January 15, 2020
Surprising new facts about the first submarine to destroy an enemy ship. The culmination of years of development by Confederate designers led by marine engineer Horace Lawson Hunley, the Hunley killed two crew teams during testing (Hunley was among those killed) and a third on February 17, 1864, when it sank a Union blockader in Charleston Harbor with a bomb at the end of a 20-foot pole. Ironically, since submerging had proved a death sentence, the submarine traveled on the surface during its successful attack. This dramatic feat gained it mythical status, and great excitement followed the exhumation of the wreck in 2000. An engineer working for the Navy, Lance was studying at Duke University for a doctorate in biomedical engineering, and her thesis research concerned the effect of underwater explosions on humans. Most occurred during World War II, so these occupied her until a thesis advisor suggested that she give thought to the Hunley. She complied and turned up an intriguing puzzle, which she delivers to readers. When recovered, the submarine was intact with little visible damage. "All eight men inside were found resting at their battle stations," she writes. "None showed any signs of skeletal trauma. None appeared to have made any attempt to escape the vessel. The narrative combines description of the author's research into what happened after the explosion with a detailed history of events on that night in 1864, including biographies of those involved and careful examinations of the eight victims. In Hollywood, an explosion hurls the hero through the air; he brushes himself off and walks away. In reality, most bomb blasts mutilate their targets, but a sufficiently strong shock wave can produce internal injuries that kill someone on the spot. Lance delivers a lively, if often technical, description of the many experiments, models, calculations, and explosions that persuaded her and her doctoral committee that this is what happened to the Hunley. An entertaining account of research that solved a historical mystery.
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January 27, 2020
Lance, a biomedical engineering researcher at Duke University, debuts with a thorough and persuasive account of her efforts to solve the mystery surrounding the February 1864 sinking of the Confederate submarine HL Hunley off the coast of South Carolina. Tasked with breaking the Union blockade of Charleston, the Hunley detonated its spar torpedo (a stationary bomb attached to the end of a long pole) against the hull of the USS Housatonic, becoming the first submarine to sink an enemy warship in combat. But the Hunley disappeared immediately after the explosion. When it was finally recovered from Charleston Harbor in 2000, it didn’t appear to have been significantly damaged in the attack and each of its eight crewmembers “was still seated peacefully at his station.” Lance offers a blow-by-blow account of “what it took to work through the puzzle” of the Hunley: recruiting colleagues with expertise in hyperbaric medicine, painstakingly reassembling the ingredients of the Hunley’s torpedo, exploring the mechanics of how the device was delivered, and testing through trial-and-error a theory that the crew perished in a shock wave. Readers without an engineering background may struggle through Lance’s number crunching, but she has a firm command of both the scientific and historical subject matter and writes with flair. Her richly detailed account appears to definitively solve this Civil War–era mystery.
Starred review from February 1, 2020
This debut by scientific researcher Lance chronicles her experience as an engineer for the U.S. Navy and later a Duke University doctoral student, testing her hypothesis in order to explain how the crew of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley died after torpedoing the USS Housatonic. Lance deftly blends historical narrative and the unraveling of this scientific puzzle in a thoroughly accessible and entertaining style. Chapters discuss different theories that caused the death of the crew, including suffocation, drowning, a "lucky-shot," explosions, blast waves, and pressure waves. For example, while investigating the H.L. Hunley's torpedo, Lance researches how black powder (gunpowder) was manufactured and used during the Civil War. To test the lucky-shot theory (a sailor abroad the sinking Housatonic shot the submarine's conning tower), Lance had a Civil War reenactor with a period-accurate rifle fire at cast iron skillets and compared the bullet holes to the sub's damaged tower. Using her extensive research, Lance concludes that the damage to the submarine was not the result of a lucky shot, but of pressure waves. VERDICT This engaging investigative work will intrigue readers of Civil War and naval histories and sleuths of scientific puzzles.--Margaret Atwater-Singer, Univ. of Evansville Lib., IN
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