CHARLESTON — A silk bandana worn around a crew member’s neck. A boot that still bears the footprint of the man who wore it. And a brass oil can with oil still inside.

These are among items recovered and preserved from the Confederate submarine, the H.L. Hunley, which was lost at sea for more than a century. It’s an exhibit more than 25 years in the making, with the articles of clothing and bits of cloth worn by members of the eight-man crew going on display for the first time at The Charleston Museum next month.

“History can feel distant until something brings you closer to the people who lived it,” said Kellen Butler, executive director of the Friends of the Hunley nonprofit. “These remnants of clothing do just that, offering a remarkably personal connection to the men of the Hunley.”

The exhibit, “Textiles from the Deep: Findings from the H.L. Hunley Submarine,” opens Oct.3, remaining on display through April 4.

Funding from the non-profit friends group and the state-appointed South Carolina Hunley Commission paid for the exhibit, Butler said.

The Hunley’s history

The Hunley made history as the world’s first attack submarine on Feb. 17, 1864, when the all-volunteer crew boarded the ship and used it to sink the USS Housatonic, one of the Union’s mightiest naval blockade ships, off the coast of Charleston.

But after completing its mission, the Hunley mysteriously disappeared. It remained missing until 1995, when novelist and underwater explorer Clive Cussler found the shipwreck 4 miles off the coast of Sullivan’s Island after 15 years of hunting.

Another five years of ownership and funding fights ensued, led by former state Sens. Glenn McConnell and Ernie Passailaigue, of Charleston, and former U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings, D-S.C.

South Carolina and the federal government eventually reached an agreement to keep the Hunley in the Palmetto State. Under the agreement, the United States retains title, but South Carolina gets custody.

In August 2000, crews finally hoisted the sub from the ocean floor and transported it to Clemson University’s Warren Lasch Conservation Center at the former Charleston Naval Base in North Charleston, where it remains submerged in a chemical bath for preservation.

Excavation of the Hunley’s interior began in 2001, with the remains of the crew buried at Magnolia Cemetery. Working with the Friends of the Hunley, Clemson scientists spent the next 25 years preserving the ship’s contents.

“They didn’t take a lot of things because they thought they had a mission to go out and come back,” Butler said of the crew. “They weren’t planning on staying.”

A preservation challenge

To restore the clothing and other textiles, the scientists meticulously cleaned each item while it was submerged in water before freeze drying the various cloth — silk, wool, cashmere and cotton. There are also personal items, including a wallet and a mustache comb.

“Conserving textiles in marine environments is quite a feat. The fact that we can now preserve, study, and share them is an extraordinary opportunity,” said Virginia Theerman, curator of historic textiles at The Charleston Museum.

The Friends of the Hunley so far have been unable to display the items at their North Charleston museum due to a lack of humidity controls, Butler said. More than a century in salt water also damaged much of the clothing.

But Theerman, of The Charleston Museum, and Johanna Rivera-Diaz, a conservator at Clemson’s Warren Lasch Conservation Center, have put their collective scientific and historical expertise together to build a more complete picture of what the crew might have been wearing the night they went out.

What visitors will see

In the museum exhibit, visitors will see the pieces of recovered textiles next to mannequins dressed in matching historic garments from the time period.

“Clothes can be a way of really humanizing something that seems very distant and far away,” Theerman said. “These were men who were possibly scared, who were seeking valor, who had many many motivations for the actions that they took, and so reminding ourselves that every action taken by someone in history is also an action that we can imagine putting ourselves into, and really rediscovering what that might have felt like.”

An acrylic reproduction of the Hunley, showing the size of the crew cabin and position of tools, stands on the other side of the museum’s u-shaped gallery.

One of the original slings used to pull the Hunley out of the Atlantic Ocean and a jumpsuit from the volunteer team that worked to excavate the ship is also on display. And throughout the exhibit is the story of enslaved people who worked on the Hunley, sinking and raising it several times during test runs in the harbor, as well as those who made gunpowder at Ashley Ferry Nitre Works.

All together, Theerman said, the exhibit puts a new lens on a story that captured global attention for decades.