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75 °F Forecast | Road Cams Saturday, August 28, 2004 Today's News | Classifieds | Autos | Homes | Jobs | Tempo | Health | Community | Home Delivery SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics Tempo AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map SPECIAL SECTIONS Since We Asked Outdoor Journal Prime Times Wellness Connection Readers' Choice Real Estate Showcase Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Wedding Guide Rogue Valley's Finest EXTRA Newspaper in Education Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People MARKETPLACE Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Classifieds Place an ad eSouthernOregon Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar CUSTOMER SERVICE Frequent Questions Advertising Information Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Network Affiliate Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend April 18, 2004 Doug Devine�s Medford business, Pacific Survey Supply, played a key part in the recovery and restoration of the Civil War-era submarine H.L. Hunley. Devine attended the burial Saturday in South Carolina of the eight crewmen�s remains found inside. Mail Tribune / Jim Craven Farewell to submarine pioneers Remains of Hunley crew, whose vessel went down in 1864, are finally buried By PAUL FATTIG Mail Tribune As the eight coffins were lowered into the soft southern soil at the Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston, S.C., on Saturday, Doug Devine quietly said farewell to some old friends. Never mind that the Medford resident had never met the people whose skeletal remains the coffins contained: They died on Feb. 17, 1864, in the H.L. Hunley, the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship. "But we got to know these people very well," said Devine, owner of Pacific Survey Supply in Medford, which provided the specialists and equipment to precisely measure the famous Civil War craft inside and out. "When we were working around them, you almost had to say, ‘Pardon me’ at times," he added. "We never forgot these were human remains. There was always a great degree of respect shown to them." The eight-member crew died shortly after the Confederate sub successfully rammed a torpedo mounted on a steel spar into the Union ship Housatonic. The Confederacy was desperate to break a blockade of Charleston Bay. Advertisement After the Union vessel sank, submarine commander Lt. George E. Dixon signaled with a blue light back to Charleston that the Hunley was returning to its base. But the submarine never arrived. Its watery grave wasn’t discovered until three divers from the National Underwater and Marine Agency found it buried in the silt of Charleston Bay in 1995. Adventure novelist Clive Cussler founded the non-profit, volunteer agency dedicated to preserving maritime heritage through discovery, archaeological survey and conservation. The divers, on the third search for the Hunley which NUMA began in 1981, discovered the submarine 1,000 feet southeast of where the Housatonic’s boiler had been located. The Hunley was raised in the summer of 2000 and taken to the former Charleston Navy base to be preserved in cold water. The excavation and conservation efforts were sponsored and overseen by the National Geographic Foundation and Friends of Hunley. After years of careful research and restoration, involving everyone from scientists with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., to specialists from Devine’s company, the crew members’ remains were buried Saturday. Each coffin was transported individually by horse-drawn caisson during Saturday’s public yet somber ceremony. "This brings a fitting closure, giving them the respect and dignity they’ve earned," observed Harry Pecorelli III, an archaeologist and one of the three divers who originally discovered the Hunley. Like Devine, Pecorelli, whose father, Harry Pecorelli II, lives in Shady Cove, also felt a kinship to the deceased crew. "We have been intimately involved with these guys," he said. "We needed to document everything we could about them. But we also wanted to go through this whole ceremony for them." It was the younger Pecorelli who called Devine shortly after the Hunley was raised. The archaeologist, who had picked up a brochure from Devine’s firm (which sells equipment nationwide), wanted to know if a transit could be used to accurately measure the outside of the submarine. Devine suggested using sophisticated digital-imaging equipment for the job. He also volunteered his firm’s services. Early 2001 found Devine and digital mapper Carlos Velazquez in Charleston to create a precise image of the sub. Using a $250,000 scanner, they plotted thousands of points across the vessel’s surface, then created connecting planes. The result was a high-resolution image of the Hunley, accurate to within 3 millimeters. The craft, which weighs about eight tons, is 4 feet high and 3½ feet wide. With its spar pole, it is roughly 41 feet long. Built of curved metal hull plates mounted on support ribs, its design included forward-mounted dive planes, the type still used in submarines today. Commander Dixon used a vertical tiller to steer while the rest of the crew turned a hand crank to power the propeller. A bellows pumped air from the snorkels to the crew compartment. "They had a bucket they would pass along if someone had to go to the bathroom," Devine said. "Conditions were pretty rugged." But he is quick to note it was state-of-the-art for its time, one that would have impressed Jules Verne. "It was an amazing craft — way ahead of its time," Devine said. The second phase of their digital-imaging work found them inside the cramped Hunley, often working alongside skeletal remains. Pacific Survey employee Bernie Knotts, who was able to precisely place bones and artifacts with digital imagery, attended Saturday’s burial services along with Devine. "Their participation has been absolutely crucial," Pecorelli said. "Doug and his crew have allowed us to recreate the information so incredibly accurately. "Our project has raised the bar for marine archaeology," he added. "And it all started with a chance phone call." While Devine, 59, who hails from New York state where he had worked in robotics and engineering, had worked on plenty of land surveys, the Hunley was a first. He launched his business shortly after arriving in the Rogue Valley in 1973. "We threw every bit of technology we could find at it," he said of the Hunley. "We knew it worked for surveying but we didn’t know if it would work for that." It did. Now the firm is working on several other archaeological projects around the world. Using radiology and laser scanners as they worked their way through the sub’s silt-filled interior, his firm helped forensic scientists recreate what happened to the crew and the artifacts. "There are thousands of things — human bones, buttons, even human hair," he said. "Everything was so incredibly preserved in the Hunley. This is the Holy Grail of the South." Other artifacts included pencils, shoes, buttons, .58 caliber miniballs and seven tobacco pipes, indicating that seven of the eight crewmen likely smoked. Perhaps one of the strangest mysteries, yet to be solved, was the discovery of a military dog tag of a Union soldier named Ezra Chamberlin, Devine said. Another item of interest was a half-burned candle. While underway, the submariners used a candle to provide light as well as to indicate when the oxygen was running low. When the candle began dying out, the crew knew it was time to surface, Devine noted. "Dixon also had an apothecary jar by his bench," Devine said of a bottle used to hold medicine. "We don’t know what is in it. We haven’t opened it yet." He described Dixon as a "bit of a dandy" who wore silk boots and silk pants. When they were using a radiological scanner to see what was in Dixon’s pockets, the research team detected a pocket watch with something else behind it. "Behind the beautiful gold watch we found a diamond ring and a diamond broach wrapped in linen," Devine said. "People wondered why he carried it with him. But this was wartime. Where else would he put it?" He also carried a $20 gold coin that apparently saved his life. "The story was that George Dixon had a girlfriend in Mobile, Alabama, named Queenie Bennett," Devine said. "She apparently gave him the gold piece. Well, in the battle of Shiloh on April 6, 1862, Dixon was hit in the groin with a miniball." You guessed it: The coin stopped the bullet. A researcher found the 1860 U.S. Gold Eagle $20 coin in the sediment block that also encased the remains of Dixon, Devine said. Engraved on the coin are the words, "Shiloh, April 6, 1862 My life preserver, George E. Dixon." The coin is worth about $10 million, Devine estimated. "That was an unbelievable find," he said. While working on the Hunley, they thought about Dixon and his crew, Devine said. "That was on everybody’s minds," he said. "We realized, after doing the forensic analysis of how the bodies collapsed, that they had died of hypoxia. Nobody was clamoring. They had just fallen forward." In other words, their air supply ran out. "You get tired, fall asleep and fall forward," he explained. Each crew member had a wrench to unscrew a ballast block which, in theory, would send the craft to the surface, he said. "I really think they decided to die together," he said, noting it would have been extremely difficult for anyone to escape the cramped sub that night as it plowed into the bottom of the bay. "But what caused the Hunley to sink and what happened to the crew will be debated for years," he said. Hunley’s short working life during the Civil War killed 13 others The H.L. Hunley went down nearly three years and within a cannon’s shot of where the Civil War’s first battle began on April 12, 1861, at Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay. Unfortunately, the experimental submarine devised by Horace L. Hunley already had claimed the lives of 13 men in two previous sinkings. The remains of the eight crewmen buried Saturday in the Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston, S.C., join the 13 Hunley crew members already buried there. The first sinking occurred on Aug. 29, 1863, when the wake of a passing ship flooded the sub’s open hatches during a practice run. Five men drowned and four escaped. After the submarine was retrieved, the second crew, with Hunley at the helm, was making a routine dive when disaster struck again on Oct. 15 of that year. The vessel sank with all eight hands, including its inventor. The cause of the second sinking was never determined. Researchers have yet to determine what caused the world’s first successful attack submarine to sink for the third and final time. To learn more about the historic submarine, check www.hunley.org . Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at [email protected] Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2004 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions Website Feedback ADVERTISERS A D V E R T I S E R S SPECIAL SECTIONS Auto Finder Job Finder Home Finder Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Tempo Readers' Choice Real Estate Showcase Since We Asked Outdoor Journal Moving to Southern Oregon? Volunteer Opportunities