The H.L. Hunley - Civil War Submarine
On August 8, 2000, a crowd gathered at Charleston Harbor in South Carolina. They were there to watch the recovery of a vessel that had been underwater for 136 years, a vessel that had been touted as the most important underwater archaeological find of the 20th century.
The crowd was awaiting the recovery of the H.L. Hunley , the Civil War-era submarine that is widely recognized as the first submarine to actually sink a warship. While the excavation of the Hunley was an important and exciting event, the history of the ship is just as intriguing and significant.
While submarines already boasted nearly 100 years of history in the United States, the first being used during the American Revolution, the Confederate Hunley was the first submarine that could truly be considered a precursor to the modern submarine.
The story of the Hunley begins in New Orleans in 1862. Horace Lawson Hunley, James McClintock, and Baxter Watson began work on a small submarine dubbed the Pioneer . Although the Pioneer was tested in the Mississippi River, work on the small submarine was abandoned when the Union Army began to converge on New Orleans.
Hunley, McClintock, and Watson moved on to Mobile, Alabama, where they began to work with machinists Thomas Park and Thomas Lyons. Another submarine, American Diver, was constructed and abandoned as too slow before the men began construction on what would become the Hunley.
Known during development and construction as “the porpoise,” the Hunley lived up to her nickname; a sleek design with an appearance years ahead of her time, the Hunley was a 40 foot long watercraft made especially for subverting and destroying Union boats.
The Hunley was a relatively small watercraft, with a hull height of only a little over four feet, designed to be manned by a crew of eight - seven to turn the hand-cranked propeller, one to direct and steer her. At each end of the vessel were ballast tanks that could be flooded by valves to allow the vessel to travel underwater or pumped dry by hand pumps when the vessel needed to come to the surface. These ballast tanks were supported by iron weights that were bolted to the underside of the Hunley ; if the vessel needed to rise to the surface quickly, these ballasts could be dropped from inside the vessel.
After a successful demonstration, the Hunley was shipped to Charleston by rail and drafted into service by the Confederate Navy, with decidedly mixed results; two test runs of the vessel claimed the lives of thirteen men, including her inventor, Horace Lawson Hunley.
Undaunted by the Hunley’s less-than-stellar record, the Confederate Navy charged on ahead with plans for the vessel, and on February 17, 1864, the submarine was employed in her first - and only - mission: the sinking of the USS Housatonic.
The Union blockade of southern ports had paralyzed the South, particularly the blockade on Charleston. The Housatonic, 1240-ton steam-powered warship, equipped with a dozen large cannons, was employed in the blockade of Charleston Harbor.
Confederate Naval Lieutenant George E. Dixon, along with a crew of seven men who’d volunteered for the Hunley’s first mission, attacked the Housatonic, and managed to bring the ship down with a torpedo to the hull. The Housatonic and five of her crew were at the bottom of the harbor in a matter of minutes; the Hunley was to meet a similar fate.
The reasons for the Hunley’s sinking are unclear. It has been theorized that the torpedo that sunk the Housatonic also damaged the Hunley, as well, or that the torpedo actually misfired, taking the submarine down along with the Housatonic. Whatever the reason, the submarine sunk in the Charleston Harbor with all eight of her crew inside.
Irregardless of her tragic fate, the Hunley proved to naval engineers that a submarine watercraft could indeed be created for destruction of enemy ships, changing modern naval warfare forever.
After her excavation in 2000, the Hunley was taken to the Warren Lasch Conservation Center at the decommissioned Charleston Navy Yard, where the she now rests in a specially designed water tank while she is under the process of conservation. In 2004, her crew, identified by DNA testing, was laid to rest with full military honors at Charleston’s Magnolia Cemetary.
