For God, Family and Republic

One-hundred and forty-two years ago, on February 17, 1864, the C.S.S. Hunley sank in a accident, but not before successfully attacking and sinking a U.S. naval warship. The Hunley was the first submarine to attack and sink a warship, though the sub was also sunk in that same engagement.

It is helpful to capture the background to the Confederate submarine program. In the 1860s, following the secession of the southern states from the Union, and Lincoln's hostility and invasion of those states, the Union possessed a considerable advantage in maritime power. New York and New England were renowned for its shipbuilding industry, thus the Union possessed a decisive advantage of naval power. General-in-Chief Winfield Scott devised a plan in 1861 to crush the Confederacy, and what to strangle southern ports from trade by a naval blockade. This plan was euphemistically dubbed the Anaconda Plan. Thus, the underdog Confederacy hoped to devise ways of breaking the blockade.

"Scott's Great Snake" - The illustration of Union General Winfield Scott's plan to strangle the South with an economic blockade.

Against this blockade, the Confederate strategists sought to innovate combat submarine research, and field combat submarines. The program was pioneered by private investors Horace Lawson Hunley, James McClintock and Baxter Watson.

Confederate inventor Horace Lawson Hunley converted a steam boiler into a submarine. This Confederate submarine could be propelled at four knots by a hand-driven screw. During trials the submarine sank twice during tests in Charleston Harbor killing the crew. In fact, Hunley, the inventor himself was asphyxiated with eight other crew members. Despite this setback, the submarine was recovered, and a new crew was found. To convert it into a combat submarine, it was armed with a 90-pound charge of powder at the end of a long pole projecting from the submarine. The ideal was to simply ram the enemy ship , and the submarine crew would backpedal away from the submarine as quickly as possible thereafter. And on February 17, 1864, the Hunley attacked and sank a federal steam sloop, U.S.S. Housatonic.

Incidentally, the Housatonic was a steam sloop-of-war of the United States Navy, named for one of the rivers of New England, that was launched in 1861 from Boston's Navyyard. It weighed over 1240 tons and was 207 feet long.

The submarine displacement was 7.5 tons, its length was 39 ft 6 in (12.0 m), its beam was 3 ft 10 in, while its propulsion was driven by a hand-cranked propeller, its speed was 4 knots (7 km/h), while its capactiy was 1 officer, 7 enlisted, and its lone armament consisted of a spar torpedo. The Hunley was equipped with two watertight hatches, one fore and one aft, atop two conning towers with small portholes. The hatches were small, measuring 14 by 15¾ inches (356 by 400 mm), which made entrance to and egress from the hull difficult.

The Hunley demonstrated the advantages and dangers attendant to submarine warfare, but inaugurated a whole new era in naval history.

A History of the C.S.S. Hunley from the Naval Historical Center
I won't trifle further with making my own recollection of facts, as the official U.S. Naval Historical Center adequately sums it up. I've thrown in some illustrations and pictures to satisfy the reader's curiosity.

H.L. Hunley was a Confederate submersible that demonstrated the advantage and danger of undersea warfare. Although not this nation's first submarine, Hunley was the first submarine to engage and sink a warship

Privately built in 1863 by Park and Lyons of Mobile, Alabama, Hunley was fashioned from a cylindrical iron steam boiler, which was deepened and also lengthened through the addition of tapered ends. Hunley was designed to be hand powered by a crew of nine: eight to turn the hand-cranked propeller and one to steer and direct the boat. As a true submarine, each end was equipped with ballast tanks that could be flooded by valves or pumped dry by hand pumps. Extra ballast was added through the use of iron weights bolted to the underside of the hull. In the event the submarine needed additional buoyancy to rise in an emergency, the iron weight could be removed by unscrewing the heads of the bolts from inside the vessel.

On 17 February 1864, the Confederate submarine made a daring late night attack on USS Housatonic, a 1,240-ton (B) sloop-of-war with 16 guns, in Charleston Harbor off the coast of South Carolina. H.L. Hunley rammed Housatonic with spar torpedo packed with explosive powder and attached to a long pole on its bow. The spar torpedo embedded in the sloop's wooden side was detonated by a rope as Hunley backed away. The resulting explosion that sent Housatonic with five crew members to the bottom of Charleston Harbor also sank Hunley with its crew of eight. H.L. Hunley earned a place in the history of undersea warfare as the first submarine to sink a ship in wartime.

The search for Hunley ended 131 years later when best-selling author Clive Cussler and his team from the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) discovered the submarine after a 14-year search. At the time of discovery, Cussler and NUMA were conducting this research in partnership with the South Carolina Institute of Anthropology and Archaeology (SCIAA). The team realized that they had found Hunley after exposing the forward hatch and the ventilator box (the air box for the attachment of a snorkel). The submarine rested on its starboard side at about a 45-degree angle and is covered in a 1/4 to 3/4-inch encrustation of ferrous oxide bonded with sand and shell particles. Archaeologists exposed a little more on the port side and found the bow dive plane on that side. More probing revealed an approximate length of 34 feet with most, if not all, of the vessel preserved under the sediment.

The Recovery of the Hunley
In August 2000 archaeological investigation and excavation culminated with the resurrection of Hunley from its watery grave. A large team of professionals from the Naval Historical Center's Underwater Archaeology Branch, National Park Service, the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology and various other individuals investigated the vessel, measuring and documenting it prior to preparing it for removal. Once the on-site investigation was complete, harnesses were slipped underneath the sub one by one and attached to a truss designed by Oceaneering, International, Inc. Then after the last harness had been secured, the crane from Karlissa B began hoisting the submarine from the mire of the harbor. On August 8 at 8:37 AM the sub broke the surface for the first time in over 136 years where it was greeted by a cheering crowd in hundreds of nearby watercraft. Once safely on its transporting barge, Hunley finally completed its last voyage back to Charleston, passing by hundreds of spectators on Charleston's shores and bridges. The removal operation reached its successful conclusion when the submarine was secured inside the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in a specially designed tank of freshwater to await conservation.

All who viewed the vessel said Hunley incorporated an unexpectedly graceful and beautiful design. It is certainly a marvel both for its time period and for modern day researchers. No doubt this small submarine will be the key to unlock many mysteries of a bygone era.

Confederate Submarine CSS H.L. Hunley, suspended from a crane during its recovery off the coast of South Carolina, 8 August 2000. Photographed by Barbara Voulgaris, U.S. Naval Historical Center (public domain).

The Raising of the Hunley
Following the raising of the Hunley, the members of the Hunley crew were given a funeral and buried with full military honors in Charleston, South Carolina, on April 18, 2004. Veterans of the Silent Service of the U.S. Navy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans were involved in the elaborate ceremony, which I have on DVD video. Today, there is a replica of the Hunley at a museum in Mobile, Alabama, and the real Hunley which was recovered in 2000 is held in South Carolina.

Related Web Sites
Answers.com article
Charleston Illustrated
Friends of the Hunley
H.L. Hunley, Confederate Submarine
TheHunley.com