CSS H.L. Hunley

1864

Charleston, the first combat submarine, the spar torpedo Location: Atlantic Ocean, off Charleston, South Carolina · Coordinates: 32.71°N 79.77°W · Casualties: 8 · Survivors: 0 · Depth: 8 m · Cause: unknown · post-attack loss — Sank the Union sloop USS Housatonic with a spar torpedo on the night of 17 February 1864, the first combat use of a submarine in history. The Hunley herself was lost on the same night after the attack; her hull was recovered in 2000 and extensive analysis suggests the crew were incapacitated by the shock of the torpedo detonation transmitted through the water. · Fate: recovered 2000 · conserved · Type: submarine · hand-cranked · Tonnage: ~7.5 tons · Crew: 8 · Flag: Confederate States · Launched: 1863 Confederate submarine, hand-cranked by a crew of eight, armed with a spar torpedo on a ten-metre pole. On the night of 17 February 1864 off Charleston, she became the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship, putting her torpedo into the Union sloop USS Housatonic. She never returned. Recovered in 2000 and conserved for twenty years; analysis suggests the crew were stunned unconscious by the shock of their own torpedo transmitted through the water and drowned at their stations. The Vessel The H. L. Hunley was a Confederate States Navy submarine built in Mobile, Alabama, in 1863 under the private direction of the engineer Horace Lawson Hunley, from whom she took her name. She was 12 metres long, roughly 1.2 metres in diameter, constructed from a cut-down cylindrical boiler with pointed ends riveted on, and was propelled by eight men turning a hand crank that drove a single three-bladed propeller. She displaced approximately 7.5 tonnes submerged and carried a crew of eight: seven crankmen and a commander who steered and managed the dive planes. She was the third submersible Horace Hunley had built. The first, the Pioneer, had been tested at New Orleans in 1862 and scuttled when the city fell to Union forces. The second, the American Diver, had been lost in Mobile Bay in early 1863 during a test that confirmed she was underpowered. The Hunley was the improved version, with the eight-man hand crank replacing the earlier four-man design, built to attack the Union blockade of Charleston, South Carolina. Her weapon was a "spar torpedo": a 4.5-metre wooden pole extending from her bow, tipped with a 41-kilogram copper canister containing black powder. The attack method required the submarine to approach its target below the surface, ram the spar into the target's hull below the waterline, back off, and detonate the charge by a lanyard as the submarine withdrew. The method was crude, dangerous, and unprecedented in naval warfare. The Disaster The Hunley approached the Housatonic from the southwest at perhaps 3 knots, awash or nearly so to present minimal silhouette. She was sighted by the Union watch officer, Acting Master John Crosby, at approximately 20:45 at a distance of 90 metres. Crosby rang the alarm bell, ordered the anchor chain slipped, and directed musketry at the approaching object. Rifles fired, revolvers fired. None of the small-arms fire penetrated the Hunley's iron hull. At approximately 20:45:30 the spar torpedo made contact with the Housatonic's starboard quarter, just forward of her mizzen mast. The detonation of the 41-kilogram black-powder charge opened an 3-metre hole in her hull below the waterline. The explosion lifted the Housatonic bodily; she settled back into the water and began to flood rapidly. She sank in 9 metres, her masts still projecting above the surface, at approximately 20:52. Five of her 160-man crew died. The Hunley never returned to Breach Inlet. Dixon and his crew were sighted signalling toward Sullivan's Island from a short distance southeast of the Housatonic sinking at approximately 21:00 on 17 February; they were never seen again. The Hunley was officially lost. The Confederate naval command classified her missing and investigated for decades without locating the wreck. She was the first submarine in human history to sink an enemy warship in combat, and she had not come home from the attack.