Gold Watch Recovered From Civil War Submarine

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CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) - Archeologists have recovered an ornate gold pocket watch from the excavated Civil War submarine H.L. Hunley, the first submarine to sink an enemy ship in battle, project officials said on Friday.

The watch has not yet been opened, leaving unanswered the question of what time it stopped, which archeologists say could help them piece together the mystery of the final moments of the Confederate submarine, which disappeared on Feb. 17, 1864.

The timepiece, decorated on both sides and including a gold chain and fob, belonged to Lt. George Dixon, captain of the Hunley when it sank the USS Housatonic.

The 43-foot hand-cranked submarine was lost until 1995 when a dive team financed by adventure novelist Clive Cussler found it four miles off Sullivan's Island, South Carolina. It was raised in August 2000 and forensic anthropologists have been studying the remains of its eight crew members.

"The watch looks as if it was made yesterday. It's beautiful," Warren Lasch, chairman of Friends of the Hunley, said in a news release. "To find such a personal item is really quite amazing. We can only hope that there is an inscription or photograph inside the watch."

Archeologists using X-rays and computer tomography found the pocket watch earlier this year in one of seven blocks of sediment excavated from the Hunley. The blocks also contained Dixon's remains.

Dixon probably kept the watch in the right-hand pocket of a vest or coat and the watch's chain was intertwined with a fragile piece of cloth, archeologists said.

Opening the watch will be a delicate task. Archeologists want to X-ray it to check the condition of its mechanisms but first need to make sure radiation will not damage any photograph it might contain, senior archeologist Maria Jacobsen said.

"It is also possible that there is a pocket of ancient air trapped in an interior compartment," she said. "A pristine sample of air from a secure 1864 date would provide important data to scientists studying atmospheric changes."

Until the watch is opened, archeologists will not know the time it stopped. The time could prove to be an important element in reconstructing the final voyage of the Hunley.

The submarine was built to break through a Union blockade of Charleston Harbor. It plunged a spar loaded with explosives into the wooden hull of the Housatonic, sinking it within minutes.

Confederate soldiers on shore reported sighting a signal from the submarine that it had turned toward home but it disappeared in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and sat for 136 years before it was found.

Six researchers from the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Tennessee are working in the Warren Lasch Conservation Center on the forensic analysis of the crew's remains.