It is not known which submarine the Bayou St. John submarine is. There is only one report that states that shortly before the Northern States conquered New Orleans on April 29, 1862, a submarine was involved in an accident in Bayou St. John in which all three crew members died. At first it was assumed that it would be the Pioneer designed by Horace Lawson Hunley . However, this had already been canceled in 1868 and a comparison of the submarine with the plans recorded in 1862 and 1865 showed discrepancies in construction and dimensions. The Bayou St. John submarine is more reminiscent of the Tredegar submarine , which was constructed under the supervision of William Cheeney and was used against the USS Minnesota in 1861 .
The Bayou St. John submarine may have been sighted as early as June 1861. EP Doer, a Northern informant, reported seeing a small steel submarine in the Mississippi River . A dome with hatches for the helmsman used to be placed on the opening at the top of the submarine. A snorkel tube was attached to a small opening , which had a float at the other end and thus supplied the crew with fresh air.
The submarine was on display on the shores of Bayou St. John in the Spanish Fort amusement park . In 1908 the submarine was moved to the Camp Nicholls Confederate Home on Moss Street on the other side of Bayou St. John. In order to better preserve the submarine, it was poured with concrete . In 1942 it was acquired by the Louisiana State Museum and exhibited in various locations around Jackson Square . From 1957 to 1999 it was exhibited in the arcades on the ground floor of The Presbytere . After the concrete was removed and conservation work was carried out in Baton Rouge , it was moved to the Capitol Park Museum , where it has been on display ever since.
literature
Peter Winston Hitchcook: Intelligent Whale: A Historical and Archaeological Analysis of an American Civil War Submersible ( Thesis ), May 2002, pp. 39–42 ( online )
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