♪ Mark Quinn> It is one of the most significant conservation projects in the world, the ongoing work to restore the "Hunley" submarine.

Will we ever know why she sank?

Attempts to answer that question, plus details on new and emerging technologies up next on "The Big Picture."

Hello, and thanks for joining us here on "The Big Picture."

I'm Mark Quinn.

Today, we're paying a visit to the "Hunley" submarine.

Hard to believe that it's been eight years since the "Hunley" was raised from the bottom of the Charleston Harbor.

Since then, a team of world-class scientists who've undertaken the painstaking work of restoring what many have called one of the most important underwater archaeological discoveries of the 20th century.

Much of that you already know.

What you probably don't know is how the project to preserve the "Hunley" has been the catalyst for a whole range of new science, and the clearing house for most of that innovation is the relatively new Clemson Restoration Institute.

They say some of that science has applications in the real world, applications the Institute hopes might one day mean an entirely new economy for the Lowcountry.

>> The "Hunley" is housed not far from where she was raised, no more than a few miles from Charleston Harbor.

It's located on the grounds of the old naval base in North Charleston, a parcel of land along the banks of the Cooper River that had been mostly deserted after the military left town a decade ago.

Now, like the "Hunley" itself, this area is being revived with development of all types.

The Lasch Conservation Center houses a number of new and emerging technologies.

There are researchers here from more than nine countries all around the world, and they're in the process of creating a world-class institute, cutting-edge science directly related to preserving and saving the "Hunley".

To the untrained eye, the submarine still looks in many ways as it did in the summer of 2000.

Concretion covers nearly every inch of her outside skin, the result of spending almost 140 years on the ocean's floor.

Removal of all this buildup is a painstaking, time-consuming task.

More than 10 tons of sediment have been taken from her interior alone.

One reason why that project has taken so long, the excavation of more than 1500 bones from the eight crew members, bones still being cataloged and mapped today.

Dr.

Mike Drews> We really don't really understand all of the processes going on on something that's corroded like the "Hunley" is.

Mark> So you still have a ways to go.

I guess that's the exciting part for you.

Dr.

Drews> That's the exciting part for us.

And as we put in the kind of scientific instrumentation we need to address these fundamental issues, this is one of the real missions of the university, to take a facility which is a world-class conservation facility and translate it into one that is a world-class facility for conservation research.

Mark> The "Hunley" captivated world attention when she was raised nearly eight years ago.

Civil War buffs were fascinated by the sub's role in naval history and the story of her intrepid crew.

The "Hunley" was the first submarine to sink an enemy warship, but nearly as soon she helped to sink the "Housatonic," the "Hunley" disappeared.

Over the course of the past eight years, scientists from all over the globe have dedicated major parts of their careers to restore and conserve the "Hunley," a project that has, in the last few years, taken on international significance.

Senator Glenn McConnell> I would tell you we started this as a historical recovery project, and we found that before it was over, history and science had to come together to tell time and to preserve the future.

And that's what's exciting about what's going on.

None of us envisioned that this particular laboratory... when I saw this building, it was a soundstage for the TNT movie "Hunley."

And about where we're standing is close to where the ballroom scene was.

And the porch scene was back in a little area on further back from us.

None of us ever envisioned that the "Hunley" project would grow to the magnitude that it would.

But within the first week that we had the submarine out of the water and in here, this building was surrounded by thousands of people trying to get in because they had heard we were opening the doors, which we were...to the people who had helped us raise it.

We found out what a phenomenal draw it was.

We found out it had worldwide attention.

So we got the big picture of the tourist industry.

Tours come here.

People come here.

Now the research is going on here, the science and how to conserve her and stabilize her.

All of that is occurring.

That starts getting added to the exhibit in... This has turned in from a small submarine being brought up to a big project.

Mark> So now, the Lasch Center has become a focal point of international conservation and archaeology.

Four years ago, as an outgrowth of the science being discovered here, the Clemson Restoration Institute was established.

Their mission was the creation of an economic engine spurred on by developing and emerging restoration and sustainable industries.

That business blueprint has been used before, from Silicon Valley in California to the hi-tech hub in Austin, Texas to the Research Triangle in Raleigh-Durham.

All of those began as a result of partnerships between private business and public universities.

And the plan is to make North Charleston America's new home for still emerging technologies related to sustainability.

Dr.

John Kelly> I think the thing to realize is that the Lasch laboratory that houses the "Hunley" now during its conservation is one of the, if not the premier laboratory in the country.

We're putting about $3 million worth of new investments into that laboratory, which will include electron microscopes and things that will be used well beyond the "Hunley" project.

But the "Hunley" project has been an important seed.

We've learned a lot in this conservation.

We've learned not only from the materials side but the thoughts about what we might do in the future relative to rust and prevention of corrosion.

But even on the archeological side, you have people developing information from essentially what was a scene and determining whether there might be applications in current law enforcement relative to the recreation of a crime scene.

So science is helping to drive a lot of opportunities that might occur in the marketplace that would be beneficial to today's society while we're restoring at the same time and conserving an important artifact.

Dr.

Drews> And here, as we build our in-house expertise, one of our missions is to build connectivity to local industry, because one of the things we've learned from the main campus that when you start building these industrial partnerships and start bringing their problems into your laboratory, trying to help them solve their problems, it very often translates into solving some of your own problems.

Mark> And that might eventually mean that we solve problems and need more people to work at these industrial type places.

Dr.

Drews> That's exactly- Mark> It could mean jobs and dollars-- Dr.

Drews> That's exactly.

Mark> - and a whole new tax base.

That's the kind of thing that politicians like to hear, I think.

Dr.

Drews> That's right.

And jobs that attract more jobs.

You build a warehouse, you have a limited number of jobs.

You'll never have any more than that.

In fact, in most cases- Mark> You'll have less.

Dr.

Drews> -as technology goes on, you'll have less.

You build on a knowledge base.

The more knowledge, the broader your knowledge base becomes, the more new resources you need, the more new people you need, it grows.

Mark> All the while, the "Hunley" itself continues to be coy in giving up its long-held secrets.

The major archaeological highlight is this misshapen gold piece that was uncovered in 2002.

It was a good luck charm carried by the ship's commander, Lieutenant George Dixon, given to him by his sweetheart back home in her native Alabama.

But there still remains one huge question.

Archaeologists don't know why the "Hunley" sank, a question we hope to make headway on later in this program.

If not for the work of Paul Mardikian, the "Hunley" might be nothing more than an oxidized pile of dust today.

Mardikian is a conservation expert who's helped salvage and save items from the "Titanic" and the Confederate ship, the "Alabama."

That's one of the Alabama's main cannons there.

Mardikian is a man of tremendous patience.

He measures progress in minute detail.

The restoration of this cannon is now in its sixth year.

Paul Mardikian> Yeah, as long as I get paid when I do it, it's fine, right?

Mark> It's a long time.

Paul> Yeah.

No, it's very important to know that there is no other ways... there have been no ways to speed up that process.

You need to reverse the marine corrosion.

And as I said, you cannot do that overnight.

As a conservator, I can tell that if maybe treating those cannons takes five to six years, maybe using this technology could reduce the treatment time by ten, that would be fantastic.

Mark> That would really, 'cause you could get a lot more done, right?

Paul> You could have a lot more done.

The archaeologists would have their artifacts much, much faster.

The funding would be right now available, and people would not be- Mark> -They wouldn't have to wait so long to see the fruits of their labor.

Paul> Seven years or six years is too much.

You cannot tell somebody, "Okay, it's gonna be ready in seven years."

Like I said, you could build a bridge with that or... not a cathedral, but you could build something big [laughing] for six years.

Mark> Mardikian has tackled what many consider one of the most complex artifacts ever preserved in the "Hunley."

His primary objective was pulling the salt out of her 48 wrought iron plates.

Done too quickly and the "Hunley" would simply turn to rust.

So this is where the science is going mainstream.

Mardikian is using what's called a sub-critical process, using high temperatures to diffuse the salt buildup there, a process that may give researchers new insights into thousands of American bridges.

Dr.

Drews> We used to have two bridges going across the Cooper River.

And what is the reason that we had to replace those bridges, other than the fact that traffic was increasing?

The bridges were beginning to fail.

And why were they beginning to fail?

Because of the same kind of corrosion problems that we are experiencing on the "Hunley."

Mark> And we have bridges spread out throughout this country just like those.

Dr.

Drews> Just like that.

Mark> It's that kind of real-world application, science from the "Hunley" eventually being used in other areas, that has many observers keeping a close eye on this Restoration Institute.

Will there be enough research spun off from the submarine that will one day be mainstream?

Dr.

Kelly> The kind of the beauty of some of these public-private partnerships is we're very good at basic science or we're very good at application science.

Sometimes where universities really need help is when it takes an idea that has marketplace application, we need a partner that's capable of helping us move that into the marketplace in the appropriate setting, someone that can make the investments necessary to scale up a laboratory type of model and turn it into a reality in the marketplace and someone who actually...of course, in the private sector, you have people that fully develop products, whereas our people perhaps are most valuable if they stay in the laboratory and continue to work on the next stage of development as opposed to try to think of how they would go out and market something when they historically have not had that experience and don't have, necessarily, the contacts that would be necessary.

Sen.

McConnell> This small investment in this project has turned into a big thing, and the big thing is that this Restoration Institute over the next 10 to 20 years, in my opinion, will draw millions and millions of dollars of investment, jobs, research, and will have an impact on the quality of life here in America.

What a great mission, and for the knowledge-based economy, what a great thing for South Carolina.

And so I think it was just a natural fit, and it started out with us and Clemson at this laboratory trying to look at conservation and salt treatments.

And they became familiar with the facility.

They had the forward vision of the Restoration Institute.

Our vision was to complete the journey of the "Hunley."

And that is to conserve her and get her upstream into the permanent facility.

So it just was a natural fit, and it's a great fit for the people of South Carolina because their money that went into this building long is going to outlive the Hunley and goes on to create jobs and a better future.

Paul> It's a unique arrangement.

If you don't have that arrangement, you're obviously going to cut the corners and you're obviously not going to give a chance to this heritage to be preserved.

What's happening right now with Clemson University is a very rare chemical reaction.

And we want to keep it going, and we want to use that to take over complex conservation issues, large projects, and also have the conservation community and the archaeological community to meet their challenges.

Mark> Clemson's Restoration Institute is already attracting students from all over the world.

For those studying in the areas of archaeology and conservation, working on the "Hunley" has always been considered a world-class project, but now, the institute is taking steps to lay out a future that includes covering more than 85 acres of this portion of the old naval base.

It's the first step in creating a full-fledged research campus.

Dr.

Kelly> It won't look at all like a college campus.

It will be much more like a research campus.

It will be high technology type of operations here.

My hope is that a portion of the campus will be highly educational, though, and interactive with the public.

If you go to most campuses, there's obviously lots of activity and lots of young people moving around.

This would be more like a corporate type of environment where there will be lots of research going on.

My hope is that we take advantage of a concept that we've termed "edutourism," which is taking education and turning it into something that is consumed by the public, something that they can learn from.

If you go to most campuses, you can see a chemistry building, but you don't really know what goes on in the chemistry building.

Our hope here is that when you approach the advanced materials building, on the grounds would be things that would teach you about what goes on in the advanced materials building or in the conservation laboratory or in the restoration ecology work, so that the campus actually is a teacher itself.

The landscape of the campus is a teacher, and you don't have to actually see a laboratory to understand what's going on in the laboratories.

Mark> While administrators go about the business of turning this burgeoning lab into an international center for a whole range of restoration science, researchers here every single day go about the work of bringing the "Hunley" back to its original form.

They can see that original design with the help of white light 3-D imaging.

With this technology, you can see right through those years of buildup, all the way down to the nearly 28 hundred rivets that were used to hold the "Hunley" together.

>> What you see on the exterior of the submarine, the concretion, it is a record of everything that's happened to this submarine from the time of the sinking, from the night of the sinking, to the recovery process and even afterwards.

It's a record, a physical record, of what's happened in and around the submarine.

And so there's so much data.

There's stratigraphy data that you see trapped in the concretion on the submarine.

There's macrofaunal data, which is the sea growth that attached itself to the exterior hull.

All of that sort of functions to give us an idea of what happened to the submarine as it sat on the sea floor and the conditions as the submarine slowly was buried.

Mark> Combine that 3-D technology with some new supercomputing technologies, and researchers can also calculate the stress points the "Hunley" is under.

Let's say they want to move the "Hunley" from its current resting place, which is on her side at a 45-degree angle.

You can see where those red areas light up on the model that the stress there would probably snap the "Hunley" in half.

Engineers are running similar type programs on massive offshore platforms that drill for oil, helping identify trouble spots that might not stand up to the ocean's pounding.

By running simulations such as these, the "Hunley" might one day cough up its biggest secret of all, exactly why she never made it home.

Maria Jacobsen> I think down the road we'll be able to answer if we have the data.

But right now, we're accumulating different aspect of the data.

We're putting together puzzle pieces, and the puzzle is getting more and more complete.

So right now, it looks pretty hopeful.

The data at least is not horribly contradicting itself, you know.

But if we're in a scenario where, let's say, the geological data opposes what we see on the hull underneath the concretion, then we have a problem.

But right now, the road's coming together very nicely.

Sen.

McConnell> Let me tell you, we, technically, we had a group approach us about a movie, a big movie on the gold coin, the love story, and everything.

But they need one component, what happened in those final minutes of the voyage, and we can't tell 'em.

We can't complete our exhibits for the museum unless we know why she didn't come home.

And so if we don't ultimately solve it, which I think we will.

I think we'll have good, strong clues to say, "This is what happened."

We're just not sure if it happened ten minutes after or two hours after.

Some think they were sitting out there waiting on the change of tide, the weather front moved through, the water got rough, and when they took on the water, it occurred then.

Others suspect it occurred when they opened the hatch, signaled with the blue light, and the wave from one of the boats, "USS Canandaigua," may have swamped her.

Others theorize that maybe something hit the submarine somewhere, something broke.

There are many different theories on it.

I think there's even a theory that she was anchored out there.

But I'm confident that that what will happen here is we'll pick up the pieces, for instance, eliminate or include the front eye piece; decide it was being bilged or if it wasn't being bilged, the crew compartment.

Then are we in the flood compartments?

Is there the remnants of an anchor, rope, or cable on the outside, underneath that concretion?

That's something we won't know until they take the concretion off.

So we've got some distance to go, but I'm gonna tell you, the big picture is the final answer too, and the big picture says that we've got to bring all of the talent and all of the disciplines together to solve this story.

Maria> I think it's premature that everybody out there have their theories, and I think we should... we have the privilege, you know, of looking at the submarine itself, and the data, so we should probably hold our opinion until we've had a chance to study it.

Mark> That one secret is just one of many the submarine has clung to over the last eight years.

Much of that was the result of what had happened as she sat on the floor of the Atlantic all those years.

Concretion is a collection of organisms that attached to the sub's structure.

They're referred to as barnacles, and they are a huge environmental concern for any company that does business on the seas.

Buildup on the "Hunley" is extreme, but every ship fights the same battle.

Might the science here at the Institute have some solutions to keep boats clear of barnacles?

Dr.

Drews> So there are some faculty members in materials science, and engineering that are working on a type of polymer coating that would inhibit the marine organisms from growing so that they can be used to monitor a watershed for a long period of time without having to go out there every week and clean off the...probes.

Mark> And if I'm a boat manufacturer, I'm looking at that going, "This would be a pretty nice thing for business."

Dr.

Drews> Yeah, if you can figure out how to keep stuff from growing on the hull of a boat- Mark>-I've got a better boat than the guy next door to me.

Dr.

Drews> You've got a better boat than the guy next door to you.

Now, if you can keep it off a big boat, like one of the- Mark> -Maybe a transcontinental shipper or something.

Dr.

Drews> - transcontinental shipper, that translates to fuel dollars.

Dr.

Kelly> So a part of what we do here is we integrate the disciplines, we look at complex problems, and then we figure out how to solve those by rethinking and maybe in a restorative way redoing the way we've traditionally built.

Mark> The work here between public and private entities, between scientists across a broad spectrum of disciplines, might one day transform a small part of the Lowcountry that was left in ruins when the Navy left town.

Clemson's Restoration Institute is one of the largest tenants in a development that is hoping to restore many of the brownfield buildings here.

The plan is to reclaim much of the old Navy Yard in ways that are at the forefront of environmental science.

Dr.

Kelly> Our intent would be to really reconfigure the way we think about a lot of restoration types of projects.

The architecture component is one, and obviously a reason to locate in Charleston.

But there are many other aspects of restoration, as well, when you start thinking of the natural world and how to restore damaged areas in the natural world, our project here happens to be on a brownfield.

Every single bit of the project is located on a brownfield site.

So it gives us an opportunity to use nature to actually clean up a site that was tarnished by a presence of man.

Dr.

Drews> ...the complexity of trying to conserve the "Hunley" and started thinking about where we could take this, I went pretty far, but I didn't get to the Restoration Institute.

Mark> Eight years ago, even the "Hunley's" most ardent supporters didn't envision a project that has literally taken on a life of its own.

Science that may one day be spun out of the Institute will likely long outlast the people who are here today, scientists still years away from completing the "Hunley's" conservation.

Michael Scafuri> Looking at different aspects of the submarine, I'm constantly fascinated by the idea that somebody had to invent this.

It's every part of it, whether it's a rivet pattern or an interior ballast pump, it had to be invented specifically for this submarine.

Maria Jacobsen> And the other aspect that really strikes me is there's nothing in the structure that indicates that this was a submarine put together in a hurry and implemented quickly because there was a dire need.

Everything is so complete, so meticulously executed.

It's a real puzzle.

Dr.

Drews> I think everybody who's been associated with the "Hunley" has come away with that thought.

It is really... Mark> Continually surprised, like, "Look at this!"

Dr.

Drews> Continuously surprised.

The way they engineered redundancy into things, they way they did things, it continuously surprises us.

Mark> The future and final resting place of the "Hunley" is still not known; the hope, that it will be on display in her own museum as soon as 2013.

By then, the Restoration Institute hopes to be an international hub of emerging science, and the "Hunley's" backers hope she'll be shown to hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.

Sen.

McConnell> But we will go more for what we call virtual reality.

It will be an exhibit where you literally think through their brains and look through their eyes at the world they were in, and you will understand why they would go out on that submarine and engage in that type of risk.

Then, what we're gonna do is we're gonna have science components like the challenge of salts, how do salts get in metal, how do they get out, and interactive exhibits because to tell the "Hunley" story, we've found you got to have science.

You got to have the science of conservation.

You got to have the science of archaeology, those coming together to describe the blueprint in time so we can tell that story.

And we want the public to understand how we got to that story because if they understand that, they also will support missions such as what has occurred here with this.

♪ Mark> There are no public tours of the "Hunley" during the week.

That's so the scientists there can work uninterrupted throughout the day.

But you can see the sub almost any weekend.

We have information about those tours on our website at myetv.org, as well as a host of other useful links.

This programming note now, we're less than three weeks away from the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

"The Big Picture" will be there with nightly updates right here on ETV.

We'll also be live each morning at 9:00 with a special edition of "The Big Picture on the Radio."

After Labor Day, it's back out on the road.

We travel to Minnesota to spend a week with the Republicans.

Same coverage there, TV every night, radio in the morning.

That's all the time we have for now.

Make sure to be with us next week when we talk politics and explore the popularity of online schools.

They're called virtual schools.

Are they good for education?

For now, I'm Mark Quinn.

Thanks for watching "The Big Picture."

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪