Archaeologists said Tuesday they believe the graves of five Confederate sailors who manned the first submarine to sink a ship in battle are lying under a football stadium at the Citadel military school.
Recently uncovered records indicate that crewmen from the torpedo boat Hunley were buried in a city graveyard for destitute mariners after they were killed in August 1863 when the sub, tied to its mooring in Charleston harbor, was swamped, and waves flooded an open hatch."We're 95 percent sure that's the location," Hunley Commission Chairman Glenn McConnell said of The Citadel's Johnson-Hagood Stadium, which is scheduled to be renovated after this year's football season ends in November.
The Hunley made history on the night of Feb. 17, 1864, when it hit the Union blockade vessel Housatonic off Charleston harbor with a 100-pound powder charge and became the first submarine to sink a ship in warfare.
Earlier digs around the stadium uncovered several Confederate graves, but officials have never been able to probe directly under the stadium walls. When renovations begin, teams from the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology will use ground-penetrating radar to map objects beneath the stadium's concrete base.
Researchers said the Hunley crewmen's caskets should be easy to identify because they were built to hold bodies bloated after 10 days under water.
Also, some of the dead were reportedly found in contorted death throes after rigor mortis set in. In some cases, body parts had to be sawed off so the sailors could be extricated from the vessel.
"Extraordinary measures, including dismembering, had to be taken to remove the bodies from the submarine because of the small hatches and the condition of the bodies," Hunley Commission spokesman Player Pate said. "As a result they were buried in odd-sized and shaped coffins."