CNN Today

H.L. Hunley on the Way to be Studied

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LOU WATERS, CNN ANCHOR: It lay on the ocean floor for nearly 136 years. At this hour, the H.L. Hunley is strapped to a barge and headed for home on shore.

CNN's Brian Cabell joins us from Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, to tell about the raising of the first submarine to sink an enemy ship -- Brian.

BRIAN CABELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good afternoon, Lou, we've just gotten word, as a matter of fact, that the Hunley, onboard its barge, has actually arrived at a dock along the Cooper River. And from there it will be taken inside to a lab, that will probably happen in the next hour or so.

But as you say, it was raised this morning, about six hours ago as a matter of fact, a very quick, efficient, glitch-free operation. Only took about five minutes, we're told, to raise it from the ocean floor, about 29 feet down, up to the top of the surface and over on to the barge.

Now watching all of this with great excitement was Clive Cussler, he is a novelist, also an adventurist, who funded the expedition to discover the Hunley five years ago. Needless to say, he was a happy man.

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CLIVE CUSSLER, HUNLEY EXPEDITION: It's a great thrill because we looked -- searched for so long, you know, off and on for 15 years. And we ran 1,159 miles of, you know, line, you know, when we search with a magnetometer (ph). So to see this happen is just an incredible experience because I didn't expect it, maybe, I thought they'd probably, maybe, raise the Hunley after I was dead.

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CABELL: After it was raised it was then welded to its barge and then it was towed by tugboat along the Charleston Harbor and into the Cooper River. And along the way, of course, crowds gathered, thousands of people literally along the shores, hundreds of boats, some of them with Confederate flags, saluting it.

But a big day for Charleston, they've been working on this for some four years. And now they're expecting for the next six months or so to have a major excavation project at this lab. They expect to get the excavation under way in the next month or so.

What they're expecting to find onboard, they believe, nine bodies, along with their clothes, along with artifacts, along with coins. They are not certain exactly what they will find.

But they're calling it a time capsule from Charleston, 1864. So a major archaeological find, a major naval find. A lot of historians, a lot of archaeologists, looking at this with a great deal of excitement.

I'm Brian Cabell, CNN live, Sullivan's Island, South Carolina.

NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, Brian.

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