myself, I’m hit by a wall of thumping workout music. On a warm September Saturday, I’m standing outside the student center at Duke, a low-rise contemporary building accented with the university’s signature neo-Gothic stone, when Lance swings around the bend in a blue Pontiac Grand Prix straight out of Motor City where she grew up. Without collaboration or key pieces of data, could Lance’s account of the final moments of the Hunley and its crew be right?
Hunley submarine model full#
But how she made the discovery is almost as surprising as the discovery itself: She did it without access to the physical sub, which was excavated in 2000 without prior experience in archaeology or forensics and without help from the Hunley Project, a team of researchers and scientists at Clemson University in South Carolina that has been on the case full time for the past 17 years. If she’s right, the mystery of the Hunley may finally be put to rest.
Navy biomedical engineer who holds a PhD from Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering in North Carolina, concludes that the blast from the sub’s own torpedo sent blast waves through its iron hull and caused instant death for the eight men inside. After three years of sleuthing, Rachel Lance, a U.S.
Hunley submarine model cracked#
Now, one maverick scientist is making the bold claim that she has cracked the case. Its demise has baffled scores of researchers and Civil War buffs for more than a century. Just after the brief moment of glory, the Hunley, which had just become the world’s first successful combat submarine, mysteriously sank. By 9:00 p.m., it was over: The Hunley had thrust its spar-mounted torpedo into the Housatonic’s hull and within seconds, 60 kilograms of black powder had caved in the ship. The crew hand-cranked the sub more than six kilometers toward its target-the Union blockader USS Housatonic-and surfaced like a leviathan for the charge. Hunley, a self-propelled metal tube attached to a bomb, and slipped quietly into the freezing black water off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. on February 17, 1864, eight men crammed into the Confederate submarine H. Read more stories like this at .Īround 6:30 p.m. This article is from Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems.
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