Civil War Sub found in Las Perlas Panama
Since 06-13-05
Special Report
Civil War-Era Sub Linked with Earliest Deaths from the “Bends”
Naval History, December 2004
JAMES P. DELGADO
Archaeologist James Delgado, host of
National Geographic International Television’s “The Sea Hunters,” which also
features best-selling author Clive Cussler, has announced the discovery of a
forgotten Civil War submarine, the Sub Marine Explorer, on a deserted island
on Panama’s Pacific coast. Delgado’s account of the sub’s history and
discovery was announced at a recent press conference and is featured in his
new book, Adventures of a Sea Hunter: In Search of Famous Shipwrecks
(Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2004). News of the discovery comes as the
U.S. Navy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration continue
their search for the USS Alligator, the Navy’s first submarine, which
foundered off the North Carolina coast in 1863, and work continues to
preserve and study the remains of the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley in
Charleston, South Carolina.
With interest in Civil War submarines at an all-time peak, Delgado’s
discovery highlights not only the role of subs in the Civil War but also the
exploits of a forgotten New York inventor—whose invention may have killed
him. His submarine was the most technologically advanced craft of its age,
even more so than the fabled Hunley, but it had a fatal flaw. Its crew
compartment, pressurized to the same intense pressures as the deep to allow
divers to freely leave and reenter the sub to disarm enemy mines, lay
explosives, or, in its final career, collect pearls from the seabed, did not
allow the crew to “decompress” when the sub returned to the surface.
That meant the men inside were exposed to the dreaded “bends,” which can
cripple and kill divers. History records that the first American victims of
the bends, also known as decompression sickness, were workers laboring to
build the Brooklyn Bridge in 1869. Descending to the bottom of the river in
pressurized caissons, they were struck with a debilitating illness that
mystified doctors, who termed it “caisson disease.” It was not until decades
later that researchers discovered the cause: rapid decompression after
spending time under pressure. The first American to die of caisson disease
is said to have been a worker on the St. Louis Bridge in 1870. But Julius
Kroehl, a former Union naval officer and inventor of the Sub Marine
Explorer, died in Panama of “fever” after several test dives in his craft in
1867. Physicians who have reviewed the technical details of the Explorer and
her dives have determined that Kroehl suffered from decompression sickness,
which has similar symptoms to malaria, also called fever. It is likely that
Kroehl, in fact, was the first American to die from decompression sickness,
which continues to claim the lives of divers each year.
This plan of the Sub Marine Explorer appeared in a 1902 article on the
history of U.S. submarine development in Journal of the American Society of
Naval Engineers.
A German immigrant and a resident of both New York City and Washington,
D.C., Kroehl built the Explorer in Brooklyn between 1863 and 1865. The
submarine was abandoned off Isla San Telmo in Panama’s Pearl Islands in the
fall of 1869, after its final crew was stricken, to a man, with “fever.”
Laid up and forgotten in a small cove, it remained unidentified until
resident fishermen on a nearby island pointed it out to Delgado, who was
sailing through the islands in 2001. “They thought it was a Japanese midget
submarine from World War II,” recalls Delgado. “It turned out to be much
older and much more significant. In this case, truth is stranger than
fiction—although it feels like finding Captain Nemo’s lost sub on Robinson
Crusoe’s island.” Delgado led an expedition to Panama earlier this year with
the Sea Hunters crew that included a representative of the Historic American
Engineering Survey and Hunley Project Historian Mark K. Ragan to document
the sub and remove the sand that clogged her interior. They found intact
glass instruments filled with mercury and the intricate pipes and valves
that controlled Kroehl’s Explorer.
These current section views illustrate the narrowness of the Explorer’s
conning tower, and the placement of the lower hatches through which the crew
exited and entered the submerged craft.
http://www.hunleystore.com/NEWSLETTER_|053_|0NOTES/NEWSLETTER_|053.htm#6)_ACW-era_sub_found_on_Panamas_Pacific_coast
this is a DEAD LINk
HISTORIC AMERICAN ENGINEERING RECORD,
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, TODD CROTEAU 2004
Plans are under way to continue the documentation of the Explorer and
perhaps bring the submarine home. Where she might go is up for discussion.
One option is the foot of East Third Street in Brooklyn, where she made her
first dive. Another is the Warren Lasch Center in Charleston, where the H.
L. Hunley is undergoing conservation for eventual display. A third
possibility is Washington, D.C., home of Kroehl’s wife and site of the
family home, when Kroehl was not working as an inventor or in the Union Navy
as an underwater explosives expert attached to the staff of venerated
Admiral David Dixon Porter.
