No one knows how the little Civil War-era submarine was built, how it operated or what happened to its crew.

For more than a century those mysteries have stumped historians and scientists.

Now the tiny submersible rests in a conservation lab, with scientists working to restore it to its former glory and unlock its many secrets.

It is a familiar tale around Charleston, but this is not the story of the H.L. Hunley.

This submarine, which belongs to the Louisiana State Museum, is undergoing rehabilitation anonymously in a New Orleans lab. If it ever had a name, it's long since been forgotten.

Found in a clump of weeds on the bank of Lake Pontchartrain in 1878, the sub was long thought to be Horace Hunley and James McClintock's first effort, the Pioneer. New research by Louisiana scholars and Hunley historians indicates that's unlikely.

If it's not the Pioneer, what is it?

There is no shortage of theories. Some say a plantation owner built the sub and two slaves perished in it on a test run. Others believe it's a prototype for a submarine that a New Orleans businessman wanted to build. It may be one of a fleet of subs built during the war in Shreveport, La.

Greg Lambousy, curator of exhibits for the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans, says the best guess right now seems to be that the sub was built in New Orleans by one or two likely suspects.

But he's ruling nothing out.

"It could be related to McClintock and Hunley," Lambousy said. "But McClintock never mentioned it."

The sub is 21 feet long - half the size of the Hunley - but shares many other characteristics with the world's first attack sub: It is made of iron; it had a propeller turned by men working a handcrank; it had diving fins and maybe even a spar.

The lower part of the hull is rotted from poor early 20th-century preservation efforts, but it doesn't need the electrolysis treatment the Hunley requires to restore the health of its iron hull. Conservators estimate it needs another year or so of work before the submarine is ready for display.

When it is put on exhibit, though, they aren't sure what beginning they will put on its long, strange history.

The notion of underwater boats was in vogue among Southerners in the early days of the Civil War. Without a Navy of its own, the Confederates were desperately searching for a way to level the playing field on the water. Without the resources, money or time to build a fleet of warships, they had to improvise.

A letter published in a Tennessee newspaper near the beginning of the war urged Southerners to build sneaky underwater war machines. The writer even provided a general blueprint - diving fins, screw propeller, etc. Whether that letter sparked it, several projects soon were under way across Dixie.

Hunley and McClintock teamed up in this environment. Together with some wealthy investors, including Hunley's brother-in-law, they began work on a little sub they called, appropriately enough, the Pioneer.

The Pioneer carried a crew of three: one man to steer and operate its diving fins; two to crank handles that turned the propeller. According to McClintock, it had no ballast tanks.

The exact size is subject to debate. It could have been anywhere from 30- to 35-feet long. After the war, McClintock wrote, "She was made of iron a quarter-inch thick. The boat was of a cigar shape, 30 feet long, and 4 feet in diameter."

In March 1862, the Pioneer received a privateer license. It was the only sub to receive official recognition from the Confederate government during the war. But it never saw combat - it was still undergoing test runs on Lake Pontchartrain when the Union invaded New Orleans in April 1862.

There was no way to save the submarine. It was too heavy to carry out of the city, and it didn't have the range to escape upriver. Hunley and McClintock chose to scuttle the sub in a canal on the outskirts of town to keep it out of Yankee hands.

Just before they escaped the city under siege, they watched as workers opened its hatch and let murky river water fill the hull until it disappeared.

More than a decade after the end of the war, in 1878, workers dredging the mouth of Bayou St. John found a pumpkinseed-shaped submarine lying in the weeds on the banks of the lake.

It piqued little interest, and the sub continued to lie there abandoned for years. Later it was moved to nearby Spanish Fort, then an amusement park.

When William Alexander, the Mobile engineer who helped build the Hunley, published his lengthy history of the first attack sub in the New Orleans paper in 1902, an editor's note at the beginning of the article mentioned the abandoned sub out near Pontchartrain:

"Visitors to Spanish Fort may still see, half submerged in the weeds and flowers growing on the bank of Bayou St. John, a rusty vessel of curious shape. It is built of iron, about 20 feet long, and besides a propeller at the stern, is adorned on either side by strangely shaped broad metal fins. ... It was built during the war by Captain Hunley as a submarine torpedo boat."

Most likely, the sub had been misidentified as the Pioneer long before, but no one would question that claim for decades.

In 1908, the funny fish-boat was moved to the nearby Camp Nicholls Confederate Home, where it would sit on display for more than 30 years. As the little sub began to rust out, it was partially filled with concrete - under the assumption that would preserve it.

Dave Johnson, one of the conservators working on the sub project, said that well-meaning gesture did not help. The concrete trapped moisture in the sub, and the water sparked rust. As the concrete expanded, the hull began to crack. Slowly, the boat was being destroyed.

In the mid-20th century, the Louisiana State Museum took ownership and moved the sub to Jackson Square across from the Cafe du Monde coffee shop. Eventually, its rudders and propeller blades disappeared - French Quarter souvenirs.

Later, the sub was placed behind bars under a portico at the Presbytere arcade, one of the museum's exhibit halls. And there it sat until 1999, most of that time people still believing it was the Pioneer, the grandfather of the H.L. Hunley.

After the Hunley was discovered in 1995, interest in Civil War submarines was revived. During that period, Mark Ragan, Hunley historian and author, found records that seemed to indicate the museum's boat was not one of the Hunley line.

In late 1863, Union engineers stationed in New Orleans found the Pioneer lying in the mud around New Basin Canal, where McClintock had sunk his ship a year-and-a-half earlier. A sketch of the sub was sent to an assistant secretary of the Navy.

The sketch looks more like an early version of the Hunley - which it was - and not the strange New Orleans boat.

A few years later, the Pioneer apparently suffered a sad end. In 1868, a New Orleans paper reported that a torpedo submarine boat found in the New Basin Canal after the war would be sold at auction that day.

The next edition reported the sub sold for scrap metal for $45. It was never seen again.

It is almost fitting that the museum's sub was confused with the Pioneer for so long, because the Pioneer may have had its history mixed up with this submarine's.

Lambousy says one historical account the museum found tells a strange tale about a wartime submarine boat. A wealthy plantation owner had built the submarine to send into battle against a Union ship. He ordered two slaves to test it in the river, and there they perished. The submarine sank.

For years, that tale was dismissed as legend, but part of the story shows up in the Union's official report of its investigation of the Pioneer.

William H. Shock, the Union engineer who found the Pioneer, told Navy officials that he'd been told two "contrabands" died in it on trial runs.

That story doesn't mesh with McClintock's history of his first sub. The Pioneer was piloted by a friend of Hunley's and no one ever died on it, according to McClintock.

Could this be the slave sub? Lambousy says there is no evidence either way.

Historians have little to go on, but they believe the submarine was built in New Orleans - a number of foundries there could have done the work. It could have come from other cities - submarines were being built all across the South, and the North - at the time. Four submarines were built in Shreveport, La., and some of those have not been accounted for.

The leading candidates as the sub's builders are John Nesmyth and John Roy. Historical records show Nesmyth created a "submarine mortar" and Roy experimented with cannon that fired underwater.

But Lambousy concedes no one may ever know where the submarine really came from.

Dave Johnson, a metals conservation expert, says the sub did not absorb much saltwater while in the lake, although Pontchartrain may not have been as salty in the 19th century as it is now. He says it appears the submarine was propelled by two men while another man drove - just like the Pioneer. The sub has iron ballast in its bottom but also may have allowed water in the crew compartment.

"They may have cranked with their feet wet," Johnson says.

There are some innovative design attributes on the sub - its forward hatch, long since gone, was offset to one side, away from the crankshaft. There appears to be a place to mount a spar. Its hull plates are formed in a strange pattern - this was not a converted boiler.

"This was built to be a submarine," Johnson says.

The conservators had to chip the concrete out of the hull, a painful and painstaking task. They are now scraping the rust, treating the sub gingerly and not doing anything that can't be reversed.

Bob Neyland, Hunley project director, had a look at the sub and said he noted some similarities with the Hunley.

The New Orleans sub is more primitive, and may predate the Hunley, he said, but the two boats share several attributes.

Although he knows little about the sub, Neyland is fairly certain of one thing.

"It's not the Pioneer, because it doesn't match the two existing drawings of it. But it certainly is Civil War-era."

The little Louisiana State Museum sub shares one other trait with the H.L. Hunley - it is reluctant to give up its secrets.

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