![]() The Hunley would ram the side of the target’s ship with 135 pounds worth of explosives. The Hunley was fitted with a spar torpedo-a copper cylinder packed with black powder attached to the end of a long pole, mounted on Hunley’s bow. ![]() Additionally, the towed line could foul Hunley's screw or drift into the submarine herself. Towing an explosive device was abandoned because of the difficulty of safely maneuvering the submarine between the keel of the ship and the ocean bottom. However, they agreed that the Hunley had to be modified if she were to succeed. Yet, there were many who believed that the Hunley could successfully break the blockade on Charleston Harbor. All eight men, Hunley included, perished.Īfter the two tragedies, the Confederate General Beauregard was reluctant to put the Hunley back in service. On 15 October 1863, the Hunley dived underwater and plummeted bow-first to the ocean floor. This time Horace Hunley himself insisted on captaining the sub on another test demonstration. The submarine was retrieved and prepared for another mission. On 29 August 1863, Hunley was preparing to make a test dive in Charleston, when the captain inadvertently stepped on the diving controls while the hatches were open, and the sub sank killing all five men aboard. But more tests were to follow before the Hunley could be readied for war.Ī life size model of the CSS Hunley on the grounds of The Charleston Museum, Charleston. In July 1863, the Hunley made a successful demonstration of its attack capabilities by sinking an old coal-hauling barge in the middle of the Mobile River. Once the submarine dove and passed under the keel of her target, she would resurface on the other side, causing the torpedo to be drawn against the targeted ship and explode. The Hunley was originally designed to dive completely below her target while towing behind a floating torpedo at the end of a long rope. A single candle provided light, while also functioning as an indicator to the quality of the air inside the vessel-if the flame flickered and died out then there was too little oxygen left. The Hunley could remain submerged for two excruciating hours before having to surface for fresh air. In the case of emergencies when the submarine needed to rise up quickly, these weights could be unscrewed from inside the cabin. The craft was also weighted down with additional iron weights screwed to the bottom. Each end of the submarine was equipped with ballast tanks that could be flooded by opening valves, or pumped dry by hand pumps allowing Hunley to submerge and surface. Inside that terribly small space, eight burly men sat side by side along the length of the vessel and hand-cranked the crankshaft that turned the propeller. Hunley, the submarine, was about 40 feet long and less than four feet in diameter. Hunley named the vessel after himself.ĭrawing of Hunley from Popular Science Magazine, circa 1900. It was never recovered, but the lessons learned from Pioneer and American Diver gave Hunley and his team enough confidence to create a third vessel that would succeed. Nevertheless, it was decided to deploy the submarine and in 1863, while towing the American Diver down Mobile Bay, in the Gulf of Mexico, in an attempt to attack on the Union blockade, the submarine foundered in the heavy seas and sank. The American Diver was an ungainly vessel and too slow to be practical. ![]() Eventually, they decided to stick to conventional hand-cranked means of propulsion that had powered the Pioneer. The plan was to power the American Diver using some sort of an engine, like an electric motor or a steam engine, but they were unable to produce enough power to propel the craft. The Pioneer was followed by the American Diver. After only a short month of tests, the Pioneer was scuttled by the Confederates to avoid capture by the approaching Union army. The first was Pioneer, a prototype built in early 1862 and tested in the Mississippi River, and later in Lake Pontchartrain. Hunley was one of three submarines that Horace Lawson Hunley built for the Confederate Navy during the American Civil War. But it wasn’t the first time the submarine had sunk.ġ864 painting of H. Shortly after, the Hunley itself sank and disappeared from existence. On 17 February 1864, the Confederate submarine CSS Hunley attacked and sank a 1,240-ton United States Navy ship, the USS Housatonic, and entered history books as the first combat submarine to sink a warship. ![]()
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