The November meeting of the Rufus Barringer Civil War Round Table will be held at 7:00pm on Thursday, November 21st at the Civic Club on the corner of Pennsylvania and Ashe St. in Southern Pines. Socializing begins at 6:30pm. The special guest speaker will be researcher and author, Rachel Lance, and the title of her presentation is “In the Waves: My Quest to Solve the Mystery of a Civil War Submarine.”

On a winter night in 1864, the Confederate submarine HL Hunley made its way toward the USS Housatonic just outside of Charleston Harbor. The submarine, using a giant black powder bomb, blew a hole in the larger vessel which sank quickly. Then the submarine, the first ever to be successful in combat, disappeared. Discovered 131 years later at the bottom of the harbor entrance, the hull had no evidence of being breached by the blast. The crew’s bodies were all found at their stations. Why did it sink? How did these men die? This is the story of one woman’s dogged quest to scientifically solve the mystery of this historic event.

Rachel Lance is a PhD biomedical engineer who specializes in patterns of blast injury and trauma. As an engineer for the U.S. Navy, she worked to build and test specialized underwater equipment for use by the Navy. Dr. Lance earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan and her PhD at Duke University. At Duke’s Center for Hyperbaric Medicine & Environmental Physiology, she focused on the development of novel methods to enable human survival in extreme environments, like underwater and outer space.

Meetings are open to the public. For more details contact Matt Farina at 910.246.0452 or mafarina@aol.com.  The Rufus Barringer Civil War Round Table is a 501(c)(3), incorporated, non-profit, educational organization. The purpose of the organization is to promote, educate, and further stimulate interest in, and discussion of, all aspects of the Civil War period.