“In The Waves”, by Rachel Lance ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
As a mechanical engineer by training and profession, anything to do with scientific and engineering investigations is of interest to me. With a career in the U. S. defense industry, and specifically submarines, that started in the Reagan era, coupled with a general interest in military history, the story of the Confederate submarine HL Hunley which lies at the heart of this book certainly piqued my interest. The Hunley, which famously sank the U.S. Navy blockade ship Housatonic with a black powder “torpedo” in February 1864, and then disappeared into the waters of Charleston Harbor, still posed a maritime mystery even after it was discovered, raised and put on display in a warehouse near Charleston Bay one hundred and thirty-one years after that fateful February night.
The mystery of the Hunley lay in what marine archaeologists and conservators found inside the vessel after it was raised—the skeletal remains of all eight of its crewmen, still at their posts; seven at the crank that turned the screw which propelled the vessel through the water, and the eighth, the commanding officer, at his post under the forward conning tower. How did they die? Did they drown, or suffocate—or did the blast of their own “torpedo” somehow reach through the hull of their ship and kill them? And if so, why were their bodies still disposed as if they had died instantly, almost peacefully, at their posts?
Numerous theories about the loss of the Hunley and the deaths of her crew had been proposed at different times, by different people, both after her disappearance, and after she was recovered in 1995. In 2011, In The Waves author Rachel Lance, a PhD candidate in biomedical engineering at Duke University, set out to discover not only which it was, but to demonstrate proof to support her conclusions.
Before she started investigating the Hunley, Lance, a civilian engineer working for the United States Navy, had been working on a new underwater breathing system for the U.S. military. After the successful demonstration of the operability of the system, the Navy offered her a chance to get her PhD in the field and return to lead research projects herself. This led her to Duke University, where she started researching underwater blast injuries under research advisor Cameron R. “Dale” Bass.
One day Bass stopped by her office, sat down, and said, “What about the Hunley?” These four words—“What about the Hunley?”—started Rachel Lance on a three-year journey of discovery into what really caused the deaths of the eight men aboard the ill-fated Confederate submarine. It is a classic tale of scientific investigation, as Lance formulates a theory about what combination of events killed the crew of the Hunley after they delivered the death blow that sank the Housatonic, and remarkably, left them at their action posts inside their vessel, in a watery grave at the bottom of Charleston Harbor, for over 130 years.
Lance tells the story in alternating phases, moving back and forth between sections in which she recounts historical events that are relevant to the story, and the narrative of her efforts, along with other graduate students, undergrads, and even an explosives-expert ATF agent, to address the possible causes of demise of the Hunley’s crew, and then to gather evidence, through analysis and experimentation, to determine if her theory is correct.
I won’t spoil your enjoyment of the book by divulging the conclusion that Lance reached over the course of three years of investigation, analysis, and experimentation; a little online research will reveal that, if one is so inclined. But even knowing “how it ends” won’t spoil this book, because reading In The Waves is more about the journey than the destination. It’s about the long hours of research and analysis; it’s about research into blast effects (and why what we see in special-effects-laden action movies is so terribly, terribly wrong); it’s about learning about Confederate gunpowder production, and those early submarine designs, and the “torpedoes” (we would call them mines nowadays) that Southern inventors devised and deployed in an effort to break the Union blockades that were starving the South; and much, much more.
In The Waves is a fascinating story of the technological “advances” that almost inevitably accompany warfare; of how desperate, motivated men apply ingenuity and expertise to solve problems that arise during armed conflict—and how a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. It is also a story about how a motivated, curious and intelligent person can reach back into the past, based on the evidence of a 131-year-old shipwreck and the human remains entombed within it, and using her own knowledge and expertise, with the help and support of friends and colleagues, and calling on the work of researchers that came before her, reconstruct the tragic events of the night of February 17th, 1864 in Charleston Harbor
Rachel Lance tells this story with clarity, intelligence, and humor. You don’t have to be a scientist, a doctor, or an engineer to understand her explanations of the complex physical and physiological phenomena that underlie the sinking of the Housatonic and the loss of the Hunley and her crew. There is discussion of shock waves, blast effects in air and water (and between the two), hypothermia, and the physiology of suffocation. You will learn (in very general, non-“how-to” terms) how black powder is made, and why it is less effective, and yet more dangerous, than modern explosives (but you will not learn how to make a bomb.)
On sale April 7th, 2020, In The Waves shines a light on a mystery that perplexed Civil War buffs, expert and amateur alike, for over a one-and-a-quarter centuries, and on the skill and determination of the extraordinary woman who solved it, once and for all. It just may be the best non-fiction book you read this year, or for many years to come.
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