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History
The Hunley In History
Confederate Submarine Hunley Well the Confederate submarine Hunley is finally out of its desalinization bath. The Hunley is an amazing boat. It's a submarine that operated on human power. The submarine was found off the coast of South Carolina almost 12 years ago. The South had managed to build a metal submarine that entered service on February 17, 1864 and ended its service on the same day. It was 39 ½ feet long almost 4 feet wide at it's beam and could reach the amazing speed of 4 knots. It held one officer and seven enlisted men in a coffin like enclosure and carried one spar torpedo. In case you were wondering what a spar torpedo is, it's a bomb at the end of a long pole that was attached to a boat. It would be rammed into the side of wooden boats and the fuse lit. The spar torpedo was invented during the Civil War by the Confederate states of America. There is no doubt that the submarine Hunley was a death trap. When the Hunley was built, it was referred to by several different names such as “fish boat”,”fish torpedo boat” and “porpoise”. There is an unconfirmed legend that the boat was made from a cast-off steam boiler and that William Alexander had looked at the boiler and envisioned the boat. The reason the Hunley was designed for a crew of eight was that it took seven people to crack the propeller shaft and one to steer the boat. The submarine was built purposely for her mission. Each end of the boat had ballast tanks that could be flooded using valves and could also be pumped dry. The designer was always thinking and had decided to attach plates made of iron that were bolted to the bottom of the submarine, so that if she needed additional buoyancy the weights could be dropped allowing the submarine to the surface. These were only to be used in an emergency situation. The boat also had watertight hatches, one forward and one aft. The hatches were very small and certainly would not have accommodated a large man, since there were only 14 x 15 and three-quarter inches. The entire hull of the ship was only 4'3” high. You certainly would not want to be inside of this boat if you had claustrophobia. In 1863 a demonstration of the Hunley took place under the supervision of the Confederate Admiral Franklin Buchanan. The demonstration was successful, the Hunley had successfully attacked a coal flatboat in Mobile Bay. The Hunley was then shipped to South Carolina by train. The builders of the submarine must not have been very happy, because the military seized it and made it a Confederate Army vessel, but the builders did remain involved and Horace Huntley the designer stuck with it. An interesting fact is that even though the vessel was seized by the military, it was never officially commissioned into service. There was not a lack of volunteers to become the crew of this boat and the first crew was commanded by Navy Lieut. John A. Payne. He was put in charge of the crew of seven men from two other ships who volunteered to operate the submarine. I don't know much about the competency of Lieut. Payne, but what I do know about him is that on August 29, 1863 crew was preparing to make a test dive and had not closed the hatches yet, when Lieut. Payne accidentally steps on the lever that controlled the boats diving planes and flooded the boat, because our hatches were open and she descended into the water. Payne and two crew members escaped while the rest drowned. This certainly was not a very auspicious beginning for the Hunley.
USS Housatonic One would think that after an accident of this type that it might be hard to assemble another crew of volunteers, but on October 15, 1863 the boat went out again, this time with its designer on board and seven other crewmen. It was supposed to conduct a mock attack, but it never resurfaced. The designer and the entire crew drowned. Again a new crew and officer were needed and as hard as it is to believe, more volunteers came forward. Did these volunteers believe that the boat was necessary for the South to win the war? They certainly must have believed something about the importance of having a submersible boat in their Navy. It was also possible that since there was a navel blockade of Charleston Harbor, that the Southerners who volunteered thought that this was the only way they could break this blockade. A man named Lieut. George E. Dixon volunteered to command the Huntley and a crew of seven volunteers were quickly found. The idea was for the Huntley to sneak out of port and sink the USS Housatonic. The Housatonic was a large 1240 ton steam powered sloop. It carried 12 large caliber cannons. The Hunley sailed out on the water under the Housatonic and successfully stuck its spar torpedo into the side of the wooden ship. The torpedo was detonated as the Huntley was backing away. The Housatonic sunk in 5 minutes, the Hunley never returned.
Confederate Submarine Pioneer One has to admit that the volunteers that crewed the Hunley were extremely brave. As one crew would die another would volunteer. The idea of a submarine was really nothing new. Primitive submarines have been used sparingly for quite some time. It was even said that Alexander the great went down to the bottom of a river inside a diving bell. What was new was the idea that an underwater vessel could actually carry a crew of eight and administer a torpedo attack on a surfer ship that could sink it. The Hunley was not even the first submarine that the South had experimented with. Two men named McClintock and Watson had built a small submarine named the Pioneer in Louisiana. The boat had been tested in 1862 by putting it into the Mississippi River and it was later towed to Lake Pontchartrain, for further tests. Unfortunately for the South the boat had a be scuttled, because of the Union advance towards New Orleans. The designers didn't want the boat to fall into Union hands and thought that destroying it was a better option than trying to rescue it and failing.
Confederate Submarine American Diver It is believed that another submarine was being built at the same time, but unfortunately there is not much documentation on it. It was the Bayou St. John Confederate submarine. Sometime that year the inventors of the about submarines moved to Mobile Alabama and were joined by machinists named Park and Lyons. In a joint effort they began to develop a new submarine called the American Diver. The Confederate Army backed their development costs. The men had decided to look into some sort of propulsion for this submarine, so they examined using steam and electromagnetic types, but it was either the shortness of development time available, or the unreliability of the engines that made them decide to go back to people power. People power being the crew cranking a propeller. In 1863 the submarine was tested by attacking the Union blockade, but it was unsuccessful and extremely slow. It sank in Mobile Bay during a storm later that month and was never recovered.
Cutout Of Fulton Submarine Nautilus One has to wonder if the Hunley could have been powered some way by a steam engine without frying everyone inside the submarine from the extreme heat, would this boat have become a super weapon? All indications are that it might have been under those circumstances. Maybe it could have broken the blockade, since the North had no way to fight submerged boats. There was no such thing as a destroyer in those days or depth charges. Many people don't realize the fact that Robert Fulton, the American inventor of the steamboat designed a submarine between 1793 and 1797, that was named the Nautilus. The idea was for America to use these submarines to balance the power against the British Navy. He even said that he would build it himself and not asked to be paid until it actually sunk a British vessel. He was turned down. The boat was made of wood with copper sheeting over it. It was able to submerge and rise again by pumping a hand crank attached to a valve on a ballast tank and had two horizontal fins that could regulate the angle of the dive. The boat was shaped like a long teardrop with an observation dome that could be called a conning tower. When it surfaced a sail could be raised. As you can see the idea of a submersible boat was not a new idea, even when the Civil War started. |
