How very interesting!! And I can't imagine the emotions of Maria Jacobsen when she held the watch for the 1st time. And the gold coin too!! I sure hope there's a picture still intact inside the watch. So much history being seen & touched for the 1st time in over a hundred yrs.!! Amazing!!

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Commander's Pocket Watch Found With His Remains Aboard Hunley




June 10, 2002--A gold pocket watch that could conceivably answer the question of exactly when the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley sank has been found in a block of sediment holding the remains of the boat's commander, Army Lt. George E. Dixon.




The timepiece appears to be in excellent condition, researchers said, but has not yet been opened for a number of reasons.




"It is possible that there is a pocket of 'ancient' air trapped in an interior compartment," When senior archaeologist Maria Jacobsen said. "If that is the case, we will attempt to sample the air as well. A pristine sample of air from a secure 1864 date would provide important data to scientists studying atmospheric changes."




"The watch looks as if it was made yesterday; it's beautiful," Warren Lasch, chairman of Friends of the Hunley, told the Charleston Post & Courier.




"We can only hope there is an inscription or photograph inside," he added, noting that there is good reason to think that an inscription, in particular, is plausible.




A gold coin that Dixon carried as a good-luck piece after it took a bullet that would have otherwise hit his thigh during the Battle of Shiloh, was engraved "My Life Preserver."




The watch, said Hunley Commission Chairman Glenn McConnell, "will help us understand who this man was and the values that propelled him to put himself at risk for a cause."




Scientists caution that the time at which the watch stopped may not actually mean anything significant. If the crew died from a lack of oxygen the watch could have kept working for days or longer afterward. If the sub flooded, the watch might have stopped more quickly, but not necessarily right away.




Little is in fact known about Dixon, and even less about the other members of the Hunley's crew. Early reports that Dixon was from Kentucky, historians say, now appear to be wrong.




The watch, with its gold chain and fob, was mingled among other things in the Alabama infantryman's coat, including what may be binoculars, keys and even a logbook. The watch itself was spotted on a preliminary X ray of the excavated block last winter.




Jacobsen said the watch appears to be intact. Scientists want to X-ray the watch to figure out how to open it, but first they want to know if that would hurt any degraded photo that might be inside.




Six researchers from the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Tennessee are working on forensic analysis of the remains with scientists at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center. That work, designed to identify the crewmen and paint a portrait of how they lived and died, is expected to take another year and a half.




Dixon and his seven crewmen died aboard the sub on Feb. 17, 1864, shortly after the Hunley sank the blockade ship USS Housatonic.