laststandonzombieisland

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday Feb 26, Mr. Hunley’s invention after 150 years.

Here we see in a beautiful work by Mort Kuntsler, the Confederate submarine HL Hunley as she sits preparing to sail out to sea and strike at the US Navy blockade. The Hunley was the first operational submarine of any navy to sink an enemy warship in combat and she did so 150-years ago this month.

With the Confederacy surrounded by US Navy blockade at sea and the US Army on land, she desperately needed a way to poke holes to breathe. One of these plans involved early, and very primitive submarines.

The Hunley and two earlier prototype submarines were privately developed and paid for by one Horace Lawson Hunley and his associates. Hunley was a Tennessee-born engineer by training who was practicing law in New Orleans when the war broke out in 1861. There he funded his early subs before having to relocate to Mobile once the Crescent City fell to the US fleet in 1862.

The craft was born in Mobile, Alabama, one of the last Confederate ports to fall.

Park and Lyons machine shop building, Mobile, Alabama, Where the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley was constructed in 1863. Located at the corner of Water and State Streets, in Mobile, this old building housed the Gill Welding and Boiler Works when photographed in about 1960.

Hunley’s craft was simple. Manned by a captain who would steer and command the vessel, it was powered by a hand cranked turned by 4-7 men. This made the 40-foot long submersible capable of about 4-knots for as long as the crew could hold out. It was submerged and raised by hand pumped ballast tanks. Armed with a copper cylinder containing 90 pounds of black powder on a 22-foot spar ,she would attach the charge to the enemy ship, back away, and then detonate the bomb against the hull of the Yankee blockader.

While testing in Mobile Bay, the boat was able to simulate an attack on a moored coal boat in the summer of 1863. This led the craft to be transferred by rail to besieged Charleston, SC.

There she sank twice in testing, the first time taking five of her crew with her, the second time, on October 15, 1863, taking Mr. Hunley himself to the bottom of Charleston harbor.

Finally on the cold night of February 17, 1864, she sailed with her third unfortunate volunteer crew under the command of Lieutenant George E. Dixon, himself a well-known Mobile area steamboat engineer before the war and late of the 21st Alabama Infantry Regiment. The Hunley cranked to the location of the 1240-ton screw sloop USS Housatonic, swaying 3.5 nautical miles from Sullivan’s Island outside of the entrance to Charleston Harbor.

Housatonic‘s officer of the deck sighted an object in the water 100 yards off, approaching the ship. “It had the appearance of a plank moving in the water,” he later reported. Although the chain was slipped, the engine backed, and all hands were called to quarters, it was too late. Within two minutes of the first sighting, the Hunley rammed her spar torpedo into Housatonic‘s starboard side, forward of the mizzenmast. The resulting explosion sank both the sloop, with a loss of five men.

It was the first occasion in history that a submarine sank another warship in action and would be far from the last.

Hunley, however, was mortally stricken and her hulk, still with Dixon and the crew inside, was raised by author Clive Cussler and his NUMA crew in 2000, found in 1970 just twenty feet from where the Housatnonic sank in 1864. Remember, Hunley‘s spar was but 22-feet long.

Dixon and the bodies of the crew, namely Frank Collins, Joseph F. Ridgaway, James A. Wicks, Arnold Becker, Corporal C. F. Carlsen, C. Lumpkin, and Augustus Miller, were recovered and buried with military honors.

The Hunley remains in preservation process and you can visit the Friends of the Hunley  website for more information and how to help with its preservation.

 

 

Specs

Displacement:     7.5 short tons (6.8 metric tons)
Length:     39.5 feet (12.0 meters) Unconfirmed.
Beam:     3.83 feet (1.17 meters)
Propulsion:     Hand-cranked propeller
Speed:     4 knots (7.4 kilometers/hour) (surface)
Complement: 1 officer, 7 enlisted
Armament:     1 spar torpedo

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International.

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

I’m a member, so should you be!