Fish story to me, Mr. Boring. To expect the leather seals and iron fittings that were current technology to maintain integrity for one hundred and forty four years in order that the hull would be found "floating"?

Hunley was the money behind the New Orleans projects. I believe more credit is given him for any design input than is due. Check the names of those who actually beat the thing into shape after their escape from New Orleans to the Water Street shop in Mobile and you have the real innovators of the C.S.S. Hunley. Hunley was not around during the building of same, he was working deals for materials and cotton plantation in Egypt.

As to your reference to the earlier boat, the Pioneer, it was built by the same group who went to Mobile. The consideration of electric propulsion in the form of the Henry reciprocating motor was pioneer, indeed. Please note that the Pioneer turned up in Mobile. This fact infers the importance given to the concept and the governments support of same. This at a time when people and material were abandoned in New Orleans during the few days in April of 1862 that the Confederates had to ship out by train.

The Turtle, D. Bushnell's creation of an earlier conflict, could not complete its mission of attaching a charge to a British man-o'-war due to its inability to maintain station in the river current in order to drive a screw through the copper bottom. Bushnell died in Warrington , Georgia. I do not know what influence he had on events of a later generation but the use of marine mines, submarines and armored warships suggests that somebody may have either known him or had read what he might have written. Somebody Southern.

Regards.