Hunley

‍Rebel sub sinks Union sloop-of-war

‍“Biut it weren’t easy

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‍Introduction

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‍It’s 1863. South Carolina had seceded from the Union in 1860. The Confederates pushed the Union out of Ft. Sumter near Charleston, and President Lincoln proclaimed a blockade of the southern states from Virginia to Texas.

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‍The blockade was a nightmare for the Confederacy. By the summer of 1861, it was in full force. The southern states were already far behind the industrializing northern states, and the blockade worsened their economic situation.

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‍The world, especially Europe, coveted the South’s cotton, and southerners craved the luxury goods that came from Europe.

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‍If you’re a Confederate, you’re in a bind. If you’re trying to get your ship into Charleston Harbor, you can run the blockades, but it’s not easy. By 1863, the Union captured Morris Island at the entrance to the harbor. You have no navy and lack the resources to build one. Now what, coach?

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‍Two ideas popped to the fore. The first was to build semi-submersible boats, outfit them with a torpedo, and attack and sink Union ships. The second was to build a submarine and do the same. Oh yes, and do this secretly so the uppity Union does not find out.

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The semi-submersible

Ross Winans, a successful railway engineer from Maryland, and his son Thomas developed a design for what were called “cigar ships,” which were semi-submersibles. The first prototype was built in 1858, and four ships were built between 1858 and 1866, all with Winans’ money, so you can name the first the Winans.

The steamer Winans measured 16 feet in diameter amidships and was 180 feet long. She employed a radial propeller amidships, powered by two railroad steam engines. There was a narrow deck with railings, a lookout tower, and a narrow smokestack.

Great idea Ross, but she was no good and frankly, there are people mocking you. But, there were others who took notice of the work.

Dr. St. Julian Ravenel of Charleston was the son of a ship owner and, in 1863, was inspired by Winans’ work. He designed a semi-submersible torpedo vessel outfitted with a torpedo at the end of a 14-ft. iron spar on the bow. The plan was to use a steam engine to propel it toward an enemy ship and detonate the torpedo along the hull. The target was the USS New Ironsides, which was blockading the port of Charleston.

David Ebaugh worked for Ravenel and added an engine and boiler to the design. Their boat was five feet in diameter, 18 feet in diameter at the middle of the boat, and 48.5 ft long. She was a beauty.

Well, let’s run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes. They sailed her across Charleston’s South Channel without a problem. Understanding the Confederacy’s desperate situation, they named the vessel the David, drawing on the David and Goliath tale.

Old man Ebaugh thought the David was so good that he turned her over to the Confederate States (CS) Navy (CSN). As warriors, the CSN strapped a 70-lb. torpedo to the end of an iron pipe extending from the David’s bow and about 6.5 ft. underwater. The design maintained her semi-submersible status.

Lt. William T. Glassell, CSN of Virginia, long held that ramming a Union ship at night at maximum speed was the way to sink the wooden blockaders. Capt. Francis Lee, CS Army (CSA), had been toying with the idea of attaching explosives to a long pole mounted on a rowboat and then ramming it into a Union ship, with the rowboat operator holding a steel plate to shield the boat from the explosion.

Glasswell secured funding from a wealthy man and, at 1 a.m., took a crew of six to attack the USS Powhatan, a Union side-wheel steam frigate. For a variety of unexpected reasons, the mission failed, and the crew made its way back to Charleston.

Glasswell was moved north to Wilmington, North Carolina, and worked for a skipper who was a fan of the torpedo idea. In the meantime, Glasswell was moved back to South Carolina and learned about the David through a network of people, including James McClintock and Horace Hunley. The David was now located in Charleston.

Glasswell volunteered to help. On October 5, 1863, Glasswell and his crew left the Charleston wharf, bound for an attack on the USS New Ironsides. The Union ships anchored off Charleston offered plentiful targets.

The David was equipped with a spar projected about 14 ft. from the front of the David holding about 100 lbs of rifle powder in an explosive mix. Glasswell and crew brought along shotguns and pistols to defend themselves.

The David approached New Ironsides at about six or seven knots and was spotted by the officer of the deck. Glasswell fired his shotgun, killing the officer, who died a few days later. The David then struck the New Ironsides. An explosion threw water over the David and put out the fires in the boiler. Three of the four crew abandoned the ship. Union forces captured two of them. The engineer, James Tomb, swam back to the David, restarted the boiler, and escaped back to Charleston.

Two crew members from the Ironsides were injured, and the ship was damaged.

The leadership of the Union Navy viewed this attack as a serious threat and sought to build similar vessels. The Ironsides was moved to locations where a repeat attack could not occur. There were reports that the Confederacy had built 25 such submersibles, though only three were ever spotted at once.

A submarine was born: the CSS Hunley

During roughly the same period, James McClintock, a self-made inventor from Ohio, and Baxter Watson, a mechanic, began building an underwater boat in New Orleans in 1861. Horace L. Hunley, billed as a Louisiana gentleman despite being a New Orleans lawyer from Tennessee, learned of the effort and joined the group. He had the money!

Hunley knew of the possibilities already demonstrated by submarine technologies and funded their construction as his contribution to opposing these blockades, which by 1863 had become most effective.

Their first vessel was built in spring 1862 in McClintock’s machine shop. She was named the Pioneer. She had a hand-cranked, manually driven screw propeller and horizontal fins that enabled her to dive. The torpedo was to be attached to the keel of an enemy ship from the Pioneer while submerged and would be exploded by a clockwork mechanism.

Why a manually driven screw propeller? The technology for small engines suitable for submerged operations was not available. Steam engines could not do the job because they depended on oxygen and produced a lot of heat. Pioneer was only 30 ft. long, with a 10 ft. midship section. She could not carry a steam engine, even if one were available. She used one or two crew to crank.

The plan was to strap a clockwork torpedo, mounted on top of the submarine, that was intended to be screwed into the bottom of a Union ship.

The Pioneer made several descents in Lake Pontchartrain, a lake covering 530 square miles with an average depth of 12 to 14 ft. She was able to destroy a couple of targets, but was difficult to control.

Union Admiral David Farragut captured New Orleans in 1862. McClintock scuttled the Pioneer, hoping to destroy the evidence. There are still open questions about what really happened to the Pioneer.

McClintock, Watson, and Hunley were not about to give up their submarine concept. They left New Orleans and went to Mobile, Alabama, which remained under Confederate control almost until the end of the war in 1865.

This second ship was 36 ft. long, three ft. wide, and four ft. high, and was named American Diver. She was tapered to glide through the water. They tried to outfit her with an electric engine but could not produce enough power. Instead, they decided to install a hand crank and use “people power.”

In February 1863, American Diver flopped in a stormy sea at the mouth of Mobile Bay, was engulfed, and sank without loss of life. She was never recovered. That said, the designers and engineers were closing in on the development of the Hunley.

In April 1863, the submarine team found some investors, returned to the Park & Lyons machine shop, and tried again, starting to build a second ship at the machine shop in Mobile.

The boat measured thirty-five feet in length, four feet in breadth at the midships section, and five feet in depth. She had two conning towers, each eight inches in height. The pilot had to surface to get fresh air. The boat passed successful trials in Mobile harbor.

The vessel was manually propelled by a crankshaft connected to a twin-bladed propeller. She ran on “people power.” Eight men, facing each other in turn, operated the crankshaft. Her maximum speed was 4 knots. She was nicknamed the “fish boat.”

At some point during 1863, the boat was named the CSS Hunley, after money-bags Horace Hunley.

The plan was for the vessel to drag a floating torpedo behind with a 200 ft. tether, cross under a target ship’s keel, at which time the torpedo would strike the target and explode.

In July 1863, they tested her in the Mobile River against a barge. The boat dove, and when the torpedo struck, it sank the barge. Happily, the submarine surfaced, and all hands were exuberant. High-ranking officers observed the spectacle, and a top admiral proclaimed that she was ready to attack a Union ironclad. The boat was put on a train and shipped to Charleston, where she could be readied for service.

Charleston was suffering greatly from the Union blockade, and the Confederacy grew impatient because the Hunley had not yet attacked the Union. So it seized the boat, and put Lt. John Payne, CSN, in charge.

Lt. Payne, Lt. Charles Hacker, and six other crew members took the Hunley out to Charleston Harbor and dove several times. Payne and his crew went to Fort Johnson on the harbor's edge and prepared for a combat mission.

On August 29, 1863, while preparing for their first combat mission, the submarine inexplicably sank while moored at the dock. There are many stories about what happened. Whatever the case, five Confederate sailors drowned. The vessel dragged Lt. Hasker to the bottom, but he was pulled to safety. Payne and one other sailor survived the ordeal as well.

The submarine was recovered, and a new crew of volunteers was recruited, with Lt. Payne still in charge. However, Horace Hunley demanded that the boat be returned to him, and his demand was approved.

On October 15, 1863, crew from Mobile and Horace Hunley commanded the ship himself. Unbelievably, she sank again with Hunley on board. She was reportedly found with her bow buried in the seabed. Horace perished. The boat was raised, and the Hunley team was able to assess what went awry. She was prepared for another launch.

A new plan was developed. Lt. George Dixon, CSN, a strong advocate of the submarine, was placed in command. He decided to develop a different kind of torpedo containing 90 lbs. of rifle powder. It was mounted on a ten-foot spar extending forward from the bow. The steel head of the torpedo was to be driven into the hull of the intended target. The exploder was attached to 150 yards of line, and the Hunley would back off that distance. The rope would then tighten and set off the detonator.

Dixon and his crew took the boat out on multiple voyages through the end of January 1864, after which the seas were too rough.

The Hunley attacks

In February 1864, the Hunley crew encountered calm seas and set out to attack the USS Housatonic, which was anchored in the North Channel opposite Beach Inlet. The Hunley departed on February 17, 1864, for the attack.

This is a photo of artistry titled ”The Final Mission," by Mort Künstler, a world-renowned historical artist. He envisioned the faces of the crewmen using the latest forensic research conducted in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution and Friends of the Hunley.

Writing "The H.L. Hunley, Secret Weapon of the Confederacy" for the July 2002 edition of National Geographic, Glenn Oeland wrote,

"Shortly after sunset on the night of February 17, at a dock on nearby Sullivans Island, eight audacious Confederates squeezed into the claustrophobic iron vessel and set out on a quixotic mission. A spar tipped with a deadly charge of black powder was affixed to the boat’s bow. At the helm was Lt. George Dixon, a bold-hearted, battle-scarred army officer. Behind him, wedged shoulder to shoulder on a wooden bench, sat seven crewmen whose muscles powered the sub’s hand-cranked propeller."

In this artist's concept drawing presented by the Friends of Hunley, you can envision the Hunley underwater as she approaches her target. There is a 22-foot spar attached to her bow, with 90 pounds of explosives at the end.

Again, Oeland wrote this,

"As the crew began turning the heavy iron crankshaft, Dixon consulted a compass and set course for a daunting target—the steam sloop U.S.S. Housatonic, stationed four miles (six kilometers) offshore. The Rebels’ plan was to run about six feet (two meters) below the surface until they neared the blockader. But to take final aim, Dixon would have to resurface just enough to peer through the sub’s tiny forward viewport.”

"At 8:45 p.m. John Crosby, acting master aboard the Housatonic, spotted something off the starboard beam that looked at first like a 'porpoise, coming to the surface to blow.' There had been warnings of a possible attack by a Confederate 'infernal machine,' and Crosby was swift to sound the alarm. Sailors rushed to quarters and let loose a barrage of small arms fire at the alien object barely breaking the surface, but the attacker was unstoppable.

“Two minutes later, the Hunley rammed her spar into the Housatonic’s starboard side, well below the waterline. As the sub backed away, a trigger cord detonated the torpedo, blowing off the entire aft quarter of the ship. It was an epic moment.

“For reasons that are not known to this day, the Hunley never returned to port. Dixon radioed in after his attack, but was never heard from again. The Hunley sank in Charleston harbor, just outside Sullivan’s Island.”

The Hunley is recorded as the first submarine to destroy an enemy ship in combat. The cost, of course, was high. She sank three times, and 22 Confederate sailors died as a result. She sank only one Union ship, killing five Union sailors. Others have said the Hunley sank to the bottom out of control five times, drowning a total of thirty-five volunteers. History can be tough to nail down.

The sinking of the USS Housatonic cannot be dismissed as trivial, however. She was a 1,930-ton Ossipee-class steam screw sloop of war, built at the Boston Navy Yard, commissioned in August 1862, and outfitted with 12 large cannons. She arrived off Charleston in September 1862 and was very active in capturing or helping to capture several blockade runners and in supporting attacks on fortifications ashore.

The Hunley, on the other hand, was far smaller and far more fragile, powered by a crew cranking the propeller, with only one weapon mounted on a 22-foot spar attached to the bow.

Hunley found and raised: Scientific bonanza

In 1995, Clive Cussler, a novelist and underwater explorer, and a team from the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) discovered the sunken CSS Hunley resting on her starboard side off the coast of Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina. Cussler had spent 15 years searching for her.

However, Dr. E. Lee Spence, has said he discovered the Hunley in 1970. I will not get involved in this debate, though it is an interesting one.

What I will say is that Cussler unleashed a scientific progression that is a story all its own.

Cussler had conducted three searches for the Hunley between 1980 and 1995. Ralph Wilbanks, an archaeologist with the University of South Carolina, Wes Hall, a veteran marine archaeologist who headed Mid-Atlantic Technology, and Harry Pecorelli, a diver and archaeologist, dove underwater near the known location of the Houstaonic’s boiler in May 1995, searching for the Hunley.

Wes Hall found the Hunley's hatch. All three men converged on the location and confirmed their discovery. They filmed the submarine, which confirmed its identity. It was buried under three feet of silt in 28 feet of water, four miles outside Charleston.

Dr. Robert Neyland, the Naval Historical Center’s (NHC) chief underwater archaeologist and the Hunley project director, called the revolutionary vessel “a national treasure” comparable to the Wright brothers’ aircraft. Neyland said,

“In many ways this is like recovering a bottle — everything is contained inside the submarine. It is the very first successful military submarine. Not until World War I would another submarine sink an enemy ship.”

The next step was to recover the Hunley and bring her to shore. This was a challenging endeavor that took five years to accomplish. State Senator Glenn McConnell began arranging contractual agreements. In 1997, McConnell asked Warren Lasch, a businessman, to become the chairman of the Friends of the Hunley and raise money for the recovery effort.

Representatives from the Department of the Navy, the National Park Service, the Department of Natural Resources, and Oceaneering International joined the team, with Lasch leading the charge.

This was an engineering task par excellence. The site below water had to be prepared. A stable platform had to be erected to go below, and a large overhead truss had to be manufactured and lowered over the Hunley. A sling was employed and injected with inflatable foam.

On August 8, 2000, the Hunley was raised from the water. She was then placed on a transport barge and moved to what became the Warren Lasch Conservation Center on the campus of Clemson University Charleston Innovation Campus.

The work done at the center was incredible.

The scientists involved first put the Hunley in a 75,000-gallon steel tank filled with fresh water. They then removed the hulk plates, worked through the sediment and found the crank, the wooden bench that held the crew, and personal items. They found the cranium of one of the crew, a Union soldier’s dog tag, which indicated there may have been a spy on board, a lantern, and a $20 gold coin.

They also found Lt. Dixon’s remains and his pocket watch. They conducted three-dimensional scanning of the crew’s skeletal remains, and DNA matches were made. All kinds of equipment were removed and further examined. They submerged the Hunley in a bath of sodium hydroxide to conserve the iron structure. The scientists removed the sediment and rust encasing the boat and did the same for the interior. They found jewelry, a lantern, binoculars, buttons, a canteen, a watch, a shoe, suspenders, and even a bandana.

The scientists used forensic evidence to perform facial reconstructions of Lt. Dixon and the crew. On April 17, 2004, the remains of the crew were buried in the Confederate Section of the Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston.

And so it was, the crew of the first submarine to sink a Union man-of-war.

I encourage you to visit and browse the website of the Friends of the Hunley.