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| A diver prepares to descend to the sunken H.L. Hunley |
CHARLESTON, South Carolina -- Millionaire novelist Clive Cussler expects to realize a long-held dream Tuesday: raising the H.L. Hunley, the first submarine ever to sink an enemy ship.
Cussler funded divers who discovered the Confederate vessel off South Carolina in 1995, 131 years after it rammed and sank the USS Housatonic in an attempt to break a Union blockade during the U.S. Civil War.
Minutes later, the Hunley itself sank, for reasons that remain unknown.
"It will be a thrilling moment," Cussler said of Tuesday's raising. "It's going to be a wonder."
Sub discovered intact
Cussler's divers found the Hurley after four other expeditions failed during a 15-year period. The craft was found under about 30 feet of water, about four miles off Sullivan's Island, South Carolina.
Except for some minor damage, salvagers found the submarine intact.
On Tuesday, a salvage crew plans to bring the Hunley to the surface by lifting it from the ocean floor with an elaborate truss consisting of heavy duty straps.
In June, divers told CNN the sub was covered by a thick rock-like coating. They said it appeared to be in good shape, although underwater visibility at the wreckage site varied from two or three feet to total blackness.
Salvagers said they believed the bodies of the sub's nine-man crew
--along with their possessions-- remain inside the vessel, possibly in a
semi-preserved state.
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| Underwater images of the submarine H.L. Hunley with its rock-like covering |
'I guarantee I'll cry'
"I guarantee I'll cry, I will," Warren Lasch of the group Friends of the Hunley told CNN in June. "I get tears in my eyes once in a while when I think about the bravery of those men, and to bring them home after all these years and get them out of that cold sea bed, I'm going to cry."
To offset the cost of the estimated $17 million salvage and restoration project, South Carolina has provided $3 million dollars and the U.S. Department of Defense has provided $2 million.
Hunley's last mission
Prior to the Hunley's final mission on February 16, 1864, two previous crews aboard the vessel had lost their lives. Their graves can still be found at a Charleston cemetery.
The sub's third and final crew ignored the danger and cast off toward their target, propelling themselves forward with the vessel's hand-cranked propeller.
"Fear was just an element they put aside," Hunley Commission Chairman Glenn McConnell told CNN in June. "They were focused on breaking the blockade, their duty, as they saw it, to the state, and that's all that mattered to them."
The Hunley rammed the Housatonic, which was part of the Naval blockade of Charleston, inserted an explosive device into its hull, and blew it up.
By bringing the Hunley back up to the surface, historians may learn why the sub sunk minutes later.
Despite its sinking, the Hunley was a mechanical marvel ahead of its time. The next submarine to sink an enemy ship didn't succeed until 50 years later.
Finder of lost ships
Cussler, 69, has spent decades finding lost ships. "I've always said I'd die a happy man if I found just two ships," he said. "One is the Hunley and I've done that. The other is John Paul Jones' the Bonhomme Richard."
The Bonhomme Richard is thought to be sitting at the bottom of the Atlantic inside a 400-square mile area off the English coast.
Jones' flagship sank in 1779 after destroying a much larger British warship. During the battle, Jones was said to have declared the now famous words, "I have not yet begun to fight."
CNN Correspondent Brian Cabell and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
