NAVY U.S. researchers hope to find first submarine

Blueprints from the submarine were found in French archives.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
An unlikely discovery in France's naval archives has put American researchers hot on the trail of the Union submarine Alligator, the U.S. Navy's first commissioned submarine and the first to enter a combat zone.
Unlike its Confederate counterpart, the H.L. Hunley, the ill-fated Alligator didn't sink any ships or kill anybody, either enemy sailors or its own crew. And when it was lost in a fierce storm off Cape Hatteras, N.C., in 1863, it was nearly lost to history as well.
A recent discovery in the French archives of the vessel's blueprints, however, has stimulated new interest in the ship and has prompted federal authorities to try to find and raise it.
The search is also sparking interest in the vessel's mysterious creator, Brutus De Villeroi, an eccentric Frenchman who listed his occupation on the 1860 census as "natural genius."
"The Alligator Project will test our ability to find an object in the sea in a reasonable amount of time and at a reasonable cost," said Rear Adm. Jay Cohen, chief of Naval Research. "If we can find the Alligator, we can find anything."
The Office of Naval Research is mounting the search in conjunction with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Already, a team of midshipmen from the U.S. Naval Academy is charting weather and oceanic data for the date of the sinking in an attempt to determine where the Alligator may have drifted after it was cut loose from the ship towing it from Washington to Port Royal, S.C.
Significance
"What makes the Alligator so compelling is that it combines history, mystery and technology," said Daniel J. Basta, director of NOAA's National Marine Sanctuary Program.
"The vessel has a lot of firsts associated with it, which is what makes it so important," said naval historian James Christley. In addition to being the first Navy sub and the first deployed to a combat zone, it was the first to have a diver's lockout chamber, the first to have on-board air compressors for air renewal and diver support and the first to have a test run witnessed by a U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln.
"As a warship, it doesn't have a real great combat record," Christley said, "but that doesn't make it any less important."
The blueprints were discovered in a box of documents from inventors whose ideas had been rejected by the French government.
De Villeroi, about whom surprisingly little is known, began designing submarines in the 1830s and made several proposals to the French government, all of which were turned down. In his last approach, in 1865, he attached a copy of the design he did for the U.S. government, apparently in an attempt "to prove his credentials," said Catherine Marzin, a researcher for the National Marine Sanctuary Program who found the blueprints.
All his letters and the French responses were in the archives. "They had everything," Marzin said. "We couldn't find any indication of the blueprints in the United States. It was an exciting moment."