Risking everything
Members of at least two previous Hunley crews died during test runs after the Confederate Navy took over the ship. In one incident, the hatches were open when the captain stepped on a lever that made the submarine dive. Everyone but the captain drowned, and the ship was raised. The next fluke sinking killed Horace Hunley himself when he took it for a test drive with an experienced civilian crew. He literally drove the sub into the ground, suffocating the entire crew while they struggled at the crank.

But divers raised the ship again. And General P.G.T. Beauregard had his doubts.

"It is more dangerous to those who use it than to the enemy," he concluded after the sinking.

Beauregard agreed to let another crew take over, under Alabama engineering officer George E. Dixon. But he made sure they knew about the dangers. The next nine men who climbed into the Hunley's cramped hull knew exactly what they were getting into. They began practice attack runs, pushing themselves and the Hunley to the limit.

On Feb. 17, 1864, the Hunley headed for the USS Housatonic with the torpedo attached to its spar. Everything went according to plan: At 8:45 p.m. one of the USS Housatonic's crew thought he saw a dolphin. Another thought it was a log in the water. But Union sailors had been warned about Confederate submersibles in the works and quickly opened fire from their pistols and rifles

Too late. The Hunley rammed the powder charge into the Housatonic's wooden hull, and Dixon and his men cranked into reverse. Then the torpedo line tripped, blasting the blockade ship's hull. The Housatonic sank in three minutes, taking five Union sailors with it and rocketing the Hunley into history.

Then the Hunley started for home, signaled its success, and disappeared.

Raising questions
Since the end of the Civil War, people have searched for the Hunley. Chains were dragged around the Housatonic's wreckage. Entertainer P.T. Barnum offered $100,000 to anyone who found the Hunley, so that he could include it in his show. In the 1970s, marine archaeologist Dr. Mark Newell started researching and diving, backed by the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

"The general public was so convinced that it was destroyed, that it was impossible to raise the money to go search," Newell says.

Best-selling author Clive Cussler funded his own search in 1980. Newell says he helped Cussler but nothing was found until a September 1994 expedition with the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the University of South Carolina. Cussler and his own divers excavated in May 1995, and Newell says Cussler jumped the gun on announcing the find, claiming sole credit. But historian Mark Ragan, who joined Cussler's project in 1995, disagrees.

"I don't have a PhD in underwater archaeology," Ragan says, "but it looks like (the Hunley) was just covered in slime. It's always been buried. Cussler and his group found it officially. I know there's some dispute about that, but they're just whistling Dixie."

Newell says that's fine with him. He's just happy to see the Hunley out of the Atlantic.

"It's very, very satisfying," he says. "People kept telling us it didn't exist. They assumed the Hunley was scrapped. But we knew all along it was out there, and to finally see it rise was a good moment for all of us."

The home crowd
When it finally returned to the surface, the Hunley got a hero's welcome. A crane took only a few minutes to lift the Hunley 30 feet off the sea floor in a protective sling. Nine women dressed in black, one for each crew member, dropped roses into the harbor. A 21-gun salute boomed. Thousands of onlookers cheered, and more than 400 boats escorted the Hunley's carrier back to land.

Charles Rhodes of Charleston left home at 5 a.m. to see the raising. His ancestor, George Rhodes, signed South Carolina's Articles of Secession, a document preceding the state's decision to become the first to secede. Another one of Rhodes' ancestors fought and died at Gettysburg.

"They completed their mission, and now to bring them home, it's just amazing," Rhodes says. "Now it's time to give them the military honors that they deserve."

Any remains of the crew will be given a proper Confederate burial with honors in Charleston's Magnolia Cemetery with the Hunley's previous crew members. Both Dr. Mark Newell and a spokesperson for National Underwater and Marine Agency, the project that raised the Hunley, say they plan to trace the crew's ancestry and lineage so relatives can be aware of their ancestors.

But at least one important descendant was already waiting at the dock: The great-granddaughter of Lt. Dixon's sweetheart, Sally Necessary of Richmond, Va.

As the Hunley headed for dry land and the safety of a laboratory, someone waved a blue lantern, the Hunley's last signal. Success.