Quote:
Originally Posted by Maggie Leung
I've been rereading some Twain before I dig into his autobiography and am wondering:
What is the concept behind the people searching for Tom and Huck shooting off cannons in hopes of bringing up their bodies from underwater? How was that supposed to work?
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Shock waves are the answer and it probably worked often enough when the body had been in water that was not too cold and was ready to float but mired in mud. (It's fairly common to find them on the bottom in a hands and knees position so they would nt be stuck hard)
I think they mentioned mercury in loaves of bread also and that probably worked in a current. It got saturated and sank at about the same rate a body would. I've recovered a few bodies by just exhaling at the point the people thought they went under and letting myself sink. Even in fairly rapid current a body tends to stay in one place for quite a while because of the laminar flow of the water.