April 9, 2020 • 43 mins
On the evening of February 17th, 1864, the HL Hunley became the first submarine in history to successfully sink an enemy ship. Immediately after this attack, the HL Hunley disappeared. More than a century passed. Join the gang with Rachel Lance, author of In The Waves, as they dive into the mystery of the Hunley.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
tuning in. We hope everybody is happy and in good
health as you hear this. Uh we have. We have
a pretty cool episode for you today. But first things first,
I'm Ben, Ben, It's still me. Noah, what day is it?
(00:48):
I've I've started my own calendar, which is good. Yeah,
it's gonna it's probably for a different episode, but um,
I think in pre pandemic times this was what was
called a Monday in the days of your Is it
like the ben Gorian calendar? Is that what we're gonna
call it? I just spitballing here. Well, without revealing too much.
(01:09):
I didn't want to name it after myself. That felt
a little self aggrandizing. Uh So I named it after
our super producer, Casey Pegram the Pegrarian calendar. That's the one, Ben,
I'm honored. I love it and uh for for listeners
at home, for you audiophiles, Um, my voice sounds a
lot smoother this episode because I have an actual mic. Now, well, Casey,
(01:32):
no technology on the earth could make your voice sound
any smoother or my friend, but the audio quality is
more pristine today, So kudos for that. And it's so fascinating, Like,
that's such a great way to get in today's episode
because we are talking about technology, and we know, we
know that the pace of human evolution has been defined
(01:56):
many different ways, but one thing that human he is
always excelled at is the creation of technology. Where the
species that's eternally at the drawing board. Uh. We we
get a lot of stuff wrong, but we make a
lot of brave decisions, pioneering decisions. And you see, one
(02:17):
of the things that always fascinates me about technology I
don't know about you guys, is how much it empowers
us to go to places where humans physically wouldn't be
able to go on their own, you know, like the
wild reaches of the Arctic or the depths of the ocean. Uh.
Today we're talking about submarines. Today, we're diving into a mystery. Today,
(02:39):
we're diving into a very strange story from the Civil War.
But we're not doing it alone, are we know? We
sure aren't. Today we are joined by Dr Rachel Lance,
the author of In the Waves, the Story of the S. S.
Hunley Um, a Civil war who knew submarine. Thank you
so much for being with us today. I'm happy to
(03:00):
be your underwater tour guide. So no, I'm We're thrilled
to have you. And I'm not kidding. Maybe maybe this
is me showing my my ignorance, but I had no
idea that submarines were a thing during the Civil War,
and in doing a little research and reading your materials,
I realized it wasn't fully a thing. It was sort
of an experimental thing, very rudimentary version of what we
(03:22):
would now consider a submarine. Yeah, you're not the first
one to say that, so you are not alone. Um,
don't feel bad, but you are also correct in that
it's kind of like the garage band version of submarines. Uh.
The Hunley itself, which, by the way, I don't want
to start out well actually you or anything, But it
was not an ss uscl UM. It was just the
(03:45):
plane H L Hunley. It was not officially officially designated UM.
But yeah, the HL Hunley was built out of repurposed materials.
So this was a recycled submarine and they hammered it
out of the recycle old boiler of esteemship. Fascinating. So
now for for a quick level set for a lot
(04:06):
of a lot of our fellow listeners today. Uh, Let's
say most people who think of a submarine, they will
tend to think of these gargange in underwater predators, right,
often nuclear powered or diesel powered or something like that.
Could you could you tell us a little bit, Rachel
(04:29):
about how the Hunley came about? Uh? And what makes
it so markedly different? Dare I say a little bit
more low tech than some of the nuclear subs we
see in things like hunt for Red October? It was
I think lower tech is a very kind way to
put it, the Hunty. The Huntley was manpowered, so it
(04:52):
was about forty ft long, and inside there were eight
people and there was the pilot who was an officer,
so he didn't really have to do you that much.
But then the other seven members of the crew were
all stationed at a hand crank, so this thing looked
kind of like the crank shaft of a car. Each
of these handles were a little offset and together they
(05:12):
would just keep turning it continuously and that was connected
via some gears to the outside propeller, and that was
how this submarine moved. It was human powered submarine. So
it was essentially like a flint stone car submarine. Like
it's these guys are actually turning cranks to make the
thing go. Yeah, I think that that's actually a pretty
good description. That's I've never heard that one before, but
(05:33):
I might use it from now on. And just for
the record, just in my own defense, I kind of
transposed the h L, which is a person's name, um,
the person that was named after, with the SS in
my mind, So please forgive my my mistake there. But UM,
tell us a little bit about the man the Huntley
was named after, and and um maybe some of the
history of some of the tests and trials that led
(05:55):
to the story that we're exploring today, one of which
involved the man himself. Well, Horace Hunley was actually a lawyer,
which is not really the type of profession that you
would think naturally leads to building homemade submarines. But he
was down in Louisiana and he had his law degree,
and at one point he was working as a customs agent.
But this guy basically always had your next big idea
(06:19):
to get rich, and he was lucky to have an
extremely wealthy brother in law that funded a lot of
these ideas. So when when the war broke out, when
the South declared that they were going to succeed, they
didn't really have much of a navy to speak of.
And historians will disagree on the number of ships that
(06:40):
they had, but it's between zero and ten. So with
zero is your lower limit. That shows you that you
kind of need more ships. So Horace Hunley saw this
as another money making opportunity and he wanted to become
what's called a private here, so he started building submarine
with two other men, Baxtor Watson and James McClintock. And
(07:03):
those two were real engineers. Like these guys worked out
of a machine shop and they worked frequently at a foundry,
and they knew how to put together an actual product.
And together the three of them raised all these funds
and started building prototypes. The first one they need was
the CSS Pioneer, and that one actually was like officially
made a Confederate ship and everything, so now you can
(07:25):
call it whatever you please. But that one, as the
Union kind of closed in and New Orleans, they ended
up having to sink it intentionally. They didn't want it
to fall into Union hands, and so they sunk it
in Lake Pontra train Um, which is right next to
New Orleans, Louisiana. After that, everyone kind of packed up
(07:47):
and fled. They went to Mobile, Alabama, which was still
sitting under Confederate control, and they started building again. So
they built a second submarine, the American Diver, and they
kind of learned from their mistakes there, but that one
sank in an unfortunate accident, and according to the records,
everyone got out safely. It's a little bit unclear, there's
not a huge amount of detail, but either way, that
(08:09):
submarine was now in the bottom of Mobile Bay under
some mud. It was no longer going to help with
the war effort. After that, they started building on what
is thought to be their third submarine. That one would
eventually become the hil Henley. At the time, they called
it just simply fish boat now, which I love that name.
I think that's are also. I think maybe the porpoise
(08:32):
was a thing as well, or the fish torpedo boat.
I'm just you know, a quick glance of Wikipedia has
those as a list on the list as well. But
I think I prefer a good old fashioned fish boat,
you know, I agree. I think keep it simple, right, Yeah,
there were a couple other submarines at the time that
people were building at home and people were coming up
with their own prototypes. One of my personal favorite names
(08:55):
is the intelligent Whale. I think that was a great one.
That's really insulting to Wales though, honestly, I mean, you know,
come on, my sister in law began referring to herself
that way when she was pregnant with twins. Um not me,
but I was laughing when she used it on herself.
So but yeah, after that, they started building this fishboat
(09:19):
submarine and there's still in Alabama at this point. But
the Union just keeps closing in. It keeps knocking down
the city after city, and one of their major plans
is to take advantage of the fact that the Confederacy
really doesn't have much of a navy. So what they're
doing is they're black hating all of these major cities
where they can get supplies in and out. The Confederacy
(09:41):
has allies in Europe. That's who's sending them black powder
while they're getting therese kind of startup of that production ready.
It's who's sending them food to replace the food of
the farmers who are now fighting um and so block
hating these cities was a really effective strategy to just
starve them out, And eventually Charleston, South Carolina ended up
(10:03):
kind of being the last major Southern cities still to fall.
And there are these Union ships just line outside the harbor,
and dyve got this submarine in Alabama. They've got this
problem in Charleston. So they end up putting the submarine
on a train and shipping it over to South Carolina
and they start using it over there, and the eventual
(10:25):
goal is to just break the blockade. And at the time,
just related to this, I believe the Confederate government was
offering what fifty thousand dollars in eighteen sixties money to
anyone who could sink a Union worship. So this is
maybe a risky investment and probably seen as a patriotic one, uh,
(10:46):
but it could have enormous returns. It also was, from
what I understand, it was pretty lethal even in the
testing phase. Right, didn't more than half of the initial
crew die in testing for the Hunley. Yes, So you've
hit on two kind of key points about the history
of the submarine. Is First, that's how privateers worked. Is
(11:09):
these were private citizens and they were using these vessels
to try to collect basically a bounty, and it was
a bit of a sliding scale, but basically the Confederacy
was offering them the price value of the Union ship
itself plus something like I'd have to fact check the
exact number, but it was a something like twenty dollars
(11:30):
per sailor on board. So if you had one of
their larger vessels where they had like two hundred two
fifty sailors on board, that could really contribute to the
take home prize. And that was what Hunley and his
compatriots were eventually going to do. Really quick, question, um,
he he himself actually went along for one of these
(11:53):
test rides. Why why would he do that? Is it
to like, you know, earn the kind of trust of
his crew, Like if he's just it's like a kind
of bloodthirsty, you know, privateer, just trying to make his catch.
Why would he put himself in harm's way? Because he
did ultimately perish in one of these, uh these you
know fatal tests that that went awry. Oh spoilers, No,
(12:13):
it's okay. I was about to get to that. That
was my next dance there anyway, So inside my mind yes,
So this boat had a pretty horrific trek record, and
that was known even at a time, like they're these
historical documents with these terrible quotes like um, one of
my favorites was to call it an abortion of invented
(12:34):
genius um. And so people were saying really disparaging things
at the time because she kept killing her crew. So
it sank once in what the modern day military would
call dog and pony show. They were basically just trying
to show off for a bunch of spectators. Um. Not
that great at controlling information flow. But several of the
(12:56):
crew died then. And then Horse Hunley one day, even
though he hadn't been in the boat himself for months
and he was not necessarily super well trained in it,
while the normal pilot of the boat was out of town,
he decided that he wanted to go for a drive himself,
and so he wasn't Yeah, he wasn't trying to go
(13:19):
on a specific mission. He was just kind of joy riding,
taking it around the maritime block, right. Yeah. I think
it might have even been in the harbor if you
look at the map. He didn't look like he was
aiming to even get out. Um. He just looked like
he was kind of joy riding in the submarine. But
he ended up driving this thing face first into the
(13:41):
bottom of Charleston Harbor where it got stuck and they
couldn't get it out, and he and the other seven
members of this crew is fixated inside. So Horace Henley
was found in the forward conning tower, which was the
main exit, with his right hand pushing against that door
as he's trying to bash his way out of the submarine.
And this is all before the mystery that we set
(14:04):
up at the top of the show. We should say
this is yeah, this is all the the checkered past
of the Huntley. So as as you may infer listeners,
when this when this sub sank, uh, this is not
where the story ends, because later now the substincts in
eighteen sixty three, right later, in eighteen sixty four, it
(14:29):
is resurrected. Right, it's pulled from the muck. They pulled
it out pretty quickly, actually, so each time they still
wanted to be able to use it, so they pulled
it out within at most a couple of weeks. Oh great, Yeah,
the descriptions of that are still pretty horrifying. If you
really want some nightmares because the people were trapped inside,
and so they started to decompose, but they had um
(14:52):
salvage divers pulled the submarine up and they forced slaves
to clean it out because this was the Confederate solf.
But then they would find a new crew each time,
and after Henley died, that's when they renamed it in
his honor. But yes, that is the start of really
the mystery part. Their final mission was February eighteen sixty
(15:14):
four and a whole fresh new crew um takes it
out and they are successful. So they managed to sink
one of the Union ships in the blockade, and after
that victory they disappear. What that meant was that the
people in Charleston who knew about these previous sinkings had
(15:34):
a very easy explanation. At the time. They assumed that
it sank the way that it had before, that everyone
inside had drowned and asphixiated exactly like they had before.
But where it got really interesting was when this boat
was raised and in two thousand they started conserving it.
As they're starting to scoop out the silt and the
(15:54):
crub and the you know, dead crabs and crustaceans that
have filled this thing over a hundred few years in
the ocean. They find all of the skeletons of the
crew inside, and everyone is completely free of any sign
of skeletal trauma. But they're also seated at their stations,
which means they weren't like Horse Huntley, trying to bash
(16:15):
their way out the conning tower. They didn't see what
killed them. They didn't see it coming, and so that
became a much more interesting problem because all of a
sudden you have a new cause of death that's definitely
going to be dissimilar from the previous thinkings. Really quickly,
(16:37):
I want to get into a little bit about your
background and your specialization, because obviously, up to this point
you we've been interviewing you like a historian. We're talking
about all of these facts and all of the stories
that led up to this, but you're actually hardcore scientists.
For lack of a better term, I mean you your
research is um in hyperbaric medicine and environmental physiology, to
(16:58):
name one. I believe that is that we got your
PhD in or is that what you kind of the
research that led to you getting your PhD? Well, basically
I'm just an ocean nerd. That's kind of the how
I described myself at parties. But I really love examining
what happens to the human body underwater, and sometimes I
do like high altitude stuff as well. These extreme environments
(17:20):
are remarkably similar in the stress as they place on
our bodies. But yeah, anytime people are underwater, we're, like
you said at the top of the show, we're existing
in environment where we're not supposed to be, and so
interesting things start happening physiologically. You see new types of injuries,
you see new types of functions of your lungs and
of your basculature. But yeah, that is the majority of
(17:42):
my background is as a pretty hardcore scientist, but also
as an engineer. UM I got started working as a
mechanical engineer for the Navy building underwater breathing systems, and
from that I kind of sprang into Duke University. I
was working in a lab that specializes in blast from
and explosives. So for me, coming from the underwater world
(18:04):
into this lab that specializes in blast trauma and explosives,
it was a really natural fit for me to start
sending underwater explosives and and on that note, just to interject,
I believe you are not to put too fine a
point on it. Uh, the lead the leading underwater blast
trauma specialist on this continent. I I don't want to
make it too awkward bragging about you in front of you,
(18:26):
but that's that's what we founded our research. Here's the thing.
Then if you make yourself specific enough, eventually you are
the leading one of it. Man Bull is the leading
podcaster recording from home while wearing a gray hat. Right
now about is There's no question about that. I do
(18:48):
think it is important for us to emphasize that there
is a ton of science that goes into this. That's
that's one of the driving tools that this is the
only tool we can successfully use to solve mysteries like these.
But one question I have would be personal motivation. So
in two thousand, right, the sub is, as you said,
(19:09):
Rachel finally recovered what inspires you? Like, what was your
journey toward diving into this mystery? Did you maybe diving
in as a poor choice of words, my apologies, but
what what like did you immediately hear about it and say,
you know, like I've got to get on this, like
a law in order Doom Doom sort of theme starts
(19:30):
and the investigation begins or did your colleagues contact you?
What what was your journey towards this mystery. Well, in
two thousand, I had just turned sixteen, so like most
sixteen year old girls, I was fully immersed in the
world of Civil war submarines. That's definitely sarcasm. No, I
wasn't really aware of it at the time. You know,
(19:52):
it's a little bit more my opically focused, like a
lot of teenagers tend to be. And so I really
didn't find out about this mystery and till I was
already in graduate school working on my PhD. And it
was my advisor's idea. One of the things that he
and I share in common is we both really love history.
We both are always looking for the next kind of
(20:14):
historical project. Because when you work in blast and ballistic trauma,
a lot of your injuries come from more and so
that means that you are also researching history quite often,
because it's also an injury that you don't want to
inflict on people on purpose. Um So I scavenge old
case files a lot, and a lot of that involves
(20:35):
like tracking soldiers and tracking what happens in battles and
things like that. So this particular project came up as
I was working on a World War two project looking
at soldiers who were in the water when torpedoes went off,
and he sort of just suggested it one day and
we both thought it would be a really fun side project.
But it got quickly really out of hand. So um,
(20:59):
as it's pretty obvious from the books or from the
book beings spiraled wildly out of control with these experiments.
But I'm really proud of the way it turned out
me and the Huntley is pretty famous around the part
of the country where you live because it was discovered
by Clive Cussler, who is a pretty well known author,
and he wrote about it pretty extensively. But is he
(21:19):
was more of a fiction author, wasn't he like like
almost like a like a clancy or something like that. Right, Yes,
he definitely is a history fan himself, but his books
particularly are fiction. A lot of times they're kind of
inspired by these weird stories in true history though, so
um He's also used a lot of the proceeds from
his books to kind of go and explore the oceans. Uh.
(21:43):
So best was one of his projects for that. And
I should note too that there have been other people
throughout the past hundred fifty years who have claimed that
they found the Huntley, and some of them are very credible.
But once you have a name like Clive Cussler saying
it all of a sudden, the news agencies pay a
lot more attention. So that was kind of like the
really big news story was when Cleff Custler found it
(22:06):
and he connected it to his books and things like that.
So yeah, let's get back to our investigation here. So
you're you're looking into this and you're noticing it's a
little grim, but but it is science. You're noting that
the position of the bodies shows that there weren't people
rushing to the hatches, and this is this is a
(22:29):
huge clue of sorts that that that plays a role
in your hypothesis, your drive to solve the mystery of
what actually happened to the Huntley, because I believe at first,
you know, after what was it the first submarine to
successfully sink an enemy vessel? Uh, after it sank the Houstatonic,
(22:53):
it disappeared, as you said, people on people of the time,
contemporary experts said, well, that thing's cursed. Basically, I think
it's sank or whatever. What was your hypothesis, How did
you start putting these pieces together, what did you think
ultimately happened to the Huntley? And then how did you
test it? Well, I don't want to give away too much. Um.
(23:20):
The thing that really sold me on this as a
project was looking at the images of where the skeletal
remains were found. So you can find this with a
quick Google. If you look at the color coded images
of where each crewman was positioned and seeing that they
were each at their crank station and seeing that they
had no skeleton trauma. That's a really big alarm for
(23:41):
a blast trauma specialist because that's actually kind of the
hallmark of a blast trauma. Everyone thinks that you're gonna
get Jesson Stetha thrown across the room. Well, he said,
how stands up. He's got smoot on his face now,
but he's still running off to finish his mission, and
that's really unrealistic. Um. I apologize for her just having
(24:03):
ruined every movie you'll ever watch, but that's not really
how it happens. Like to get a blast that throws someone,
it has to be quite far above the lethal range,
So if someone's being thrown by the blast, they are dead.
And that's part of why I wanted to examine the submarine.
But as a scientist, you can't just declare this is
(24:26):
my theory, this is all I'm going to pay attention to.
That's really bad science because you need to pay proper
attention to all of the other ideas as well, and
approach them from kind of a databased standpoint and things
like that. So that was how I started out with
the project, was actually looking at the other explanations, especially
looking at this theory that they all asphyxiated inside the
(24:48):
submarine hall. And I was able to eliminate that one
because they were a positioned the way they were if
you get really honest about it, it gets pretty graphic.
But if you look at every submarine sinking throughout history,
the people inside knew they were about to die, and
the way that they were found is consistent between every
(25:10):
single other submarine accident in history. So you look at
like that the square list to ask for the hmstidas.
All of them, people are clustered near the exits, and
they're impostures and positions that indicate that they're really suffering
and that's very unfortunate. But the reason for that is
because they're experiencing carbon dioxide. I've experienced carbon dioxide before.
(25:35):
It's terrible. I don't want to do it again. It
hurts you get this like splitting migraine. I mean, I
was curled up, um, curled up on the deck of
a dive boat, like please just sleep me here for
a few minutes, and it's really unpleasant. Um. And so
to suggest that people experience that and then chose to
(25:58):
stay where they are anyway is really consistent with human nature,
especially when you find that carbon dioxide is used by
psychiatrists to intentionally cause panic attacks. So these aren't even
people who are thinking logically anymore. This is a biologically
induced panic attack. Isn't part of the phenomenon of carbon
dioxide poisoning or for lack of a better term, like
(26:19):
your blood actually becomes increasingly acidic because of you know,
kind of trying to compensate for this, and that is
painful as well, Like you can experience that as a
actual sensation. Yeah, so kind of in a way. I
don't know that any person, at least me, has enough
experience to be like, oh, my blood feels acidic today,
(26:40):
But that's what's happening on a biological level, and your
body has coping mechanisms to try to deal with that,
and that's what you end up feeling a symptoms. So,
for example, that headache is your body expanding the blood
vessels in your brain. It's trying to offload some of
this acidity, so it's no longer reaching your brain, and
that's what we perceive as a headache. And that was
(27:02):
one of the clues. Again, I don't want to give
away too much either, and really quickly, I just want
to say, reading your book, um it it reads like
an adventure novel. It's really well written. It's very visceral,
and you really feel like there's a scene where you
pick up this black powder, um you know, to run
your tests and you almost get into this crazy traffic
accident and you really feel the stakes of everything that
(27:25):
you're doing. And the way it's written is it's lots
a lot of fun, there's a lot of science, there's
a lot of history, but it is an absolutely page
turning kind of adventure read. So I just want to
put that out there for everyone absolutely read this book.
We're certainly not going to spoil anything, but um, it's
it's a really fun read. Um, can we talk a
little bit about the clues when you started actually doing
your tests that kind of leads you to discount some
(27:47):
of those things, other than the fact that people weren't
piled up clawing their way out of the submarine, some
of the kind of scientific cues that you took after
you started doing these tests. So one of the scientific
clues to me that wasn't extremely conclusive, but that was
sort of a hint and a wink and a point
in the right direction, was that when these crew members
(28:10):
were recovered, a lot of them still had intact brains
inside their skulls. And that's interesting for several reasons. First
of all, the discovery that the human brain can survive
for a hundred fIF years in salt water, But from
a biological perspective, a lot of their brains had these
kind of diffuse patterns and stains that were just on
(28:32):
the surface. And really, because again we don't have a
ton of examples of people staying underwater for that long,
there are multiple possible things that could explain that. But
what's also important to know from my perspective is that's
what blast trauma looks like. So once again, that's how
a brain injury from blast appears, especially one that's in
(28:54):
the fatal ranges. You end up having what's called a hematoma,
which is that big breading of bloods somewhere on the brain,
and it can appear in any location on the brain,
but it only appears really on the surface, and the
brain itself isn't disrupted. The brain looks completely intact. It
kind of just looks like this paint splotch has appeared.
So for me when I read about that finding, again,
(29:17):
you can't really eliminate all the other possibilities just because
we don't have a lot of examples of brains in
that state. But it's another kind of hint and wink
and suggestion that we might be dealing with the blast
trauma here. So picking back up on the idea of
(29:39):
black powder, which which I believe we mentioned just briefly there,
one thing that I found fascinating about in the waves
was that there was a lot of science going into
black powder that I wasn't I wasn't familiar with. Like,
you know, I've never built a civil war sub I've
never even built a regular torpedo or underwater explosive much
(30:03):
less you know, like loaded a gun with powder. So
how do you even test that? Like? How what? It's
just such a strange concept to me because it seems
like such a uh an archaic means of propellant or blasting.
What was it like when you were thinking, Okay, how
do we figure out the role of black powder? And
(30:25):
what is is black powder just gunpowder? Um? It depends.
The word gunpowder can mean a couple different things. Black
powder is the more specific. Sometimes when people say gunpowder
they mean smokeless powder also, which has different blast characteristics.
I won't go into that because I like you guys, um,
but black powder is like a very specific mixture. And yeah,
(30:48):
there was a lot more involved in the finer points
of black powder that I had anticipated when I started
the project as well. But one of the things that's
really important and looking at blast fraumas is looking at
your explosive making sure that you know that, um, people
are getting blessed in the correct way for that problem.
And just a little we kind of dived right into
(31:08):
black powder. But just to really really be clear, this
quote unquote torpedo is propelled by this very archaic, very finicky,
dangerous material that you actually transported in the trunk of
your Subaru or something or pontiac. I think it was right.
It was a Pontiac. I'm a Detroit girl. I do
have American power. Um. Yes, so I was transporting black
(31:33):
powder and what I was doing was completely legal. I
feel like that's important for me to throw out there.
But yeah, the thing with black powder is if you
hit it and the heat generated from impact can cause
it to go off. And so me being in a
Pontiac on the highway where two cars in front of
me just crashed into each other randomly, and there was
(31:56):
a massive truck really aggressively tailgating me was a kind
of terrifying moment in the experiment. But thankfully as an
injury and trauma specialist, I am an O c D
safety minded driver, and so I had a little bit
extra following distance knowing what was in my trunk. But um, yeah,
that guy behind me, who was clearly texting, should have
(32:17):
been a lot more aware because he had no idea
what he was when he was so close too with
his grill. Yeah, but um, dealing with black powder is
a difficult adventure and I hope to never ever do
it again. It's extremely finicky. So first off, as a
fellow defensive driver, I very much appreciate the point you're
(32:37):
making about vehicular safety. So but we should have phsized
too that you weren't trying to intentionally explode something on
another vehicle. Uh h. L Huntley was one of the
things that fascinated me in in the waves was figure
(33:00):
out how this torpedo technology would work. I was I
was surprised to find out that it was. Um, I'm
gonna say the word they kept coming to mind when
I was reading about the setup was precarious. It was
like dicey. Honestly, it was like why would you why
(33:20):
would you get in that sub? But how did they
make a torpedo and attach it? Well, they had these
two brothers called the Rains Brothers, and there's some of
my favorite characters in history because together I think they're
really responsible for all the black powder and entire Confederacy. Um. So,
one of them started a black powder mill for the
Confederacy using a pamphlet and no other previous knowledge, and
(33:44):
the other one invented land mines and built all of
the mines and torpedoes for the South. So it's important
to note here also that the word torpedo at this
time in history means something different. It means more of
a mine or stationary bomb, so it's not being propelled
on its own. But I think that the case of
the Hunley really emphasized why that technology would be useful.
(34:09):
Because you have the Ugel Hunley in eighteen sixty four,
it sets office torpedo nobody comes home alive. Eighteen seventies,
people are already working on torpedo designs that can propel
themselves through the water. So it's pretty immediately apparent that
not only is this useful technology, but we don't want
to be near it when it goes off. Um. So
(34:29):
that was a really major impact on warfare within ten years,
which is unusual. So to that point, like you know,
the difference of the concept of a torpedo, how were
they able to actually successfully destroy this Union ship? Like
I mean, is it a slow thing where they deploy
it and then kind of try to get away and
there's a fuse on it, or can we just talk
(34:50):
a little bit about the mechanics of how this thing
would actually you know, be at any level precise. I mean,
obviously it wasn't precise. That's a total misnumber. But there
had be some level of control to it, otherwise it
would just blow up, you know, inside the submarine and
kill everybody every time. I think they had a surprising
amount of control over it and also no control at
the same time. The way that this thing worked, it
(35:13):
was attached to a spar on the bow of the submarine,
so it is outside the submarine, but it's still only
sixteen ft away because that's the length of their spar.
And then their torpedo had a pressure trigger, so what
they had to do was hand cranked their submarine all
the way up to the enemy ship, which is more
courageous than it sounds, because they are being shot at
while this happens, and jabbed the Union ship in the
(35:37):
side of the hole with the pressure trigger on the torpedo.
And we know that that successfully occurred because when the
submarine and the spar were recovered, the little shards of
that torpedo were still attached, so it was peeled backwards
over the end of the spar like a daffy duck cigar.
And then it was just cartoonish and clearly evident that
(35:59):
it was still a hatched and only sixteen feet away,
which was really key to setting up an accurate science
experiment to figure out what happened. And again, I, you know,
and I really don't want to spoil anything, um, but
we have to talk a little bit about some of
these simulations you ran. At the very least, we have
to talk about Tiny. Yeah, tell us a little bit
(36:20):
about a little bit about Tiny, and then we're gonna
we're gonna let our listeners find out the rest of
the story by getting your book. But we have to
dig into Tiny a little bit because it's just it's
too delightful not to discuss. People really like that I
named the boat the Tiny. Sometimes when you're a lab
at three o'clock in the morning and you have some
spray paint, you make choices, so that that's how it
(36:45):
got its moniker. But um, that was actually one of
the things that I wanted to make sure I included
in this book is because I think a lot of
times when you read about the results of science, you
get like a paragraph or at best in news article
that condenses down years and years of research. For me,
this was three years of working average sixty to eighty
(37:07):
hours a week, and so life happens along the way too.
And that's what I think is kind of interesting. Right now,
we're dealing obviously, with this virus outbreak, and we've got
people working really hard on different solutions and different vaccines.
And I've never read another book where they take you
through a scientific project and explain what that's actually like
(37:30):
to be a scientist, to be a human being, you know,
to almost get into car accident, to have your grandma die,
like to get proposed to all while you're trying to
plow through this experiment that is either important to you,
like in my case, or is important to the world,
like what these vaccine researchers are doing right now. Um.
(37:51):
So I'm just hopeful that as people read this, they
kind of understand a little bit better what goes into
all of those news clips and how much real humanity
is behind those stories, how this science sausage gets made.
In other words, I think that's instructive too, and it's
inspiring for a lot of the listeners in our audience.
(38:12):
We have a you know, we have a lot of
younger kids who listen to the show who are actively
interested in pursuing stem and you know, humanizing that and
making making sure that we all realize that the scientists
you read about in a newsclip are themselves human beings
and people. I think is a powerful thing and it's
(38:34):
something that um, it's something that I personally am very
appreciative of. And you know, it's funny like the we
I set this up with asking you about tiny, which
was the sort of the um miniaturized version of the
huntly that you created, and in a blast of creativity
and inspiration and maybe sleeplessness, UM three am, you named
(38:54):
it tiny. But that's just the kind of little nugget
that publishers love and they'll put in like a press
kit for a book or that you can see in
a headline or like really grab onto. But that was
just one little detail that is kind of fun to
talk about, but it represents so much effort and work
that you put into not only the research, but then
designing the experiment, um, creating a scale version of this
(39:16):
scenario and running tests over and over and over again,
and then that data became like gold to you, or
you talk about in the book how you immediately backed
it up in like triplicate UM. So it really is
so much that goes into creating this, this math and
this data that then can help you tell a story much,
you know, much larger than just a headline or like
(39:37):
a sound bite. Yeah, thank you. I think people often
repeat the Thomas Edison quote and I forget the exact
number he used, so you have to forgive my fudging it.
But he said something like he didn't fail nine d
or whatever number heat of times he used to make
a light bulb. He learned nine hundred ways not to
make a light bulb. But people don't think about the
(39:57):
fact that that took years, so he failed for years.
So even our most brilliant scientists and inventors are human
beings with flaws, and anyone can do this stuff. It's
just all about perseverance. And with that we want to
be cautious about spoilers. You, like us, will have to
check out the book to learn the rest of the story,
(40:19):
and take my word for it. You won't regret it.
The book is in the Waves by Quest to solve
the mystery of a Civil War submarine. By the time
you're hearing this, the book will be available wherever you
find your favorite uh, your favorite nonfiction, your favorite solving
of historical mysteries. Rachel, thank you so much for joining
(40:40):
us on the air today. This has been an absolute pleasure,
and I've got to say this is one of the
episodes that sent me off to read more and more
on my own about submarines just for my own personal edification.
So uh so I owe you a personal thank you.
Oh well, you're welcome many time I can hook someone
(41:01):
else on submarines, I'm happy to do so. And can
you tell listeners where to find you many social media
stuff for any other places where you uh maybe post um,
you know, the stuff that you're working on currently. I
am on Twitter, I'm at Underwater Lance and they can
also find me through my website which is Rachel and
Lance Rights dot com. So they all have updates and
(41:23):
announcements and things like that. Fantastic. Well, thanks so much
again for joining us. Huge thanks as always to super
producer Casey Pegram, Alex Williams, who composed our theme, our
dear friend Christopher Haciotas, who is of course here in spirit.
Thanks of course as always to Jonathan Strickland, a k a.
The Quister, who's been saying some really nice things to
(41:43):
me post quarantine. Rachel, that's a guy who makes a
cameo on It's it's tough to explain, don't worry about it.
He's a nice guy. Ben Well, he's sort of our
nemesis is the thing, but it's sort of a soft
Cold War kind of nemeses. But I will say this,
he has been rocking the steampunk um outbreak gear and
(42:04):
I am here for it. He's got this like kind
of bandana and these goggles and like a cowboy hat.
Situation is sort of a West World meets um, you know,
a Kira kind of steam Boy kind of situation. I'm
all about it. But thanks Jonathan for being a pal
and also for ruining our lives sometimes. And thanks again
to you Rachel, Thanks to everyone who is tuning in.
(42:25):
As I said at the top, we hope this message
finds you happy, healthy and safe. I just followed at
underwater Lance on Twitter. Uh, so I can dig it
to morse up news. Uh and well, we hope that
we hope that you will share some of your favorite
strange stories or historical mysteries of your that have yet
(42:46):
to be solved or recently solved. Let us know you
can find us all over the internet where on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.
Do check out our community page Ridiculous Historians on Facebook.
And if you don't want to do any of that,
you can just send us an email to ridiculous us
at i heart radio dot com. We'll see you next time, folks.
(43:09):
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much for
tuning in. We hope everybody is happy and in good
health as you hear this. Uh we have. We have
a pretty cool episode for you today. But first things first,
I'm Ben, Ben, It's still me. Noah, what day is it?
(00:48):
I've I've started my own calendar, which is good. Yeah,
it's gonna it's probably for a different episode, but um,
I think in pre pandemic times this was what was
called a Monday in the days of your Is it
like the ben Gorian calendar? Is that what we're gonna
call it? I just spitballing here. Well, without revealing too much.
(01:09):
I didn't want to name it after myself. That felt
a little self aggrandizing. Uh So I named it after
our super producer, Casey Pegram the Pegrarian calendar. That's the one, Ben,
I'm honored. I love it and uh for for listeners
at home, for you audiophiles, Um, my voice sounds a
lot smoother this episode because I have an actual mic. Now, well, Casey,
(01:32):
no technology on the earth could make your voice sound
any smoother or my friend, but the audio quality is
more pristine today, So kudos for that. And it's so fascinating, Like,
that's such a great way to get in today's episode
because we are talking about technology, and we know, we
know that the pace of human evolution has been defined
(01:56):
many different ways, but one thing that human he is
always excelled at is the creation of technology. Where the
species that's eternally at the drawing board. Uh. We we
get a lot of stuff wrong, but we make a
lot of brave decisions, pioneering decisions. And you see, one
(02:17):
of the things that always fascinates me about technology I
don't know about you guys, is how much it empowers
us to go to places where humans physically wouldn't be
able to go on their own, you know, like the
wild reaches of the Arctic or the depths of the ocean. Uh.
Today we're talking about submarines. Today, we're diving into a mystery. Today,
(02:39):
we're diving into a very strange story from the Civil War.
But we're not doing it alone, are we know? We
sure aren't. Today we are joined by Dr Rachel Lance,
the author of In the Waves, the Story of the S. S.
Hunley Um, a Civil war who knew submarine. Thank you
so much for being with us today. I'm happy to
(03:00):
be your underwater tour guide. So no, I'm We're thrilled
to have you. And I'm not kidding. Maybe maybe this
is me showing my my ignorance, but I had no
idea that submarines were a thing during the Civil War,
and in doing a little research and reading your materials,
I realized it wasn't fully a thing. It was sort
of an experimental thing, very rudimentary version of what we
(03:22):
would now consider a submarine. Yeah, you're not the first
one to say that, so you are not alone. Um,
don't feel bad, but you are also correct in that
it's kind of like the garage band version of submarines. Uh.
The Hunley itself, which, by the way, I don't want
to start out well actually you or anything, But it
was not an ss uscl UM. It was just the
(03:45):
plane H L Hunley. It was not officially officially designated UM.
But yeah, the HL Hunley was built out of repurposed materials.
So this was a recycled submarine and they hammered it
out of the recycle old boiler of esteemship. Fascinating. So
now for for a quick level set for a lot
(04:06):
of a lot of our fellow listeners today. Uh, Let's
say most people who think of a submarine, they will
tend to think of these gargange in underwater predators, right,
often nuclear powered or diesel powered or something like that.
Could you could you tell us a little bit, Rachel
(04:29):
about how the Hunley came about? Uh? And what makes
it so markedly different? Dare I say a little bit
more low tech than some of the nuclear subs we
see in things like hunt for Red October? It was
I think lower tech is a very kind way to
put it, the Hunty. The Huntley was manpowered, so it
(04:52):
was about forty ft long, and inside there were eight
people and there was the pilot who was an officer,
so he didn't really have to do you that much.
But then the other seven members of the crew were
all stationed at a hand crank, so this thing looked
kind of like the crank shaft of a car. Each
of these handles were a little offset and together they
(05:12):
would just keep turning it continuously and that was connected
via some gears to the outside propeller, and that was
how this submarine moved. It was human powered submarine. So
it was essentially like a flint stone car submarine. Like
it's these guys are actually turning cranks to make the
thing go. Yeah, I think that that's actually a pretty
good description. That's I've never heard that one before, but
(05:33):
I might use it from now on. And just for
the record, just in my own defense, I kind of
transposed the h L, which is a person's name, um,
the person that was named after, with the SS in
my mind, So please forgive my my mistake there. But UM,
tell us a little bit about the man the Huntley
was named after, and and um maybe some of the
history of some of the tests and trials that led
(05:55):
to the story that we're exploring today, one of which
involved the man himself. Well, Horace Hunley was actually a lawyer,
which is not really the type of profession that you
would think naturally leads to building homemade submarines. But he
was down in Louisiana and he had his law degree,
and at one point he was working as a customs agent.
But this guy basically always had your next big idea
(06:19):
to get rich, and he was lucky to have an
extremely wealthy brother in law that funded a lot of
these ideas. So when when the war broke out, when
the South declared that they were going to succeed, they
didn't really have much of a navy to speak of.
And historians will disagree on the number of ships that
(06:40):
they had, but it's between zero and ten. So with
zero is your lower limit. That shows you that you
kind of need more ships. So Horace Hunley saw this
as another money making opportunity and he wanted to become
what's called a private here, so he started building submarine
with two other men, Baxtor Watson and James McClintock. And
(07:03):
those two were real engineers. Like these guys worked out
of a machine shop and they worked frequently at a foundry,
and they knew how to put together an actual product.
And together the three of them raised all these funds
and started building prototypes. The first one they need was
the CSS Pioneer, and that one actually was like officially
made a Confederate ship and everything, so now you can
(07:25):
call it whatever you please. But that one, as the
Union kind of closed in and New Orleans, they ended
up having to sink it intentionally. They didn't want it
to fall into Union hands, and so they sunk it
in Lake Pontra train Um, which is right next to
New Orleans, Louisiana. After that, everyone kind of packed up
(07:47):
and fled. They went to Mobile, Alabama, which was still
sitting under Confederate control, and they started building again. So
they built a second submarine, the American Diver, and they
kind of learned from their mistakes there, but that one
sank in an unfortunate accident, and according to the records,
everyone got out safely. It's a little bit unclear, there's
not a huge amount of detail, but either way, that
(08:09):
submarine was now in the bottom of Mobile Bay under
some mud. It was no longer going to help with
the war effort. After that, they started building on what
is thought to be their third submarine. That one would
eventually become the hil Henley. At the time, they called
it just simply fish boat now, which I love that name.
I think that's are also. I think maybe the porpoise
(08:32):
was a thing as well, or the fish torpedo boat.
I'm just you know, a quick glance of Wikipedia has
those as a list on the list as well. But
I think I prefer a good old fashioned fish boat,
you know, I agree. I think keep it simple, right, Yeah,
there were a couple other submarines at the time that
people were building at home and people were coming up
with their own prototypes. One of my personal favorite names
(08:55):
is the intelligent Whale. I think that was a great one.
That's really insulting to Wales though, honestly, I mean, you know,
come on, my sister in law began referring to herself
that way when she was pregnant with twins. Um not me,
but I was laughing when she used it on herself.
So but yeah, after that, they started building this fishboat
(09:19):
submarine and there's still in Alabama at this point. But
the Union just keeps closing in. It keeps knocking down
the city after city, and one of their major plans
is to take advantage of the fact that the Confederacy
really doesn't have much of a navy. So what they're
doing is they're black hating all of these major cities
where they can get supplies in and out. The Confederacy
(09:41):
has allies in Europe. That's who's sending them black powder
while they're getting therese kind of startup of that production ready.
It's who's sending them food to replace the food of
the farmers who are now fighting um and so block
hating these cities was a really effective strategy to just
starve them out, And eventually Charleston, South Carolina ended up
(10:03):
kind of being the last major Southern cities still to fall.
And there are these Union ships just line outside the harbor,
and dyve got this submarine in Alabama. They've got this
problem in Charleston. So they end up putting the submarine
on a train and shipping it over to South Carolina
and they start using it over there, and the eventual
(10:25):
goal is to just break the blockade. And at the time,
just related to this, I believe the Confederate government was
offering what fifty thousand dollars in eighteen sixties money to
anyone who could sink a Union worship. So this is
maybe a risky investment and probably seen as a patriotic one, uh,
(10:46):
but it could have enormous returns. It also was, from
what I understand, it was pretty lethal even in the
testing phase. Right, didn't more than half of the initial
crew die in testing for the Hunley. Yes, So you've
hit on two kind of key points about the history
of the submarine. Is First, that's how privateers worked. Is
(11:09):
these were private citizens and they were using these vessels
to try to collect basically a bounty, and it was
a bit of a sliding scale, but basically the Confederacy
was offering them the price value of the Union ship
itself plus something like I'd have to fact check the
exact number, but it was a something like twenty dollars
(11:30):
per sailor on board. So if you had one of
their larger vessels where they had like two hundred two
fifty sailors on board, that could really contribute to the
take home prize. And that was what Hunley and his
compatriots were eventually going to do. Really quick, question, um,
he he himself actually went along for one of these
(11:53):
test rides. Why why would he do that? Is it
to like, you know, earn the kind of trust of
his crew, Like if he's just it's like a kind
of bloodthirsty, you know, privateer, just trying to make his catch.
Why would he put himself in harm's way? Because he
did ultimately perish in one of these, uh these you
know fatal tests that that went awry. Oh spoilers, No,
(12:13):
it's okay. I was about to get to that. That
was my next dance there anyway, So inside my mind yes,
So this boat had a pretty horrific trek record, and
that was known even at a time, like they're these
historical documents with these terrible quotes like um, one of
my favorites was to call it an abortion of invented
(12:34):
genius um. And so people were saying really disparaging things
at the time because she kept killing her crew. So
it sank once in what the modern day military would
call dog and pony show. They were basically just trying
to show off for a bunch of spectators. Um. Not
that great at controlling information flow. But several of the
(12:56):
crew died then. And then Horse Hunley one day, even
though he hadn't been in the boat himself for months
and he was not necessarily super well trained in it,
while the normal pilot of the boat was out of town,
he decided that he wanted to go for a drive himself,
and so he wasn't Yeah, he wasn't trying to go
(13:19):
on a specific mission. He was just kind of joy riding,
taking it around the maritime block, right. Yeah. I think
it might have even been in the harbor if you
look at the map. He didn't look like he was
aiming to even get out. Um. He just looked like
he was kind of joy riding in the submarine. But
he ended up driving this thing face first into the
(13:41):
bottom of Charleston Harbor where it got stuck and they
couldn't get it out, and he and the other seven
members of this crew is fixated inside. So Horace Henley
was found in the forward conning tower, which was the
main exit, with his right hand pushing against that door
as he's trying to bash his way out of the submarine.
And this is all before the mystery that we set
(14:04):
up at the top of the show. We should say
this is yeah, this is all the the checkered past
of the Huntley. So as as you may infer listeners,
when this when this sub sank, uh, this is not
where the story ends, because later now the substincts in
eighteen sixty three, right later, in eighteen sixty four, it
(14:29):
is resurrected. Right, it's pulled from the muck. They pulled
it out pretty quickly, actually, so each time they still
wanted to be able to use it, so they pulled
it out within at most a couple of weeks. Oh great, Yeah,
the descriptions of that are still pretty horrifying. If you
really want some nightmares because the people were trapped inside,
and so they started to decompose, but they had um
(14:52):
salvage divers pulled the submarine up and they forced slaves
to clean it out because this was the Confederate solf.
But then they would find a new crew each time,
and after Henley died, that's when they renamed it in
his honor. But yes, that is the start of really
the mystery part. Their final mission was February eighteen sixty
(15:14):
four and a whole fresh new crew um takes it
out and they are successful. So they managed to sink
one of the Union ships in the blockade, and after
that victory they disappear. What that meant was that the
people in Charleston who knew about these previous sinkings had
(15:34):
a very easy explanation. At the time. They assumed that
it sank the way that it had before, that everyone
inside had drowned and asphixiated exactly like they had before.
But where it got really interesting was when this boat
was raised and in two thousand they started conserving it.
As they're starting to scoop out the silt and the
(15:54):
crub and the you know, dead crabs and crustaceans that
have filled this thing over a hundred few years in
the ocean. They find all of the skeletons of the
crew inside, and everyone is completely free of any sign
of skeletal trauma. But they're also seated at their stations,
which means they weren't like Horse Huntley, trying to bash
(16:15):
their way out the conning tower. They didn't see what
killed them. They didn't see it coming, and so that
became a much more interesting problem because all of a
sudden you have a new cause of death that's definitely
going to be dissimilar from the previous thinkings. Really quickly,
(16:37):
I want to get into a little bit about your
background and your specialization, because obviously, up to this point
you we've been interviewing you like a historian. We're talking
about all of these facts and all of the stories
that led up to this, but you're actually hardcore scientists.
For lack of a better term, I mean you your
research is um in hyperbaric medicine and environmental physiology, to
(16:58):
name one. I believe that is that we got your
PhD in or is that what you kind of the
research that led to you getting your PhD? Well, basically
I'm just an ocean nerd. That's kind of the how
I described myself at parties. But I really love examining
what happens to the human body underwater, and sometimes I
do like high altitude stuff as well. These extreme environments
(17:20):
are remarkably similar in the stress as they place on
our bodies. But yeah, anytime people are underwater, we're, like
you said at the top of the show, we're existing
in environment where we're not supposed to be, and so
interesting things start happening physiologically. You see new types of injuries,
you see new types of functions of your lungs and
of your basculature. But yeah, that is the majority of
(17:42):
my background is as a pretty hardcore scientist, but also
as an engineer. UM I got started working as a
mechanical engineer for the Navy building underwater breathing systems, and
from that I kind of sprang into Duke University. I
was working in a lab that specializes in blast from
and explosives. So for me, coming from the underwater world
(18:04):
into this lab that specializes in blast trauma and explosives,
it was a really natural fit for me to start
sending underwater explosives and and on that note, just to interject,
I believe you are not to put too fine a
point on it. Uh, the lead the leading underwater blast
trauma specialist on this continent. I I don't want to
make it too awkward bragging about you in front of you,
(18:26):
but that's that's what we founded our research. Here's the thing.
Then if you make yourself specific enough, eventually you are
the leading one of it. Man Bull is the leading
podcaster recording from home while wearing a gray hat. Right
now about is There's no question about that. I do
(18:48):
think it is important for us to emphasize that there
is a ton of science that goes into this. That's
that's one of the driving tools that this is the
only tool we can successfully use to solve mysteries like these.
But one question I have would be personal motivation. So
in two thousand, right, the sub is, as you said,
(19:09):
Rachel finally recovered what inspires you? Like, what was your
journey toward diving into this mystery? Did you maybe diving
in as a poor choice of words, my apologies, but
what what like did you immediately hear about it and say,
you know, like I've got to get on this, like
a law in order Doom Doom sort of theme starts
(19:30):
and the investigation begins or did your colleagues contact you?
What what was your journey towards this mystery. Well, in
two thousand, I had just turned sixteen, so like most
sixteen year old girls, I was fully immersed in the
world of Civil war submarines. That's definitely sarcasm. No, I
wasn't really aware of it at the time. You know,
(19:52):
it's a little bit more my opically focused, like a
lot of teenagers tend to be. And so I really
didn't find out about this mystery and till I was
already in graduate school working on my PhD. And it
was my advisor's idea. One of the things that he
and I share in common is we both really love history.
We both are always looking for the next kind of
(20:14):
historical project. Because when you work in blast and ballistic trauma,
a lot of your injuries come from more and so
that means that you are also researching history quite often,
because it's also an injury that you don't want to
inflict on people on purpose. Um So I scavenge old
case files a lot, and a lot of that involves
(20:35):
like tracking soldiers and tracking what happens in battles and
things like that. So this particular project came up as
I was working on a World War two project looking
at soldiers who were in the water when torpedoes went off,
and he sort of just suggested it one day and
we both thought it would be a really fun side project.
But it got quickly really out of hand. So um,
(20:59):
as it's pretty obvious from the books or from the
book beings spiraled wildly out of control with these experiments.
But I'm really proud of the way it turned out
me and the Huntley is pretty famous around the part
of the country where you live because it was discovered
by Clive Cussler, who is a pretty well known author,
and he wrote about it pretty extensively. But is he
(21:19):
was more of a fiction author, wasn't he like like
almost like a like a clancy or something like that. Right, Yes,
he definitely is a history fan himself, but his books
particularly are fiction. A lot of times they're kind of
inspired by these weird stories in true history though, so
um He's also used a lot of the proceeds from
his books to kind of go and explore the oceans. Uh.
(21:43):
So best was one of his projects for that. And
I should note too that there have been other people
throughout the past hundred fifty years who have claimed that
they found the Huntley, and some of them are very credible.
But once you have a name like Clive Cussler saying
it all of a sudden, the news agencies pay a
lot more attention. So that was kind of like the
really big news story was when Cleff Custler found it
(22:06):
and he connected it to his books and things like that.
So yeah, let's get back to our investigation here. So
you're you're looking into this and you're noticing it's a
little grim, but but it is science. You're noting that
the position of the bodies shows that there weren't people
rushing to the hatches, and this is this is a
(22:29):
huge clue of sorts that that that plays a role
in your hypothesis, your drive to solve the mystery of
what actually happened to the Huntley, because I believe at first,
you know, after what was it the first submarine to
successfully sink an enemy vessel? Uh, after it sank the Houstatonic,
(22:53):
it disappeared, as you said, people on people of the time,
contemporary experts said, well, that thing's cursed. Basically, I think
it's sank or whatever. What was your hypothesis, How did
you start putting these pieces together, what did you think
ultimately happened to the Huntley? And then how did you
test it? Well, I don't want to give away too much. Um.
(23:20):
The thing that really sold me on this as a
project was looking at the images of where the skeletal
remains were found. So you can find this with a
quick Google. If you look at the color coded images
of where each crewman was positioned and seeing that they
were each at their crank station and seeing that they
had no skeleton trauma. That's a really big alarm for
(23:41):
a blast trauma specialist because that's actually kind of the
hallmark of a blast trauma. Everyone thinks that you're gonna
get Jesson Stetha thrown across the room. Well, he said,
how stands up. He's got smoot on his face now,
but he's still running off to finish his mission, and
that's really unrealistic. Um. I apologize for her just having
(24:03):
ruined every movie you'll ever watch, but that's not really
how it happens. Like to get a blast that throws someone,
it has to be quite far above the lethal range,
So if someone's being thrown by the blast, they are dead.
And that's part of why I wanted to examine the submarine.
But as a scientist, you can't just declare this is
(24:26):
my theory, this is all I'm going to pay attention to.
That's really bad science because you need to pay proper
attention to all of the other ideas as well, and
approach them from kind of a databased standpoint and things
like that. So that was how I started out with
the project, was actually looking at the other explanations, especially
looking at this theory that they all asphyxiated inside the
(24:48):
submarine hall. And I was able to eliminate that one
because they were a positioned the way they were if
you get really honest about it, it gets pretty graphic.
But if you look at every submarine sinking throughout history,
the people inside knew they were about to die, and
the way that they were found is consistent between every
(25:10):
single other submarine accident in history. So you look at
like that the square list to ask for the hmstidas.
All of them, people are clustered near the exits, and
they're impostures and positions that indicate that they're really suffering
and that's very unfortunate. But the reason for that is
because they're experiencing carbon dioxide. I've experienced carbon dioxide before.
(25:35):
It's terrible. I don't want to do it again. It
hurts you get this like splitting migraine. I mean, I
was curled up, um, curled up on the deck of
a dive boat, like please just sleep me here for
a few minutes, and it's really unpleasant. Um. And so
to suggest that people experience that and then chose to
(25:58):
stay where they are anyway is really consistent with human nature,
especially when you find that carbon dioxide is used by
psychiatrists to intentionally cause panic attacks. So these aren't even
people who are thinking logically anymore. This is a biologically
induced panic attack. Isn't part of the phenomenon of carbon
dioxide poisoning or for lack of a better term, like
(26:19):
your blood actually becomes increasingly acidic because of you know,
kind of trying to compensate for this, and that is
painful as well, Like you can experience that as a
actual sensation. Yeah, so kind of in a way. I
don't know that any person, at least me, has enough
experience to be like, oh, my blood feels acidic today,
(26:40):
But that's what's happening on a biological level, and your
body has coping mechanisms to try to deal with that,
and that's what you end up feeling a symptoms. So,
for example, that headache is your body expanding the blood
vessels in your brain. It's trying to offload some of
this acidity, so it's no longer reaching your brain, and
that's what we perceive as a headache. And that was
(27:02):
one of the clues. Again, I don't want to give
away too much either, and really quickly, I just want
to say, reading your book, um it it reads like
an adventure novel. It's really well written. It's very visceral,
and you really feel like there's a scene where you
pick up this black powder, um you know, to run
your tests and you almost get into this crazy traffic
accident and you really feel the stakes of everything that
(27:25):
you're doing. And the way it's written is it's lots
a lot of fun, there's a lot of science, there's
a lot of history, but it is an absolutely page
turning kind of adventure read. So I just want to
put that out there for everyone absolutely read this book.
We're certainly not going to spoil anything, but um, it's
it's a really fun read. Um, can we talk a
little bit about the clues when you started actually doing
your tests that kind of leads you to discount some
(27:47):
of those things, other than the fact that people weren't
piled up clawing their way out of the submarine, some
of the kind of scientific cues that you took after
you started doing these tests. So one of the scientific
clues to me that wasn't extremely conclusive, but that was
sort of a hint and a wink and a point
in the right direction, was that when these crew members
(28:10):
were recovered, a lot of them still had intact brains
inside their skulls. And that's interesting for several reasons. First
of all, the discovery that the human brain can survive
for a hundred fIF years in salt water, But from
a biological perspective, a lot of their brains had these
kind of diffuse patterns and stains that were just on
(28:32):
the surface. And really, because again we don't have a
ton of examples of people staying underwater for that long,
there are multiple possible things that could explain that. But
what's also important to know from my perspective is that's
what blast trauma looks like. So once again, that's how
a brain injury from blast appears, especially one that's in
(28:54):
the fatal ranges. You end up having what's called a hematoma,
which is that big breading of bloods somewhere on the brain,
and it can appear in any location on the brain,
but it only appears really on the surface, and the
brain itself isn't disrupted. The brain looks completely intact. It
kind of just looks like this paint splotch has appeared.
So for me when I read about that finding, again,
(29:17):
you can't really eliminate all the other possibilities just because
we don't have a lot of examples of brains in
that state. But it's another kind of hint and wink
and suggestion that we might be dealing with the blast
trauma here. So picking back up on the idea of
(29:39):
black powder, which which I believe we mentioned just briefly there,
one thing that I found fascinating about in the waves
was that there was a lot of science going into
black powder that I wasn't I wasn't familiar with. Like,
you know, I've never built a civil war sub I've
never even built a regular torpedo or underwater explosive much
(30:03):
less you know, like loaded a gun with powder. So
how do you even test that? Like? How what? It's
just such a strange concept to me because it seems
like such a uh an archaic means of propellant or blasting.
What was it like when you were thinking, Okay, how
do we figure out the role of black powder? And
(30:25):
what is is black powder just gunpowder? Um? It depends.
The word gunpowder can mean a couple different things. Black
powder is the more specific. Sometimes when people say gunpowder
they mean smokeless powder also, which has different blast characteristics.
I won't go into that because I like you guys, um,
but black powder is like a very specific mixture. And yeah,
(30:48):
there was a lot more involved in the finer points
of black powder that I had anticipated when I started
the project as well. But one of the things that's
really important and looking at blast fraumas is looking at
your explosive making sure that you know that, um, people
are getting blessed in the correct way for that problem.
And just a little we kind of dived right into
(31:08):
black powder. But just to really really be clear, this
quote unquote torpedo is propelled by this very archaic, very finicky,
dangerous material that you actually transported in the trunk of
your Subaru or something or pontiac. I think it was right.
It was a Pontiac. I'm a Detroit girl. I do
have American power. Um. Yes, so I was transporting black
(31:33):
powder and what I was doing was completely legal. I
feel like that's important for me to throw out there.
But yeah, the thing with black powder is if you
hit it and the heat generated from impact can cause
it to go off. And so me being in a
Pontiac on the highway where two cars in front of
me just crashed into each other randomly, and there was
(31:56):
a massive truck really aggressively tailgating me was a kind
of terrifying moment in the experiment. But thankfully as an
injury and trauma specialist, I am an O c D
safety minded driver, and so I had a little bit
extra following distance knowing what was in my trunk. But um, yeah,
that guy behind me, who was clearly texting, should have
(32:17):
been a lot more aware because he had no idea
what he was when he was so close too with
his grill. Yeah, but um, dealing with black powder is
a difficult adventure and I hope to never ever do
it again. It's extremely finicky. So first off, as a
fellow defensive driver, I very much appreciate the point you're
(32:37):
making about vehicular safety. So but we should have phsized
too that you weren't trying to intentionally explode something on
another vehicle. Uh h. L Huntley was one of the
things that fascinated me in in the waves was figure
(33:00):
out how this torpedo technology would work. I was I
was surprised to find out that it was. Um, I'm
gonna say the word they kept coming to mind when
I was reading about the setup was precarious. It was
like dicey. Honestly, it was like why would you why
(33:20):
would you get in that sub? But how did they
make a torpedo and attach it? Well, they had these
two brothers called the Rains Brothers, and there's some of
my favorite characters in history because together I think they're
really responsible for all the black powder and entire Confederacy. Um. So,
one of them started a black powder mill for the
Confederacy using a pamphlet and no other previous knowledge, and
(33:44):
the other one invented land mines and built all of
the mines and torpedoes for the South. So it's important
to note here also that the word torpedo at this
time in history means something different. It means more of
a mine or stationary bomb, so it's not being propelled
on its own. But I think that the case of
the Hunley really emphasized why that technology would be useful.
(34:09):
Because you have the Ugel Hunley in eighteen sixty four,
it sets office torpedo nobody comes home alive. Eighteen seventies,
people are already working on torpedo designs that can propel
themselves through the water. So it's pretty immediately apparent that
not only is this useful technology, but we don't want
to be near it when it goes off. Um. So
(34:29):
that was a really major impact on warfare within ten years,
which is unusual. So to that point, like you know,
the difference of the concept of a torpedo, how were
they able to actually successfully destroy this Union ship? Like
I mean, is it a slow thing where they deploy
it and then kind of try to get away and
there's a fuse on it, or can we just talk
(34:50):
a little bit about the mechanics of how this thing
would actually you know, be at any level precise. I mean,
obviously it wasn't precise. That's a total misnumber. But there
had be some level of control to it, otherwise it
would just blow up, you know, inside the submarine and
kill everybody every time. I think they had a surprising
amount of control over it and also no control at
the same time. The way that this thing worked, it
(35:13):
was attached to a spar on the bow of the submarine,
so it is outside the submarine, but it's still only
sixteen ft away because that's the length of their spar.
And then their torpedo had a pressure trigger, so what
they had to do was hand cranked their submarine all
the way up to the enemy ship, which is more
courageous than it sounds, because they are being shot at
while this happens, and jabbed the Union ship in the
(35:37):
side of the hole with the pressure trigger on the torpedo.
And we know that that successfully occurred because when the
submarine and the spar were recovered, the little shards of
that torpedo were still attached, so it was peeled backwards
over the end of the spar like a daffy duck cigar.
And then it was just cartoonish and clearly evident that
(35:59):
it was still a hatched and only sixteen feet away,
which was really key to setting up an accurate science
experiment to figure out what happened. And again, I, you know,
and I really don't want to spoil anything, um, but
we have to talk a little bit about some of
these simulations you ran. At the very least, we have
to talk about Tiny. Yeah, tell us a little bit
(36:20):
about a little bit about Tiny, and then we're gonna
we're gonna let our listeners find out the rest of
the story by getting your book. But we have to
dig into Tiny a little bit because it's just it's
too delightful not to discuss. People really like that I
named the boat the Tiny. Sometimes when you're a lab
at three o'clock in the morning and you have some
spray paint, you make choices, so that that's how it
(36:45):
got its moniker. But um, that was actually one of
the things that I wanted to make sure I included
in this book is because I think a lot of
times when you read about the results of science, you
get like a paragraph or at best in news article
that condenses down years and years of research. For me,
this was three years of working average sixty to eighty
(37:07):
hours a week, and so life happens along the way too.
And that's what I think is kind of interesting. Right now,
we're dealing obviously, with this virus outbreak, and we've got
people working really hard on different solutions and different vaccines.
And I've never read another book where they take you
through a scientific project and explain what that's actually like
(37:30):
to be a scientist, to be a human being, you know,
to almost get into car accident, to have your grandma die,
like to get proposed to all while you're trying to
plow through this experiment that is either important to you,
like in my case, or is important to the world,
like what these vaccine researchers are doing right now. Um.
(37:51):
So I'm just hopeful that as people read this, they
kind of understand a little bit better what goes into
all of those news clips and how much real humanity
is behind those stories, how this science sausage gets made.
In other words, I think that's instructive too, and it's
inspiring for a lot of the listeners in our audience.
(38:12):
We have a you know, we have a lot of
younger kids who listen to the show who are actively
interested in pursuing stem and you know, humanizing that and
making making sure that we all realize that the scientists
you read about in a newsclip are themselves human beings
and people. I think is a powerful thing and it's
(38:34):
something that um, it's something that I personally am very
appreciative of. And you know, it's funny like the we
I set this up with asking you about tiny, which
was the sort of the um miniaturized version of the
huntly that you created, and in a blast of creativity
and inspiration and maybe sleeplessness, UM three am, you named
(38:54):
it tiny. But that's just the kind of little nugget
that publishers love and they'll put in like a press
kit for a book or that you can see in
a headline or like really grab onto. But that was
just one little detail that is kind of fun to
talk about, but it represents so much effort and work
that you put into not only the research, but then
designing the experiment, um, creating a scale version of this
(39:16):
scenario and running tests over and over and over again,
and then that data became like gold to you, or
you talk about in the book how you immediately backed
it up in like triplicate UM. So it really is
so much that goes into creating this, this math and
this data that then can help you tell a story much,
you know, much larger than just a headline or like
(39:37):
a sound bite. Yeah, thank you. I think people often
repeat the Thomas Edison quote and I forget the exact
number he used, so you have to forgive my fudging it.
But he said something like he didn't fail nine d
or whatever number heat of times he used to make
a light bulb. He learned nine hundred ways not to
make a light bulb. But people don't think about the
(39:57):
fact that that took years, so he failed for years.
So even our most brilliant scientists and inventors are human
beings with flaws, and anyone can do this stuff. It's
just all about perseverance. And with that we want to
be cautious about spoilers. You, like us, will have to
check out the book to learn the rest of the story,
(40:19):
and take my word for it. You won't regret it.
The book is in the Waves by Quest to solve
the mystery of a Civil War submarine. By the time
you're hearing this, the book will be available wherever you
find your favorite uh, your favorite nonfiction, your favorite solving
of historical mysteries. Rachel, thank you so much for joining
(40:40):
us on the air today. This has been an absolute pleasure,
and I've got to say this is one of the
episodes that sent me off to read more and more
on my own about submarines just for my own personal edification.
So uh so I owe you a personal thank you.
Oh well, you're welcome many time I can hook someone
(41:01):
else on submarines, I'm happy to do so. And can
you tell listeners where to find you many social media
stuff for any other places where you uh maybe post um,
you know, the stuff that you're working on currently. I
am on Twitter, I'm at Underwater Lance and they can
also find me through my website which is Rachel and
Lance Rights dot com. So they all have updates and
(41:23):
announcements and things like that. Fantastic. Well, thanks so much
again for joining us. Huge thanks as always to super
producer Casey Pegram, Alex Williams, who composed our theme, our
dear friend Christopher Haciotas, who is of course here in spirit.
Thanks of course as always to Jonathan Strickland, a k a.
The Quister, who's been saying some really nice things to
(41:43):
me post quarantine. Rachel, that's a guy who makes a
cameo on It's it's tough to explain, don't worry about it.
He's a nice guy. Ben Well, he's sort of our
nemesis is the thing, but it's sort of a soft
Cold War kind of nemeses. But I will say this,
he has been rocking the steampunk um outbreak gear and
(42:04):
I am here for it. He's got this like kind
of bandana and these goggles and like a cowboy hat.
Situation is sort of a West World meets um, you know,
a Kira kind of steam Boy kind of situation. I'm
all about it. But thanks Jonathan for being a pal
and also for ruining our lives sometimes. And thanks again
to you Rachel, Thanks to everyone who is tuning in.
(42:25):
As I said at the top, we hope this message
finds you happy, healthy and safe. I just followed at
underwater Lance on Twitter. Uh, so I can dig it
to morse up news. Uh and well, we hope that
we hope that you will share some of your favorite
strange stories or historical mysteries of your that have yet
(42:46):
to be solved or recently solved. Let us know you
can find us all over the internet where on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.
Do check out our community page Ridiculous Historians on Facebook.
And if you don't want to do any of that,
you can just send us an email to ridiculous us
at i heart radio dot com. We'll see you next time, folks.
(43:09):
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.