The H. L. Hunley Submarine

Numerous books have been written on the subject of the origin of wars and why we humans continue to fight them. War is our greatest irony: our worse exhibition of mindless hatred and at the same time, the best example of human altruism by those who are willing to fight and die for their country and their loved ones.

It is confusing. We hate wars but cannot seem to bring ourselves to stop fighting them.

Here is what a couple of America’s most renowned generals had to say about war. William Tecumseh Sherman who played a big part in helping the United States federal forces defeat the Confederate forces during the American Civil War wrote: “I confess without shame, I am sick and tired of fighting – its glory is all moonshine; even the most brilliant success is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, fathers…it is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded and lacerated that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.”

On the other hand, here is what George Patton, who helped the Allied Forces defeat Nazi Germany had to say: “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.” Thus, most people go to war believing they will kill the “other bastard” and survive unscathed. It is a deadly game. If I kill you, I win. If you kill me, I along with all my loved ones, lose.

Both attitudes, as serious or as flippant as they may be, confront the fact that people suffer and die in wars.

But on the other hand, war is good for some businesses and technological innovations. Every bullet, every bomb, every ship, every airplane has to be designed and manufactured and many of those who own the factories make money by making weapons of war paid for by taxes. Yet, at the same time, many of our innovations from rocket ships to advanced medical treatments have come as a result of wars.

No one is sure when the first weapons were made. Early humans learned to fight off predators and intruders by throwing rocks and sticks. About 2 million years ago Homo habilis made spearheads along with axes and scrapers and we’ve been making weapons ever since. And because conflict is, unfortunately, such a pervasive part of human interaction, our rate of technological innovation in weaponry has been phenomenal. What would a Homo habilis flint knapper think of today’s vast array of deadly weapons? Is it conceivable to imaging what humanoids 2 million from now will think of our current weapons? Is it conceivable that our species will even last that long?

Every era has generated some sort of weapon innovation. Over thousands of years, we have developed bows and arrows, metal swords, gunpowder, muskets and rifles, artillery and missiles. But one of the most interesting innovations was the ability to attack a ship from under water. Submarines have become so much a part of today’s weapons arsenal we almost take them for granted. But they went through centuries of development before they became the underwater killers they are today.

We have always been fascinated by bodies of water from rivers to oceans because we could not look down and see what was going on at the bottom. In order to get a look at what was down there, as well as to harvest fish, pearls, sponges and other sea bounty, we had to develop a variety of devices such as diving bells which allowed us to breathe underwater and see what was down there. They go back far in our history. An early version of one was described by Aristotle.

Diving bells evolved into submarines, such as one invented by Dutch engineer and inventor Cornelis Drebbel. In 1620 Drebbel built a submarine that proved reliable enough that King James I of England watched with interest as it was tested in the Thames River. Air tubes to the surface enabled the vessel to stay submerged for long periods of time.

In the next century when hostilities broke out between Britian and the American colonies, it did not take long for the military minded to think of putting submersibles to use in the conflict. The first recorded vessel of this type was designed in 1775 by American inventor David Bushnell with help from Isaac Doolittle. Dubbed the Turtle, based on the idea of an enclosed diving bell, it was an egg-shaped waterproof sphere about 10 feet by 6 feet made from oak staves with steel bands holding them together like a barrel.

A single operator sat inside and turned a crank which turned a bladed propeller, one of Bushnell’s and Doolittle’s innovations that changed future marine propulsion. The operator also had to steer the submarine and make sure the ballast and air supply were stable. The Turtle could hold about 30 minutes of breathable air before the operator had to come to the surface and replenish the supply.

Bushnell had developed a way to ignite gunpowder underwater, another important innovation, and the purpose of the Turtle was to attach a canister of gunpower to the bottom of one of the British ships blockading New York Harbor during the American Revolution and blow it up.

On September 6, 1776, operator Ezra Lee maneuvered the Turtle out to where the HMS Eagle was anchored. By the time he got to the ship, the strong tide, and the constant cranking had exhausted him. Plus, he had been spotted by British sailors. He lit the time fuse then released the canister, but it did not stick to the ship. Instead, it floated away with the tide and exploded some distance up New York’s East River. Although the target was not destroyed, the technology was feasible and it was used on the next combat submarine. And, most importantly, Ezra Lee and the submarine survived.

Inventors such as Edmond Halley, Robert Fulton, and others developed submarines that helped the technology evolve. For example, a submarine named the Plongeur developed by Frenchmen Simon and Charles Brun in 1863 that carried 23 tanks of compressed air at 180 psi, was the first to be propelled by other than human power. But it proved too heavy to be practical.

Soon after the start of the American Civil War in 1861, Union ships set up blockades at the mouths of Confederate harbors and rivers. Because trade with Northern companies stopped when the war broke out, the South became dependent on foreign trade, especially from England. A big problem was that the Confederacy lacked the manufacturing ability of the Union and depended on imports for weapons and armament that it could not produce itself.

As historian Walter Edgar wrote: “All Carolinians by 1864 were feeling the effects of inflation and the blockade.” And one might recall the famous lines in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind where Rhett Butler tells a group of pro-war Southerners: “The Yankees are better equipped than we. They’ve got factories, shipyards, coal mines, and a fleet to bottle up our harbors and starve us to death. All we’ve got is cotton, and slaves, and arrogance.” The South had to find a way to break the blockade.

So, as it became apparent that the South was not going to win the war by brute force, innovative people turned to developing new technology. A few people knew about the Turtle and other submersible craft and studied what worked and what did not work in the vessels and how the technology could be used to help the South.

One of the first attempts at a Confederate combat submarine was designed by Baxter Watson, James McClintock, and financed by Horace Lawson Hunley. At the time the three were living in New Orleans. Their first attempt, named the Pioneer, was 30 feet long, 4 feet in diameter, and carried two crew members, a pilot and a man to crank the propeller. It carried a floating mine with a timed fuse that could be released near an enemy ship while the Pioneer moved safely away.

The vessel was tested in Lake Pontchartrain and sank a test barge. However, in April 1862 the Union army occupied New Orleans and the submarine was scuttled to keep it out of enemy hands.

The three builders moved their operation to Mobile, Alabama and built a second submarine called by two names, the Pioneer II and the American Diver which had a crew of four sailors. During a test run in Mobile Bay, it was overturned by high waves. Although the crew escaped the boat sank and was not recovered.

The trio’s third effort was a larger iron vessel they named the H. L. Hunley Submarine. It was about 40 feet long and carried a crew of eight, seven of which propelled the boat by turning a crankshaft connected to a propeller. The eighth crewman was the captain who steered by the use of a rudder at the rear of the vessel and diving planes on both sides. The Hunley had 2 conning towers or hatches with glass windows for visibility. Folding snorkels and bellows brought in air when submerged.

Again, due to the advancing Union army, Watson, McClintock, and Hunley had to change their plans. This time rather than scuttling the boat, they put it on a train and sent it to Charleston, South Carolina to be used to help break the blockade there.

In the meantime, engineers in Charleston also had been working on submarines. The most promising of the designs was that of a vessel that would come to be called the CSS David. Financed by plantation owner Theodore D. Stoney who hired Dr. Julien Ravenel to design the submarine and David Ebaugh to build it, the David was built specifically to sink the USS New Ironsides, the largest and most formidable ship in the Charleston Harbor blockade.

The New Ironsides was 249 feet long, was propelled by two steam engines and sails on three masts, and carried a crew of 449 sailors. The sides of its wooden hull were clad with thick iron that Confederate artillery was unable to penetrate. It was used to bombard fortifications at both Charleston, SC and Wilmington, NC. The builders of the CSS David, with a spar mounted ‘torpedo’ — the term used at that time for an underwater canister full of gunpowder — designed by Captain Francis Lee, hoped they could put the New Ironsides out of commission.

The first CSS David was 48 feet long, 5 feet in diameter, and built of pine and oak and clad with ¼ inch thick iron. Since it was powered by a small steam engine that required a smoke stack to be above water, the vessel was not fully submersible.

With testing complete, the David was fitted with a copper canister torpedo containing 135 pounds of gunpowder at the end of a 20-foot spar extending from the front. The torpedo had a metal barb on the end that would stick into the wooden hull of a ship and a timed fuse that would allow the submarine time to back up and leave the blast zone.

On October 5, 1863 the CSS David with a crew of four successfully exploded its torpedo against the stern of the New Ironsides. The large ship did not sink but was damaged enough to put it out of service for several months while being repaired.

The explosion blew up a cloud of water which fell on the David and put out the fire in the steam engine. However, before Union sailors could capture the vessel, the David crew managed to relight the fire and escape. It must have been a tense few minutes for the CSS David’s crew.

Afraid of being attacked again, the Union Navy used a number of small vessels to constantly patrol the blockade area and keep watch for more submarines. There were at least two more attacks on Union ships by David vessels. On March 6, 1864, a David submarine attacked the USS Memphis in the North Edisto River a few miles south of Charleston Harbor, but the charge did not explode. The last recorded attack by a CSS David was on April 18, 1864 against the frigate USS Wabash in Port Royal Sound. Crew members on the Wabash saw the David coming and the ship sailed away faster than the David could keep up.

It turns out that the United States Navy also had been developing a submarine at the same time as the Confederates. Designed by French engineer, Brutus de Villeroi, it was called the Alligator because of its green color. The vessel was 47 feet long with a beam of 4 feet 8 inches and carried a crew of 18. The first version had 16 paddles sticking out the sides but a later version eliminated the paddles and had the crew turning a long crankshaft to power a propeller.

Launched on May 1, 1862, it sank in bad weather off Cape Hatteras as it was being towed from Chesapeake Bay to Port Royal Sound and was never recovered. No more Union submersible vessels were built.

The CSS H. L. Hunley submarine arrived in Charleston by rail from Mobile in mid-August 1863. On its first trial run on the 29^th of August, it sank killing 5 of its crew members when the captain accidently stepped on a lever controlling the dive planes and the vessel sank with one of the hatches open. The boat was pulled up and made ready for another test. On October 15 during another trial run, it sank again, killing all 8 crew members, including Horace Hunley himself. The reason for the sinking was not determined. However, still believing the craft to be seaworthy, the Confederates pulled it up again and got it ready to face the enemy.

An opportunity came on the night of February 17, 1864. The weather was clear and the sea calm. The target was one of the largest of the Union blockade ships, the USS Housatonic at anchor about 3 miles out from Charleston where it could confront Confederate ships leaving or coming into the harbor.

The H. L. Hunley submarine was launched around 7 pm from Fort Moultrie on Sullivans Island and at a speed of 4 knots, took over an hour to get to the Housatonic. On board were seven crewmen who turned the propeller crankshaft and Lt. George Erasmus Dixon who served as captain and navigator.

Dixon skillfully guided the sub to the side of the Housatonic and made contact. But the barbs on the copper cylinder did not adequately penetrate the hull and when Dixon backed the Hunley away from the large ship, he unknowingly brought the torpedo still attached to the spar sticking out only about 16 feet from the hull.

It is interesting that although submarines up to that point had used a rope attached to the torpedo to set it off, years later archaeologists found copper wire and a battery aboard the Hunley which led them to believe that rather than having timed fuses to set off the explosion, the gunpowder was detonated electrically.

The Hunley was close enough to the Housatonic when the explosion occurred that it caused enough damage to sink the large ship killing 5 Union sailors. The rest of the crew was rescued before it went down. The Hunley had accomplished a feat in sinking the Housatonic that no other submersible vessel had been able to do. But the Hunleynever returned to Fort Moultrie and its disappearance sparked one of the great mysteries of naval warfare.

Although the Hunley was a great technological achievement, it did little to help the South win the Civil War. It killed five sailors and sank the Housatonic but 21 Confederates had been lost in test runs and the attack on February 17.

Searches were launched to find the vessel either intact or its debris if it had blown up with the Housatonic, but nothing was found. Where was it? What was the fate of the eight men aboard? For over a century, the whereabouts of the Hunley was unknown.

Then one day in 1970 underwater archaeologist Edward Lee Spence aboard a boat owned by diver Joe Porcelli, had gone some distance out beyond Charleston Harbor to retrieve a fish trap that was hung on the bottom in about 27 feet of water. Spence dived down and saw a piece of metal protruding a few inches above the sand. On closer inspection he determined it was the Hunley.

Although extremely excited about his find, being a good archaeologist, Spence used a compass and navigation map to mark exactly where the Hunley was located and publicized his find, which, unfortunately brought treasure hunters and others to the site. At least one of these, adventure writer, Clive Cussler, nine years after Spence, claimed that he had been the first to discover the Hunley.

It turns out that one reason people were having trouble finding the H. L. Hunley submarine is that everyone was looking landward of where the Housatonic had sunk. It was assumed that the sub sank on its way back to land. But the strong outgoing tide had carried the vessel and its crew seaward of the Housatonic and it sank farther out than anyone had looked.

After Spence’s discovery, the submarine and crew sat in the sand for another 25 years while lawyers sorted out who owned it, Spence or the State of South Carolina. Then in 1995 Spence gave over his rights to the boat to the State of South Carolina and plans were made to raise it. The date of August 8, 2000 was set and thousands of people came in boats to watch the historic event.

It was quite an undertaking. A crane barge was positioned over the sub and a large metal truss longer and wider than the Hunley was lowered over it. Then divers looped a series of inflatable support straps under the Hunley to cushion it while it was being lifted. The straps were attached to the truss and the 30-ton submarine was lifted to the surface and put on a barge which transported it to a specially built Clemson University laboratory called the Warren Lasch Conservation Center on the Cooper River in North Charleston.

Since its raising, extensive research has been done on the Hunley trying to determine exactly how it functioned and what caused it to sink. The fact that the crew members had all died at their seats without any sign of struggle or no visible attempts of trying to escape was especially intriguing. Several theories were proposed as to how that could have happened, such as suffocation, or the interior flooding so quick that the crew did not have time to escape.

DNA analysis helped determine the identity of each crew member and facial reproductions were done from skull features. On April 17, 2004, the remains of the eight crew members were given a formal military burial at Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston.

The belongings found on the crew members, such as coins, tobacco, pocket knives, and other items gave the impression that they fully expected to return from the attack unscathed. Perhaps the most interesting personal belonging was a dented $20 gold coin carried by Lt. Dixon. Apparently, he had the coin in his pocket when he was shot at the Battle of Shiloh in western Tennessee in April 1862. The coin stopped a bullet from piercing his upper thigh. It saved his leg and probably his life. He had the coin engraved with “Shiloh April 6, 1862 My Life Preserver G.E.D.”

Dixon was also carrying a pocket watch which was stuck at 8:45, the same time that soldiers at Fort Moultrie on Sullivans Island had seen the flash from an explosion far out in the harbor.

The Hunley conservation has been a complicated task requiring scientists, chemists, metallurgist, physicians, and hundreds of volunteer helpers. Most of us think of artifacts as stone tools, old bones, carved inscriptions, etc. But the Hunley was an artifact made of many different materials. Bones, metal, shoe leather, wood, clothing, and other materials all had to be painstakingly analyzed differently.

And beyond the physical materials there is the intrigue of just what happened that caused the vessel to sink while its crew remained at their stations. The mystery persisted until 2020 when Duke University Bioengineer, Rachel Lance, did a number of experiments using scale models of the Hunley in blast tests and determined that the crew had been killed by the explosion of the torpedo.

Lance and her co-workers concluded that when the Hunley rammed the Housatonic the torpedo did not stick to the hull as it was designed to do. Believing that the torpedo had attached itself to the ship, Dixon had his crew back the submarine out a few feet from the Housatonic’s hull and he set off the charge.

The spar holding the still attached charge was only 16 feet long. The explosion this close sent shock waves through the submarine without actually damaging it or mutilating the crew. The strong shock wave, however, caused instant fatal damage to the crew members’ lungs and brains. They all died within seconds of the blast while still in their seats.

As the Hunley slowly sank, an outgoing tide carried it out to the sea beyond the Housatonic and farther out from the harbor than anyone had thought to look. It lodged in the sand where it sat for 136 years before being raised covered with rust and concretion and containing the last 8 of the 21 sailors who had lost their lives trying to do what no other submarine combatants had done before.

The Hunley submarine was a great technological achievement for its time, and like any technological advancement, prompted other builders to make use of the technology to build a stronger, safer, and more efficient machine.

Some 30 years after the sinking of the CSS Hunley, John Phillip Holland put all of the historical pieces together and in 1896 designed a submarine that the United States Navy decided could be useful in naval warfare. It was 48 feet long and could travel 35 miles under water at 5 knots and dive 60 feet. Propulsion was by diesel and electric motors. Diesel power was used near the surface to turn the propeller while it also ran a generator which charged batteries which powered an electric motor that propelled the vessel when submerged.

This is a level of technology far beyond what Dixon and his crew had available on the H. L. Hunley submarine.

In April 1900 the US Navy paid $160,000 for the Holland submarine and ordered 7 more. Today the legacy of the H. L. Hunley lives on both in combat submarines and as a means for scientists to study the depths of our oceans.

Ted McCormack