Like many of you, I think Sen. Glenn McConnell devotes too much — including too much of our money — to the Hunley Confederate submarine.
But I don’t get quite as outraged about it as some. For me, it’s a matter of proportion. I think research should be done on the Hunley. I just don’t know that South Carolina has to do it, and I really don’t like the atmosphere of cultishness around it — which tends to attend anything anything Confederate, where the senator is concerned.
I am frequently reminded that the rest of the country finds the Hunley fairly fascinating, if not quite as fascinating as McConnell does.
I was looking at USA Today this morning (hey, I’m at a hotel, and haven’t seen any other papers), and saw the above item.
Mind you, it was a news brief, but it was still news. That seems about right.
Burl, what do you think, as an expert on midget submarines?
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I find submarines and history fascinating too, but the Hunley project has been an enormous waste of state resources.
Every decision to spend even a dollar on the Hunley means that it is considered a higher priority than other issues.
Museums should be privately funded. This is one of those cases where The State could hold McConnell’s feet to the fire and get him to justify the expenditure.
This is also a case where Democrat legislators trade favors with McConnell using our money – “We’ll give him his toy boat and maybe he’ll give us something we want”.
I’d like to see a single bill for the funding for the Hunley and get legislators on the record that they feel it is the best place to spend tax dollars.
First, Hunley is not a submarine. It is a submersible. And, like all naval craft with proper names (unless its the lead ship of a class) it’s not “the” Hunley, it’s just Hunley.
Hunley is an important piece of pioneering technology and should be preserved for future generations. Even though South Carolina fought the Feds over ownership of the vessel, the Feds have provided many preservation dollars over the years. Hunley’s stabilization efforts have been impressive and have broken new ground in electrolytic technology. The stabilization curators and technicians have pursued a long-range salt-replacement process, and its to their credit that nothing was rushed. If you’ve ever seen a piece of steel fall apart in front of your eyes after it was pulled from the ocean, you’d know how delicate the process is.
Hunley is a national treasure. It boils down to whether preserving historical knowledge matters to you.
I totally agree with Burl.
You don’t have to give a rip about the “lost cause” to care about the historical importance of this vessel.
Yes, preserving historical knowledge, all kinds, is very important. Lack of historical knowledge seems to be why we have to keep re-learning lessons we learned before, about things like robber barons, etc.
Is preserving historical submersibles more important than K-12 education?