Bringing H. L. Hunley to Life: Understanding the Past Through New 3D Facial Reconstructions of the Crew of an American Civil War Submarine

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The eight-man crew of the H.L. Hunley submarine all perished following the successful attack and sinking of the blockading ship USS Housatonic off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina in 1864. While much has been learned about this event, the identities of the crew have not been well understood. This paper discusses a collaborative project to understand the crew of H.L. Hunley through new digital techniques in the reconstruction of facial features. Using 3D scan data from the skeletal remains, 3D facial approximations are being developed that work within the Epic Games MetaHuman framework to create photorealistic likenesses that can be animated for many digital applications. In addition, this project hopes to use facial recognition to search currently available photo archives with specific individual facial approximations in consultation with Civil War Photo Sleuth to attempt to find unidentified photographic records and potential background histories for the crewmen of H.L. Hunley.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow