- Archaeologist Maria Jacobsen holding Dixon's gold coin. This photograph was taken only minutes after the coin's discovery.
THE LEGEND: For over a century, an oral tradition-a legend-was passed down involving Lt. George Dixon, who commanded the important missions in naval history. According to the legend, Dixon was in love with a beautiful young woman from Mobile, Alabama, named Queenie Bennett.
To keep her sweetheart safe from harm, Queenie gave George Dixon a gold coin, as a good luck charm. Again, according to the legend, George kept the coin with him always, in his pocket, rubbing it with his thumb while he dreamed of the day when he and Queenie would be reunited.
During the Battle of Shiloh, George was shot point blank. A bullet ripped into the pocket of his trousers and struck the center of the gold coin. The impact was said to have left the gold piece bent, with the bullet embedded in it. Queenie's good luck gift had saved his life. Many such legends were created during the war. Was this one true? For 137 years, no one knew whether the story was true or merely a romantic tale from long ago.
During the excavation of the H.L. Hunley, the gold coin was discovered next to the remains of Lt. George Dixon. It was deeply indented from the impact of a bullet and traces of lead were discovered on the coin. The coin, a $20 dollar gold piece, was minted in 1860. One side bears an image of Lady Liberty. The other side, which has a federal shield-and-eagle symbol, had been sanded and inscribed by hand. It clearly bears four lines of cursive script with the following words:
Shiloh
April 6, 1862
My life Preserver
G. E. D.
Maria Jacobsen, Senior Archaeologist on the Hunley project and the one who actually first found the coin, said shortly after her amazing discovery, "Some people may think this is a stroke of luck, but perhaps it's something else. They tell me that Lt. Dixon was a lady's man, perhaps he winked at us yesterday to remind us that he still is."
CSI Hunley: Fate of historic sub a cold case file
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090105/ap_on_re_us/confederate_submarine
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. – It could be one of the nation's oldest cold case files: What happened to eight Confederate sailors aboard the H.L. Hunley after it became the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship?
Their hand-cranked sub rammed a spar with black powder into the Union blockade ship Housatonic off Charleston on a chilly winter night in 1864 but never returned.
Its fate has been the subject of almost 150 years of conjecture and almost a decade of scientific research since the Hunley was raised back in 2000. But the submarine has been agonizingly slow surrendering her secrets.
"She was a mystery when she was built. She was a mystery as to how she looked and how she was constructed for many years and she is still a mystery as to why she didn't come home," said state Sen. Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston and chairman of the South Carolina Hunley Commission, which raised the sub and is charged with conserving and displaying it.
Scientists hope the next phase of the conservation, removing the hardened sediment coating the outside of the hull, will provide clues to the mystery.
McConnell, who watched the sub being raised more than eight years ago, thought at the time the mystery would be easily solved.
"We thought it would be very simple ... something must have happened at the time of the attack," he said. "We would just put those pieces together and know everything about it."
But what seemed so clear then seems as murky now as the sandy bottom where the Hunley rested for 136 years. When the Hunley was raised, the design was different from what scientists expected and there were only eight, not nine, crewmen, as originally thought.
The first phase of work on the Hunley consisted of photographing and studying the outside of the hull. Then several iron hull plates were removed allowing scientists to enter the crew compartment to remove sediment, human remains and a cache of artifacts.