![]() She was then shipped by rail on 12 August 1863 to Charleston. Hunley, nearly 40 ft (12 m) long, was built at Mobile, Alabama, and launched in July 1863. She was named for her inventor, Horace Lawson Hunley, shortly after she was taken into government service under the control of the Confederate States Army at Charleston, South Carolina. Twenty-one crewmen died in the three sinkings of Hunley during her short career. She was the first combat submarine to sink a warship ( USS Housatonic), although Hunley was not completely submerged and, following her attack, was lost along with her crew before she could return to base. Hunley demonstrated the advantages and dangers of undersea warfare. Hunley, or CSS Hunley, was a submarine of the Confederate States of America that played a small part in the American Civil War. Marine with nearly three decades of service. Rachel Lance does a service, providing critical information about a poorly understood injury as old as black powder itself. But In the Waves is also an accessible and important exploration of the injury deeply affecting the current generation of America’s service members. ![]() In the Waves is many things, all of them entertaining to read: a scientific documentary woven with thriller novel intrigue, a serious history accented with gentle snark, and a rapidly paced recounting of the dogged pursuit of scientific truth and a PhD. ![]() Along the way, Lance narrowly averts explosive death while transporting a trunk full of black powder on Interstate 40, arrestingly explains explosive physics, and provides insight into the history of the Confederacy while unflinchingly addressing the ugliest aspect of a horrific war, the enslavement of human beings. Among others, her family, North Carolina farmers, an ATF agent, an Army bomb squad member turned med student, a metal artist, and a host of Duke undergrads join her in building a scale model Hunley, standing neck deep in a freezing pond, and setting off explosions on the stately Duke campus. Lance’s pursuit of the truth about the fate of the Hunley and her crew is aided by a movie-worthy cast of characters. “Force,” for example, is described “in units of Rachel,” defined as “160 pounds’ worth of human-being mass, mostly composed of cake.” Fortunately for right-brained folks less given to comprehension of Newtons, kilopascals, and the finer points of metallurgy, she simplifies complex concepts with a sense of humor. Lance offers enough scientific explanation of explosives and explosions, Civil War–era submarine construction, and competing theories about the demise of the Hunley to fascinate the most technically minded military historian. She is also an engaging writer with a gift for a wryly turned phrase. Lance is a Duke University biomedical engineer with expertise in the effects of explosions on humans. Rachel Lance’s important, timely, and deeply entertaining book, In the Waves.ĭr. Those seemingly unrelated bits of history, 140 years apart, give me a more than passing interest in the forces central to both. The most pernicious injuries were those caused by explosive shock waves, the signature wound of America’s post-9/11 wars. The explosion destroyed the truck, leaving all nine men injured. Four years after the submarine reappeared, on a cold night in Iraq, a truck carrying nine of my Marines struck an anti-tank mine filled with twelve pounds of high explosive. But in 2001 my own wars interrupted that and everything else. Marine with a love for military history, I followed the Hunley’s story closely. Did her own torpedo sink the submarine along with the Housatonic? Was she doomed by an underwater collision or breach in her hull? Had mechanical failure led to slow suffocation for the eight men trapped beneath the waves? The mystery of the Hunley’s end persisted.Īs a U.S. Though she had finally returned to port, there was no indication of the cause of the Hunley’s demise. The Hunley also sank, never seeing the surface again until she was raised in 2000, the remains of her crew still at their posts. Hunley detonated two hundred pounds of black powder against the hull of the USS Housatonic, sinking the Union warship in the waters off Charleston, South Carolina. On February 17, 1864, eight sailors aboard the Confederate submarine H.L.
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