The search for the Hunley went on for over a hundred years after the war, but it actually began back in 1864 according to an article in the Nov. 3, 2009 Charleston (SC) Post and Courier "Letters illiminate first search for the Hunley" by Brian Hicks.
In the fall of 1864, Naval officer William L. Churchill, executive officer of the gunboat USS Nipsic and a diver himself, volunteered to survey the wreckage of the USS Housatonic, but he was looking more for the Hunley according to letters donated to the South Carolina Confederate Relics Room and Military Museum in Columbia, SC.
"He is desirous of exploring the ocean bottom in the vicinity of the ill-fated Housatonic, with the view of finding the Torpedo Boat, which, by mail and clippings taken from Rebel Journals, may have sunk very near her," USS Nipsic commander A. W. Johnson wrote Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren.
More to Come. B-R'er
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