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Navy to search for sunken Civil War submarine off N.C. coast
COX NEWS SERVICE
Thursday, August 5, 2004
ATLANTA
Naval historians and archaeologists will put to sea this month to find the remains of the U.S. Navy's first submarine off North Carolina.
The target of the search by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Office of Naval Research is one of the most innovative, least celebrated vessels of the Civil War: the hand-crank-powered USS Alligator, which sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras in 1863.
Discovery of the Alligator, a 47-foot-long iron vessel that resembled its namesake, could shed new light on Civil War naval technology, an era of innovation that has risen to prominence with the recent recovery of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley and the turret of the Union ironclad USS Monitor.
The Alligator was built for the Navy in 1861 in Philadelphia. On its first mission in 1862, it proved useless against its intended target, a bridge on Virginia's Appomattox River. The river was too shallow.
After spending a year in the Navy yard in Washington being refitted, the Alligator sank off Cape Hatteras as it was being towed south for the attack on Charleston Harbor in South Carolina.
Never tested in battle, the USS Alligator might have remained a footnote to history had it not been for a chance discovery two years ago in a North Carolina bookstore.
Certain that her husband would be interested in the magazine she had found, Nancy Cohen showed him an article on "the North's only submarine."
Her husband, Rear Adm. Jay Cohen, a submariner and the chief of the Office of Naval Research, ordered some historical research - and the Alligator Project took on a life of its own.
Late this month, NOAA and Navy scientists will spend a week in the search area. No one expects instant success.
"They're looking for a 47-foot boat at the bottom of a big ocean," said James Christley, a naval historian and retired submariner assisting in the research.
This story can be found at:
http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ%2FMGArticle%2FWSJ_BasicArti cle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031777119451&path=!nationworld&s=1037645509161
COX NEWS SERVICE
Thursday, August 5, 2004
ATLANTA
Naval historians and archaeologists will put to sea this month to find the remains of the U.S. Navy's first submarine off North Carolina.
The target of the search by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Office of Naval Research is one of the most innovative, least celebrated vessels of the Civil War: the hand-crank-powered USS Alligator, which sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras in 1863.
Discovery of the Alligator, a 47-foot-long iron vessel that resembled its namesake, could shed new light on Civil War naval technology, an era of innovation that has risen to prominence with the recent recovery of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley and the turret of the Union ironclad USS Monitor.
The Alligator was built for the Navy in 1861 in Philadelphia. On its first mission in 1862, it proved useless against its intended target, a bridge on Virginia's Appomattox River. The river was too shallow.
After spending a year in the Navy yard in Washington being refitted, the Alligator sank off Cape Hatteras as it was being towed south for the attack on Charleston Harbor in South Carolina.
Never tested in battle, the USS Alligator might have remained a footnote to history had it not been for a chance discovery two years ago in a North Carolina bookstore.
Certain that her husband would be interested in the magazine she had found, Nancy Cohen showed him an article on "the North's only submarine."
Her husband, Rear Adm. Jay Cohen, a submariner and the chief of the Office of Naval Research, ordered some historical research - and the Alligator Project took on a life of its own.
Late this month, NOAA and Navy scientists will spend a week in the search area. No one expects instant success.
"They're looking for a 47-foot boat at the bottom of a big ocean," said James Christley, a naval historian and retired submariner assisting in the research.
This story can be found at:
http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ%2FMGArticle%2FWSJ_BasicArti cle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031777119451&path=!nationworld&s=1037645509161
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