Those early efforts would have looked crude beside Captain Nemo's Nautilus. After that, submarine science lagged until John Holland and Simon Lake began experimenting with and building submarines that were accepted by several countries, including us and the Germans. The Hunley even experimented with electromagnetic engines, but that technology was not ready, so eight men sat inside the submarine and turned a crank that spun the propeller for propulsion. That last thing, by the way, was a concept that nobody thought had been used before Howard Hughes flushed the rivets on an aircraft he designed in the mid-nineteen-thirties.

She was quite streamlined, and she had a rudimentary snorkel system with bellows to pump air, ballast tanks with pumps, diving planes and flush rivets to reduce water drag. When she was inspected at first hand and the silt and remains of her crew removed from inside, she was found to be far more modern in concept than was supposed. The Hunley sat on the bottom buried in silt for a hundred and thirty-six years before she was discovered, raised and placed in a conservation laboratory tank to preserve her for public display. Perlmutter nodded.Yes, the feat didn't happen again until fifty years later, in August of 1914, when the U-21 sank the HMS Pathfinder in the North Sea. As would be expected, they estimated the size anywhere from one to three hundred feet, with a beam of twenty to forty feet. The crew agreed that it was cigar shaped, cylindrical with conical ends. The ship that sank the famous Confederate raider Alabama? Who's to say? said Perlmutter, with an indifferent shrug.Perhaps Jules Verne heard of such a vessel and created Captain Nemo and his Nautilus around it.

The Hunley was built by private individuals who funded the project, lectured Perlmutter.Actually, she was the third boat built by Horace Hunley and his engineers.

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