Weird History: The Civil War Submarine

When I started writing my Dan Kotler Archaeological Thrillers, I glommed on to the idea of “weird history.” I thought it would be fun if Kotler and Agent Denzel were always finding themselves dealing with modern-day threats that had their roots in some quirk or twist of history. And I thought it’d be most fun if at least some part of that history was real (though I’ll freely admit I add-to and make up what I need to fill in certain gaps—still, there’s always some thread from the real world interwoven in my books).

When I first thought about “weird history,” it was the sort of thing you might find on Ancient Aliens or in older shows like Ripley’s Believe it or Not or That’s Incredible. Or any number of shows, documentaries, books, and magazines covering the quirkiest and strangest tidbits of our past, from ancient temples and artifacts to fringe science throughout the centuries. That’s the stuff that’s always gotten me excited. Things like comparative mythology and ancient technology that is, somehow, more advanced than what we have in the modern era. The unexplained mysteries of cultures who rose and fell without leaving much of a trace, and the mysteries of places where strange events and circumstances happened.

Kotler’s stories always have some element of that. But something I’ve discovered while writing these books is that “weird history” is sometimes just “history.” And maybe there’s a reason that it’s been recorded in the first place. Maybe history gets recorded and remembered because it’s weird.

Take, for example, the H.L. Hunley—otherwise known as the Civil War submarine. 

Built in the 1860s in Mobile, Alabama, and pressed into service in the Civil War from 1863 to 1864, it was the first submarine to sink an enemy vessel, bringing down the Union ship, the Housatonic, with a spar torpedo. Unfortunately, the sub disappeared after that fight, and was assumed sunk, all hands dead.

That turned out to be true, as was verified in 1995 when the Hunley was rediscovered in 30 feet of water, 4 miles offshore. It was raised in 2000 and moved to North Charleston’s Warren Lasch Conservation Center, where it resides to this day.

The strange thing about the sub is that it was found intact. No damage. And the crew were all at their stations, showing no sign of panic or trying to escape. There was no obvious reason for either their deaths or the sub’s failure. 

There have been a lot of theories about what brought down the Hunley. Some speculated that the crew died from asphyxiation from carbon monoxide. Others assumed the sub had taken a hit that wasn’t evident, or some seal must have broken, allowing water to rush in and drown everyone.

In 2017, however, a team of researchers from Duke University came up with a new theory: Blast lung.

The Duke team speculated that the blast from the torpedo that took down the Housatonic may have created a shock wave that was powerful enough to transmit back to the crew, through the water and the hull of the sub, and cause blood vessels in the crew’s lungs to rupture. This could potentially have killed the entire crew instantly.

Their historic victory turned out to be the cause of their own demise.

It’s a weird note from the pages of history, and in more ways than one. First of all—a submarine in use in the Civil War? Who could have seen that coming? 

Add to that the mystery surrounding first the Hunley’s disappearance, and then the cause of the crew’s death. It was a real “locked room mystery,” given that the sub was intact (taking into account a century of being underwater), and the crew was still at their posts, with no apparent cause of death.

This is the stuff good thriller novels are made from.

It hardly stops there. History is crammed to overflowing with mysteries and things that make you feel an eerie and mystified sense of confusion. There are question marks in our history books that we have no way to answer, except by the scribblings of an author determined to bring some kind of resolution to the unknown and unknowable.

That’s my job. And I like it.

History is weird. Weirded than any fiction, when it comes to it. And that means that I, and others who aspire to this work, will have business to sustain us for years to come.


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Kevin Tumlinson