CIVIL WAR RELIC Storms cut short search for 1st sub

Still, researchers are pleased with progress in the search for the Alligator.
SCRIPPS HOWARD
Their work cut short by tropical storms, government researchers still came away pleased with their initial search for the U.S. Navy's first submarine, which sank in a storm off North Carolina's barrier islands during the Civil War.
"Conditions got too rough from Gaston and Hermine for us to deploy our equipment the last two days, but the good news is that we were able to survey a larger area of the ocean floor than we had originally planned," said Catherine Marzin, an archaeologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and coordinator of the mission, dubbed The Hunt for the Alligator.
The Alligator, built in Philadelphia as a possible defense against Confederate ironclads, was never committed to battle by Union naval commanders, who were unsure of what to do with the craft. The sub sank off Cape Hatteras in April 1863 while it was being towed to join an attack on Charleston, S.C.
Although it lacks the war record of either the USS Monitor, a gunboat that sank in the same waters six months earlier, or the Confederate submarine Hunley, which was recently raised near Charleston, the Alligator may have been the most technologically advanced weapon in the Union naval arsenal, and, if found relatively intact, would almost surely be surrounded by a new national marine sanctuary.
Good beginning
The search team worked round-the-clock during the first two days of the expedition off Ocracoke Island, which was hit hard by Hurricane Alex in early August. "We were worried that the hurricane might have shifted the sand in the harbor, so our research vessel couldn't put in there," Marzin said.
But the 108-foot ship operated by the Office of Naval Research, the YP-679 Afloat Lab, was still able to dock at the tiny fishing village, making the scientists' commute to their hunting grounds 20 miles offshore relatively short during the survey, which ended Sunday.
NOAA researchers had calculated the likely resting place of the sub by using a combination of historic reports of the 1863 storm and a computer program that factors winds and ocean currents to track the likely path of oil and chemical spills.
Out in the Atlantic, the team -- which also included scientists from East Carolina University -- used side-scanning sonar, a metal detector and other high-tech gear to note several possible targets for further investigation.
Problems
However, a remotely operated diving sled fitted with a video camera became disabled soon after the expedition began, making it impossible to check out several promising targets with anything other than a camera dropped over the side of the research vessel.
"We couldn't get the views that we ideally would have liked," said Cmdr. Jerry Stefanko, project officer for the Office of Naval Research. "But if something's buried in silt or sand, you can't tell that much from the images 200 feet down anyway."
Members of the expedition will spend the next weeks and months going over the data they gathered to try to spot additional possible locations of the sub, which could be explored by robotic or even human divers next summer.
Aside from the historical significance, the search for the small vessel, just 47 feet long and about 5 feet wide, is a testing ground for naval technology that may eventually be used to defend American coasts against terrorist mines or stealth attacks. "If we can find the Alligator out there on the continental shelf, we can find anything," Stefanko said.
Being able to find long-lost metal ships may also be important to future environmental cleanups from deteriorating shipwrecks along the coastline, the researchers said.