August 2012 Palmetto Partisan Jounal

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: confederate, soldier, sons, veterans, south carolina

The Myth of the HI. Hunley s Blue Lantern

By Christopher D. Rucker, MD Gen. States Rights Gist Camp 1451

site. a Second: Lt. Col. Olin Dantzler's official CSA correspondence two days after the engagement stated that prearranged signals from the Hunley were observed at the sub's base on Sullivan's Island, and that an answering light was displayed to guide her home. b Third: author Jacob Cardozo stated in 1866, without providing a source for his information, that the prearranged signals were "two blue lights." 0

These three accounts are cited by adherents to the "delayed demise" theory of the Hunley's fate: that she survived her torpedo's explosion, and was able to maneuver long enough to display a blue lantern to shore, before suffering an unknown calamity which led to her loss. The competing "sudden sinking" theory is that the Hunley was sucked into the hole her torpedo blew in the side of the Housatonic, or that she was otherwise immediately lost due to the force of the explosion. Clive

For thirty years, authors and historians have perpetuated an unsubstantiated myth that the Confederate H.L. Hunley submarine used a blue colored lantern to signal to shore after sinking the USS Housatonic off the coast of Charleston, SC on 17 February, 1864. The mythic blue lantern has been cemented in the public consciousness via books, movies, television, modern facsimiles, the claims of internet auctioneers, and the fervent arguments of its faithful devotees. Not a shred of historical evidence exists to substantiate the blue lantern myth, and a wealth of evidence refutes it.

Researchers have misinterpreted three 19 th century accounts to cobble together the modern myth of the blue lantern. First: Housatonic lookout Robert Flemming, Jr. testified one week after the sinking that while clinging to his doomed ship's rigging, he saw a "blue light on the water" just ahead of the rescuing USS Canandai-gua as she maneuvered at the shipwreck

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