RAISING THE HUNLEY

Two South Carolina journalists breathlessly narrate the story of the construction, loss, location, recovery, and restoration of the first submarine in history to carry out a successful attack on an enemy vessel.

On February 17, 1864, moments after it had delivered an explosive charge that sunk the Union blockade ship Housatonic, the Hunley itself, for reasons still unknown, drifted to the bottom of Charleston Harbor. For 131 years, it lay undisturbed, but not forgotten. As Hicks and Kropf demonstrate in their brisk, breezy, and hyperbolic prose, the Hunley became for millions of people (the authors’ estimate) “the Holy Grail of the Civil War.” The story opens on August 8, 2000, with a salvage team raising the Hunley in view of thousands of sightseers. As it breaks through the Atlantic surface into the morning light, Hicks and Kropf whisk us back to the mid-19th century to meet the creators, investors, builders, and sailors of the craft, which was named for designer and investor Horace Lawson Hunley. We experience the tribulations and terrors of the first submariners, many of whom drowned during the R&D phase, and we witness the fierce competition among those searching for the vessel, including novelist Clive Cussler, whose team eventually did locate the Hunley. The authors have thoroughly researched the topic and display a sharp eye for engaging detail and poignant coincidence. But the subject has excited them so thoroughly that they write more like romance novelists than historical journalists: “As Dixon stood on the beach, tall and handsome, the sea breeze tussling his light-colored hair, he knew his time had come.” They also sidestep racial politics. Although they allude to the Confederate-flag issue in South Carolina, it doesn’t seem to occur to them that the reverence white Southerners feel for the Hunley might not be shared by folks whose ancestors’ state of forced servitude it was defending.

Fascinating but facile. (b&w illustrations throughout; 8 pages color photo, not seen)