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Writer’s interest buoys Hunley research
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
Best-selling crime novelist Patricia Cornwell’s donation of at least $500,000 to CSS H.L. Hunley researchers hasn’t merely kick-started a new phase of forensic scientific inquiry into what happened to the Confederate submarine and its crew on the night of Feb. 17, 1864. It also has greatly eased some financial worries.
“There’s no question this donation opens a whole new world to us,” said Maria Jacobson, senior archaeologist on the project at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in North Charleston. “So much of my work consists of asking people to work for free and asking labs, ‘Can you process our samples for free?’ That becomes difficult because, while people are very helpful, something you’re doing for free can’t be a priority and so much of our work is time sensitive.”
Cornwall’s involvement is opening another world to Hunley researchers, a world of new collaborators, Jacobson said.
At Cornwall’s behest, a group of neuroscientists from Harvard University will visit North Charleston later this year to run a series of forensic tests on brain matter collected from members of the Hunley crew.
In addition, metallurgy experts from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee will conduct an infrared analysis of the Hunley’s hull, and computer software engineers will help recreate the sinking.
“We’re very, very excited to have an opportunity to work with these people,” Jacobson said. “In a case like this, the collaborative approach really is the only way to solve all the mysteries attached to it.”
Novel research
Cornwell became fascinated with the Confederate submarine after an impromptu visit to the conservation center while researching her next Dr. Kay Scarpetta novel, a murder mystery set in the Lowcountry.
As part of that research, she contacted Dr. Jamie Downs, Georgia’s coastal regional medical examiner and a Charleston native, asking if she could observe him in the field and in the morgue.
Instead, Downs, who has worked on the Hunley project for years, brought her to the conservation center.
Since the Hunley’s recovery in 2000, most of the work done has been to conserve and stabilize the iron hull of the 40-foot experimental craft. Despite the fact that all the crew’s skeletons were recovered and many items inside the Hunley survived the ravages of time, no one has determined why the ship went to the bottom about four miles from Sullivan’s Island or how the men died.
“This craft was an engineering marvel, the space shuttle of its day, and these men, true pioneers in the advance of technology,” Cornwell said. “This was a secret weapon in which eight people died under extraordinary circumstances. We owe it to them, and to history, to determine how they lost their lives.”
Although there are many theories about the sinking of the hand-cranked ship, that’s all they are: theories.
What is known is that shortly before sinking, the Hunley rammed a spar with black powder into the Union blockade ship USS Housatonic off Sullivan’s Island. It was the first time a submarine sank an enemy vessel.
“Something not repeated for 50 years, until World War I,” Downs said.
It then evidently turned toward the shore and sunk in about 30 feet of water.
Jacobson said one theory is that the shockwave from the blast knocked the men unconscious and they drowned before coming to; another is that the Hunley got trapped on the bottom and they purposefully flooded the hull to bring a mercifully fast end to their misery.
“Still another is that they may have had a suicide concoction of some sort to take their lives in the case of dire catastrophe,” Jacobson said. “We have found a corked bottle in the Hunley with some material in it, and we’d like to test the contents in conjunction with the testing of the brain material.”
Cornwell currently has no plans to write a book about the Hunley but left open the possibility.
“I certainly didn’t go into my investigation of the Jack the Ripper case thinking I’d write a book about it, but the evidence just wouldn’t leave me alone,” said Cornwell, author of Portait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed.
She also emphasized that her financial involvement in the Hunley is just as open-ended.
“This $500,000 is a start but only a start,” Cornwell said. “If we’re really onto something, I’m going to keep going.”
Cutting-edge research
Kellen Correia, spokeswoman for Friends of the Hunley, said for a small nonprofit with an annual budget of only $1.2 million, the support and enthusiasm of someone like Cornwell will have a major beneficial effect on the breadth of science performed at the conservation center.
“Not just in terms of the money, but also the contacts she has in the public and private scientific communities,” she said.
Downs went a step further. “While, obviously, this is important for the Hunley project, we should not lose sight of the fact that this has significant implications for the entire forensic community,” he said. “One very likely outcome of all this could be advances in forensic science and technology that are born right here in Charleston, right here in this facility.”
While people will likely focus on the analysis of the Hunley crew’s brain material, Downs warns that there is little of it and that it simply may have no clues to offer up.
“The brain is fatty tissue, and when it breaks down, it turns into a derivative of soap called adipocere,” he said. “It likely won’t tell us if they died of hypoxia, a lack of oxygen, for instance, but the analysis may inspire us to ask questions that haven’t been asked before, and that’s important forensic research that, again, is being done right here in Charleston.”
Clemson’s plans
The Cornwell donation comes as Clemson University prepares to take over the operation of the center and incorporate it into its plans to build a restoration institute on 82 acres of the former Navy shipyard in North Charleston.
Among the first orders of business will be renovations at the conservation center, where extensive work needs to be done to the center’s air conditioning system and foundation.
Jan Schach, dean of the university’s College of Architecture, Arts and the Humanities and director of the restoration institute, said none of that work would affect the Hunley restoration.
“If all goes according to that plan, within the next two to three years, (we) will be breaking ground on the first new Clemson building on the site, and within five years, we’ll be leasing space to private companies involved in marine restoration-related work.”
Even before those buildings go up, the university hopes to expand the restoration activities at the conservation center, Schach said.
“It has lots of capacity,” she said. “In fact, although I’m not at liberty to divulge specifics, we’ve already been contacted by a number of people about bringing additional historic artifacts to the facility.”
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@chalestonbusiness.com.
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