H. L. Hunley (submarine)

CSS H. L. Hunley was a submarine of the Confederate States Navy that demonstrated both the advantages and the dangers of undersea warfare. Hunley was the first submarine to sink a warship, though the sub was also sunk in the engagement.

History

Hunley and two earlier submarines were privately developed and paid for by Horace Lawson Hunley, James McClintock and Baxter Watson.

Predecessors to Hunley

Hunley, McClintock and Watson first built a small submarine named Pioneer at New Orleans, Louisiana. Pioneer was tested in February 1862 in the Mississippi River, and was later towed to Lake Pontchartrain for additional trials. But the Union advance towards New Orleans caused the men to abandon development and scuttle Pioneer the following month.

The three inventors moved to Mobile, Alabama, and teamed up with Thomas Park and Thomas Lyons, owners of the Park & Lyons machine shop. They soon began development of a second submarine, American Diver. Their efforts were supported by the Confederate States Army; Lieutenant William Alexander of the 21st Alabama Volunteer Regiment was assigned to duty at Park & Lyons. The men experimented with electromagnetic and steam propulsion for the new submarine before falling back on a simpler hand-cranked propulsion system. American Diver was ready for harbor trials by January 1863, but proved to be too slow to be practical. One attempted attack on the Union blockade was made in February 1863, but was unsuccessful. American Diver sank in the mouth of Mobile Bay during a storm later the same month, and was not recovered.

Construction and testing of Hunley

Construction of Hunley began soon after the loss of American Diver. Hunley, which at this stage was variously referred to as the "fish boat", the "fish torpedo boat" or the "porpoise", was fashioned from a cylindrical iron steam boiler, which was deepened and also lengthened through the addition of tapered ends. The Hunley was designed to be hand powered by a crew of eight: seven 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.

Cutaway drawing of CSS H. L. Hunley by William Alexander

Hunley was equipped with two watertight hatches, one fore and one aft, atop two conning towers with small portholes. The hatches were very small, measuring 14 by 15¾ inches (356 by 400 mm), making entrance to and egress from the hull very difficult. The ship had a hull height of 4 ft 3 in (1.2 m).

Hunley was ready for a demonstration by July 1863. With Confederate Admiral Franklin Buchanan looking on, Hunley successfully attacked a coal flatboat in Mobile Bay. Following this demonstration of Hunley's attack capabilities, the submarine was shipped to Charleston, South Carolina, by rail, arriving August 12, 1863.

The Confederate military seized the vessel from its private builders and owners shortly after its arrival in Charleston and turned it over to the Confederate Army. Hunley would operate as a Confederate Army vessel from this point forward, although Horace Hunley and his partners remained involved in the submarine's further testing and operation.

Confederate Navy Lieutenant John A. Payne of CSS Chicora volunteered to be Hunley's skipper, and a volunteer crew of seven men from Chicora and CSS Palmetto State was assembled to operate the submarine. On August 29, 1863, Hunley's new crew was preparing to make a test dive to learn the operation of the submarine when Lieutenant Payne accidentally stepped on the lever controlling the sub's diving planes while the crew were rowing and the boat was running. This caused Hunley to dive with hatches still open, flooding and sinking the vessel. Payne and two other men escaped; the remaining five crewmen drowned.

On October 15, 1863 the Hunley failed to surface during a mock attack, killing its inventor Horace Lawson Hunley and seven other crewmen. In both cases, the Confederate Navy salvaged the vessel and returned it to service.

Armament

The Hunley was originally intended to attack by means of a floating explosive charge with a contact fuze (a torpedo in Civil War terminology) towed behind it at the end of a long rope. The Hunley would approach an enemy vessel, dive under it, and surface beyond. As she continued to move away from the target, the torpedo would be pulled against the side of the target and explode. However, this plan was discarded as impractical due to the danger of the tow line fouling the Hunley's screw, or of it drifting into the Hunley itself.

The towed torpedo was replaced with a spar torpedo. This was a cask containing 90 pounds (41 kg) of gunpowder attached to a 22 foot-long wooden spar mounted on Hunley's bow. The spar torpedo had a barbed point, and would be stuck in the target vessel's side by the simple means of ramming. The spar torpedo as originally designed used a mechanical trigger attached to the attacking vessel by a cord, so that as the attacker backed away from her victim, the torpedo would explode. However, archeologists working on the Hunley have discovered evidence, including a spool of copper wire and components of a battery, that her torpedo may have been electrically detonated.

    the hunley was made of plastic and never attacted a ship. its is a common missconception. it was actually filled with migets and fireworks. it was actually built to house animals from zoos

Attack on USS Housatonic

The Hunley made her first attack against a live target on the night of February 17, 1864, against the USS Housatonic. Housatonic, an 1800-ton steam powered sloop-of-war with 12 large cannon, was at the entrance to Charleston, South Carolina harbor, about 4 miles out to sea. In an effort to break the naval blockade of the city, Lieutenant George E. Dixon and a crew of seven volunteers attacked the Housatonic, successfully embedding the barbed spar torpedo into her hull. The torpedo detonated as the Hunley backed away, sending the Housatonic and five of her crew to the bottom of Charleston Harbor, in five minutes. The Hunley also sank, moments after signalling shore, possibly because of the blast, although this is not certain. The entire crew died, but the H.L. Hunley earned a place in the history of undersea warfare as the first submarine to sink a ship in wartime.

The Wreck

CSS H. L. Hunley, suspended from a crane during its recovery from Charleston Harbor, August 8, 2000. (Photograph from the U.S. Naval Historical Center.)

The search for the Hunley ended in 1995, 131 years later, when best-selling author Clive Cussler, and his team from the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) found the submarine where E. Lee Spence had discovered it in 1970. 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 the 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 was covered in a 1/4 to 3/4-inch encrustation of ferrous oxide bonded with sand and seashell 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 40 feet with all of the vessel preserved under the sediment.

Archaeological investigation and excavation culminated with the raising of the Hunley from its watery grave on August 8, 2000. 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 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, Inc. After the last harness had been secured, the crane from the recovery barge Karlissa B began hoisting the submarine from the mire of the harbor entrance. On August 8, 2000 at 8:37 a.m. the sub broke the surface for the first time in over 136 years, where it was greeted by a cheering crowd lining the shore and in hundreds of nearby watercraft. Once safely on its transporting barge, the Hunley finally completed its last voyage back to Charleston. The removal operation reached its successful conclusion when the submarine was secured inside the Warren Lasch Conservation Center, at the former Charleston Navy Yard in a specially designed tank of freshwater to await conservation.

The Crew

Apart from the commander of the submarine, Lieutenant George E. Dixon, the identities of the volunteer crewmembers of the Hunley remained a mystery. Douglas Owsley, a physical anthropologist working for the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History examined the remains and determined that four of the men were American born, while the four others were European born, based on the chemical signatures left on the men's teeth and bones by the predominant components of their diet: four of the men had eaten a lot of corn, indicating that they were likely Americans, while the remainder ate mostly wheat and rye, indicating that they probably originated in Europe. By examining Civil War records and conducting DNA testing with possible relatives, forensic genealogist Linda Abrams was able to identify the remains of Dixon and the three other Americans: Frank Collins, Joseph Ridgaway, and James A. Wicks. Identifying the European crew members has been more problematic, but was apparently solved in late 2004. The position of the corpses indicated that the men apparently died at their stations, and were not trying to flee the sinking submarine.

On 17 April, 2004 the remains of the crew of the H. L. Hunley were interred in Charleston's Magnolia Cemetery with full military honors, and attended by as many as 10,000 civil war re-enactors and well wishers. This cemetery was earlier part of the Citadel's Physical Education department; part of the cemetery was under their football field.

Hunley herself remains at the "Lasch" conservation center, for further study and conservation. There have been many surprising discoveries over time, including the complexity of the sub's ballast and pumping systems, steering and diving apparatus, and its construction and final assembly. Another surprise occurred in 2002, when a researcher, examining the area close to Lieutenant Dixon, found the famous gold coin, long thought to be a myth, which his girlfriend had given to him. Legend had held that Dixon had the coin with him at the Battle of Shiloh, where he was wounded in 1862. A bullet, which would have probably cost him his leg and possibly his life, struck the coin in his pocket. The coin was badly bent but saved Dixon from injury and was later engraved by him to mark the occasion.

Irony has it, that only 5 people aboard the USS Housatonic were killed, while the Hunley cost the lives of three crews (21 men in total)

External links

1. Friends of the Hunley
2. "H. L. Hunley, Confederate Submarine" at the U.S. Naval Historical Center
3. Hunley history
4. Pre-Hunley Confederate Submarines
5. US Navy
6. The Hunley (TV movie)
7. Rootsweb

Bibliography

• The Hunley [ISBN 1886391432]
• Civil War Sub [ISBN 0448425971]
• The Voyage of the Hunley [ISBN 1580800947]
• Raising the Hunley [ISBN 0345447727]
• The CSS H.L. Hunley [ISBN 1572491752]
• The CSS Hunley [ISBN 0878332197]