It's hatch was unlocked.

Yeah, this is kind of geeky, but it was one of the very first subs, after all...

Ah, but was the screen door closed?

Green fever?

Submarines give me the willys!

I promised myself several things as an adult. Never jump out of a perfectly good airplane and never go out on a ship, designed, to sink ITSELF!!

...I just finished writing a book on the Hunley and found the initial report interesting but it doesn't really add too much to the unknowns.
As of yet, there's still no agreement on exactly what that mechanism was used for - sealing the hatch or just helping to close it (it weighed more than 100 lbs). There is also the fact that unlocked or not, there was no way a crew member was going to get the hatch open thirty feet down, for the same reason that they tell you to roll down your windows if your car goes into the water.
The one real unknown it brings up is the possibility that the crew made a real effort to get out once they were on the bottom, but it would have been a futile one. We already know the hatch was open on the surface for at least a minute or two when they signaled their base on Sullivan's Island just before they sank. For a lot of reasons its very unlikely that Hunley was swamped or run down while on the surface.

Mike

I blame Bush for this...

I served, and I recieved equipment from Submariners.

and every day that I was in the MC, and I wasn't Force recon, I WANTED to be Navy, and I wanted bubbles.

Navy bubbles are like army chute's and wings.

The navy bubbles were the only, peacetime REAL warriors, because sub's were ALWAYS at a standing of war.

those guys are ninja's, and their nerves are built of tempered steel.