CHARLESTON, S.C. - Scientists excavating a ballast tank on the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley uncovered a small wooden cask, but they're not quite sure what it was used for.

It could have held water or liquor, it might have served as a float to gauge the water level in the ballast tank or it might have had a more mundane purpose, said Robert Neyland, the Hunley project director.

"It could have been a chamber pot," Neyland said Thursday. "This is the question the school kids always ask is "Where is the bathroom?"

The hand-cranked Hunley, the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship, sank with its crew of eight on Feb. 17, 1864, after sinking the Union blockade ship Housatonic off Charleston.

The sub was raised three years ago and brought to a conservation lab at the old Charleston Naval Base.

Scientists this week began excavating the ballast tanks on the sub - the last areas where sediment needs to be removed.

While workers carefully removed sediment from around the cask in the front ballast tank Thursday, others worked to hammer out rivets and remove an iron plate to get better access to the tank at the rear of the sub.

The Hunley was designed with ballast tanks at front and back with the crew compartment in the middle.

The wooden cask is about 10 inches long and 8 inches around and has metal hoops at either end. It was filled with orange-colored sediment which was not typical of the sediment found in other places on the sub. The sediment was sent to Clemson University for analysis.

The cask did not appear to have a top, which might make it more likely it was used as something other than a tank float, Neyland said. A cork was also found, he said.

When all the sediment is removed from the ballast tanks in a few weeks, the Hunley will essentially be excavated.

There are some items such as the wooden crew bench, some cloth and some canteens that have corroded and attached to the hull that will need to be removed later, Neyland said.

Officials are making plans to bury the remains of the crew, which were removed earlier, in a service next April.

"We think by spring we're going to be able to identify each one and tell a story about these people as well as show the public how they looked," said state Sen. Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston, the chairman of the South Carolina Hunley Commission.

He said work on reconstructing the faces of the crew based on remains found in the submarine is about 80 percent complete. And, he said, genealogist Linda Abrams has been working to identify the crewmen.

Researchers don't want to say much about what they have found because if details leak out, Civil War buffs "go on the hunt and could disturb records. Additionally, what it does is people say 'I'm kin to them,' " McConnell said.

"We do have some information but at this time it would be premature to release it because it would compromise the integrity of the research," he added.

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Friends of the Hunley: www.hunley.org