H. L. Hunley (submarine)
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 H. L. Hunley on the pier |
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| Career |  |
|---|---|
| Laid down: | 1863 |
| Launched: | July 1863 |
| Status: | sank February 17, 1864 |
| General Characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 7.5 tons |
| Length: | 39 ft 6 in (12.0 m) |
| Beam: | 3 ft 10 in |
| Propulsion: | hand-cranked propeller |
| Speed: | 4 knots (7 km/h) (surface) |
| Complement: | 1 officer, 7 enlisted |
| Armament: | spar torpedo |
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 lost following the engagement. Though some know the submarine by the name CSS H. L. Hunley, she was not commissioned and therefore does not warrant the "CSS" prefix.
The H. L. Hunley, almost 40-feet (12-m) long, was built at Mobile, Alabama, launched in July 1863, and shipped by rail to Charleston, SC on August 12, 1863. On February 17, 1864, Hunley attacked and sank the 1800-ton, steam-powered sloop-of-war USS Housatonic in Charleston harbor, but soon after, the Hunley also sank, drowning all 8 crewmen. Over 136 years later, on August 8, 2000, the wreck was recovered, and on April 17, 2004, the DNA-identified remains of the 8 Hunley crewmen were interred in Charleston's Magnolia Cemetery, with full military honors.
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[edit] History
Hunley and two earlier submarines were privately developed and paid for by Horace Lawson Hunley, James McClintock and Baxter Watson.
[edit] Predecessors to Hunley
Hunley, McClintock and Watson first built a small submarine named Pioneer at New Orleans, Louisiana. The 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 joined with Thomas Park and Thomas Lyons, two machinists. 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 Infantry Regiment was assigned oversight duty for the project. The men experimented with electromagnetic and steam propulsion for the new submarine, before falling back on a simpler hand-cranked propulsion system. The American Diver was ready for harbor trials by January 1863, but proved too slow to be practical. One attempted attack on the Union blockade was made in February 1863, but was unsuccessful. The submarine sank in the mouth of Mobile Bay during a storm later the same month and was not recovered.
[edit] Construction and testing of Hunley
Construction of the Hunley began soon after the loss of the American Diver. At this stage the Hunley was variously referred to as the "fish boat", the "fish torpedo boat" or the "porpoise". Perhaps because a cutaway drawing by William Alexander, who had seen the real boat, showed a short and stubby machine, legend long held that the Hunley was made from a cast-off steam boiler. In fact, the Hunley was purpose-designed and built for its role, and the sleek, modern-looking craft shown in R.G. Skerrett's 1902 drawing is an accurate representation. 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. 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.
The 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).
The Hunley was ready for a demonstration by July 1863. Supervised by Confederate Admiral Franklin Buchanan, the Hunley successfully attacked a coal flatboat in Mobile Bay. Following this demonstration, 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. The 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 the 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 and seven other crewmen. In both cases, the Confederate Navy salvaged the vessel and returned it to service.
[edit] Armament
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 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 iron pipe 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 Hunley have discovered evidence, including a spool of copper wire and components of a battery, that her torpedo may have been electrically detonated.
Hunley made her first attack against a live target on the night of February 17, 1864. The vessel was the USS Housatonic. Housatonic, an 1800-ton, steam-powered sloop-of-war with 12 large cannon, stationed at the entrance to Charleston, South Carolina harbor, about 5 miles (8 km) 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 Housatonic, successfully embedding the barbed spar torpedo into her hull. The torpedo was detonated as the submarine backed away, sending Housatonic and five of her crew to the bottom of Charleston harbor in five minutes, although many survived in 2 lifeboats or by climbing rigging until rescued. Hunley also sank, moments after signaling shore of the successful attack, possibly from damage caused by the torpedo blast, though this is not certain. (NOTE: The possibility must be considered that the torpedo was not detonated on command, but rather malfunctioned due to damage incurred during the attack. In previous tests and actual attacks, it was intended that the torpedo should be detonated approximately 150 to 175 feet away from the target, so as to minimize any damage to the sub. However, witnesses aboard the Housatonic uniformly stated that the torpedo detonated at no more than about one hundred feet, and possibly as close as seventy-five.)
There is convincing evidence that Hunley actually survived as long as an hour after the attack (which took place at approximately 8:45 PM). Authors Mark Ragan and Clive Cussler both provide convincing evidence that George E. Dixon flashed a blue signal lantern to the sub's base at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island as late as 9:30 PM, but the indications were that no one ever saw it except crew members of the Housatonic, who were in the ship's rigging awaiting rescue. At that point, George E. Dixon took the sub under to try and make it back to Sullivan's Island. However, shock damage from the torpedo and magazine explosion had probably opened the sub's seams, and she was slowly filling with water. Her crew, likely suffering from malnutrition, respiratory problems, cold, and exhaustion, would have failed to realize that the submarine was slowly going under. Submerging again would have put enough water aboard that her crew would likely have driven her directly into the shallow bottom, blocking the ballast intakes and making it impossible to pump her back out. Cold and immersion would have killed the crew relatively quickly.
Her crew perished, but H.L. Hunley had earned a place in the history of undersea warfare as the first submarine to sink a ship in wartime.
[edit] The Wreck
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The neutrality of this section is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. |
The discovery of the Hunley was made in 1970 by pioneer underwater archaeologist E. Lee Spence, who had already made a name for himself by discovering a number of Civil War wrecks in the Charleston area, including but not limited to the Georgiana, Mary Bowers, Constance, Norseman and Stonewall Jackson. However, Dr. Spence's efforts to get permission to salvage the vessel were to no avail. His records show that he notified the National Park Service, National Geographic Society, GSA, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Navy, the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology & Anthropology (SCIAA) and numerous other agencies in his efforts to obtain all of the necessary permits and licenses. Some were granted, but others were not. Without them all, the work would have been illegal. Dr. Spence's stated objective was to raise the vessel and to donate it to the State. Public documents show that Dr. Spence even mapped the wreck's location to within the accuracy of the charts at the time, and sent copies of the map to all of the agencies with which he corresponded. However, despite the overwhelming evidence of Spence's discovery, the search for Hunley did not officially end until 1995. Nearly 131 years after the vessel sank, best-selling author Clive Cussler and a team from the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), in a research partnership with the South Carolina Institute of Anthropology and Archaeology (SCIAA), found the submarine. Interestingly, despite all of the publicity received by Cussler, the expedition was actually directed by Dr. Mark Newell not Clive Cussler. A team led by Ralph Wilbanks, who had been given a personalized copy of Dr. Spence's book Treasures of the Confederate Coast: the Real Rhett Butler & Other Revelations relocated the Hunley, after exposing the forward hatch and the ventilator box (the air box for the attachment of a snorkel). The submarine was resting on her starboard side at about a 45-degree angle and was covered in a ¼ to ¾-inch encrustation of ferrous oxide bonded with sand and seashell particles. Archaeologists exposed part of the ship's port side and uncovered the bow dive plane. More probing revealed an approximate length of 40 feet, with all of the vessel preserved under the sediment. On September 14, 1995, the South Carolina Hunley Commission, after a review of some of Dr. Spence's more pertinent documents, and after listening to Dr. Spence's sworn testimony about his discovery of the Hunley, asked Dr. Spence if he was still willing to donate the Hunley to the State. Dr. Spence said he was, and the State Attorney General immediately approached Spence with a document for him to sign. Dr. Spence and South Carolina Attorney General Charles M. Condon both signed the document.
Attorney General Condon [1] afterwards praised Dr. Spence's donation, which has been valued at over US$20,000,000. Dr. Newell kindly acknowledged in a sworn deposition that he used Spence's maps to help direct his expedition and has publicly stated that he agrees that Spence located the wreck first. What Dr. Newell's expedition did was extremely important as they verified the identity of the wreck as the Hunley. Cussler generously donated money to support Dr. Newell's SCIAA/NUMA Hunley Expedition and allowed his famous name to be attached to the recovery and preservation project for fund-raising purposes. For more on Dr. Spence's 1970 discovery of the Hunley, see his sworn affidavit.
Archaeological investigation and excavation culminated with the raising of Hunley 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 and attached to a truss designed by Oceaneering, Inc. After the last harness had been secured, the crane from the recovery barge Karlissa B hoisted the submarine from the harbor bottom. Despite having used a sextant and hand-held compass, thirty years earlier, to plot the wreck's location, Dr. Spence's accuracy turned out to be within the length of the recovery barge. On August 8, 2000 at 8:37 a.m. the sub broke the surface for the first time in over 136 years, greeted by a cheering crowd on shore and in surrounding watercraft. Once safely on her transporting barge, Hunley was shipped back to Charleston. The removal operation concluded 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.
[edit] The Crew
Apart from the commander of the submarine, Lieutenant George E. Dixon, the identities of the volunteer crewmembers of the Hunley had long 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, an American diet, while the remainder ate mostly wheat and rye, a mainly European one. 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 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. A crowd estimated at between 35,000 and 50,000, including 10,000 period military and civilian reenactors, were present for what some called the 'Last Confederate Funeral.'
The Hunley remains at the "Lasch" conservation center for further study and conservation. Continued study has led to unexpected discoveries, including the complexity of the sub's ballast and pumping systems, steering and diving apparatus, and final assembly.
Another surprise occurred in 2002, when a researcher examining the area close to Lieutenant Dixon found a misshapen $20 gold piece, minted in 1860, with the inscription "My life preserver," and a forensic anthropologist found a healed injury to Lt. Dixon's hip bone. The findings matched a legend, passed down in the family, that Dixon's sweetheart had given him the coin to protect him. Dixon had the coin with him at the Battle of Shiloh, where he was wounded on April 16, 1862. A bullet struck the coin in his pocket, saving his leg and possibly his life, after which he had it engraved, and carried it as a lucky charm.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ Ron Franscell. "Civil War legends surface with sub Fort Collins expert studies exhumed sailors", The Denver Post, November 18, 2002, p. A1.
[edit] External links
| Groundbreaking submarines |
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- Searches for Hunley, Cussler, Spence
- Sea Research Society links to Hunley
- Friends of the Hunley
- "H. L. Hunley, Confederate Submarine" at the U.S. Naval Historical Center
- Hunley history
- Pre-Hunley Confederate Submarines
- US Navy
- The Hunley (TV movie)
- Rootsweb
- Hunley - Archaeological Interpretation and 3D Reconstruction
[edit] Bibliography
- The Hunley: Submarines, Sacrifice & Success in the Civil War by Mark Ragan (Narwhal Press, Charleston/Miami, ©1995) [ISBN 1-886391-43-2]
- Treasures of the Confederate Coast: the "real Rhett Butler" & Other Revelations by Dr. E. Lee Spence, (Narwhal Press, Charleston/Miami, ©1995)[ISBN 1-886391-00-9]
- Civil War Sub [ISBN 0-448-42597-1]
- The Voyage of the Hunley [ISBN 1-58080-094-7]
- Raising the Hunley [ISBN 0-345-44772-7]
- The CSS H.L. Hunley [ISBN 1-57249-175-2]
- The CSS Hunley [ISBN 0-87833-219-7]
- Shipwreck Encyclopedia of the Civil War: South Carolina & Georgia, 1861-1865 by Edward Lee Spence (Sullivan's Island, S.C., Shipwreck Press, ©1991) OCLC: 24420089
- Shipwrecks of South Carolina and Georgia : (includes Spence's List, 1520-1865) Sullivan's Island, S.C. (Sullivan's Island 29482, Sea Research Society, ©1984) OCLC 10593079
- Shipwrecks of the Civil War : Charleston, South Carolina, 1861-1865 map by E. Lee Spence (Sullivan's Island, S.C., ©1984) OCLC 11214217
| Submersibles of the Confederate States Navy |
| H. L. Hunley |
List of ships of the Confederate States Navy |
Categories: NPOV disputes | Archaeological sites in the United States | Naval ships of the Confederate States of America | Submarines of the Confederate States of America | Shipwrecks of the Carolina coast | Victorian era submarines | Submarines | Registered Historic Places in South Carolina | Maritime incidents in 1864
