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On a foggy December morning more than 100 years ago, U.S. Navy submarine USS H-3 lost its course while negotiating rough waters off the coast of Humboldt Bay. The submarine became stranded about 300 yards off Samoa Beach, triggering a harrowing rescue mission to save the 27-person crew.

In today’s episode of Humboldt Outdoors, local documentarian Ray Olson and Oregon-based author John Humboldt Gates, author of the Before the Dolphins Guild, take us through the series of events that led up to the submarine running aground on our coast and the tumultuous 10-hour rescue that would follow. 

“It was a big ordeal,” Gates says in the video above. “All the crew was rescued. You had two people [who] were pretty severely injured that had to be taken to the hospital. You had people with exposure. Some were in minor shock … but everybody was in pretty good shape and [in] good spirits. … As the sun set, the submarine was still out there. They closed the hatches and they left it there for the night.”

So, how did they get the submarine out of the surf? Click “play” on the video above to find out!

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