During a very short visit to Charleston, SC, I happened upon this interesting object. As the sign makes clear, this isn’t an accurate image of the famous Civil War submarine—famous, that is to lots of people who aren’t me. I had never heard of the H.L. Hunley—the Civil War is not my favorite historical era—but Nerdy History Girl took over, and I commenced sleuthing.
In February 1864, the Hunley sank a Union ship, the USS Housatonic. This, the first successful submarine attack, turned out not to be a major turning point in the war: The Hunley sank, too, shortly thereafter, losing all eight of its men, while the Union ship lost only five of its entire crew. Still this was definitely a major development in naval warfare.
Along with being amazed that eight men could fit into this thing and turn cranks to make it go, I was particularly interested, as a Nerdy History Girl, in the difference between what the Hunley was believed to look like, as of info available in 1967, and what it did look like, once it was recovered and uncovered.
The reconstruction outside the Charleston Museum is a good example of how tricky it can be to recreate the past and how slippery facts can be. The Hunley was raised in 2000 after an extensive search, and it’s only very recently that scientists seem to have pinned down what happened to it, though they’ve still some details to work out. 
