The Story Of The CSS Hunley
In the dark of night on February 17, 1864, a muffled explosion echoed across the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. The newly constructed USS Housatonic, a 1200-ton sloop, armed with 12 cannons, under the command of Captain Charles Pickering, began to list and sink into the murky depths. Within five minutes, only the mast and rigging remained visible.
The Housatonic earned the honor of being the first vessel to ever be sunk by an enemy submarine in time of war. Not until the HMS Pathfinder was sunk by a German U-boat in the early days of World War I was such a feat to be repeated, and by then modern warfare had become far more sophisticated and deadly.
In the case of the Housatonic, the culprit was the Confederate submarine CSS Horace L. Hunley, nicknamed “The South’s Secret Weapon”, a 35-foot long, 6.8-ton vessel not dissimilar in appearance to more modern undersea crafts. The Hunley was constructed in Mobile, Alabama and transported on August 8, 1863, to Charleston by train, at the request of Confederate General PGT Beauregard. The Hunley carried a crew of eight or nine when fully manned. Given that battery powered electricity and diesel engines lay in the future, the Hunley was powered by a hand cranked propeller. All crew members took turns at the crank. In addition, hand-operated pumps were utilized to increase or decrease ballast.
Extending from the bow was a 20-foot iron spar with a serrated barb and a copper canister containing 100 pounds of black powder. The plan was to pierce the hull of an enemy ship like the Housatonic with the barbed spar, then retreat 150 yards while unreeling the fuse, a so-called firing lanyard, before setting off the blast. While it may seem primitive by more recent standards, it was quite sophisticated for its time.
The idea of developing underwater warships had been around for a long time. As far back as the 1500’s, Leonardo da Vinci drew up plans for a submarine but scrapped the idea because he concluded that it would be too destructive. Even earlier, it is said that Alexander the Great descended in a diving bell at the siege of Tyre hoping to inflict damage on enemy ships. On September 7, 1776, an American submersible called the Turtle attempted to attach a time bomb to a British admiral’s flagship. It was reported that the bomb exploded but caused no injury to anyone on either side of the conflict. During the Civil War, the United States Navy also experimented with submarine development, constructing The USS Alligator, but little came of the experiment, and it sank off Cape Hatteras. In the case of the Hunley, Leonardo would have been correct. Not only did the Housatonic sink but the Hunley vanished beneath the waves with all hands-on board as well and was never heard from again.
The little submarine seemed to have existed beneath a dark star from day one. Before its successful sinking of the Housatonic, it had sunk twice during test runs, killing crew members either by drowning or by asphyxiation when the hatches could not be forced open from the inside. Although he was not a crew member, the sub’s inventor, Horace Lawson Hunley, also died during a test run. Most surprising is that subsequently others eagerly volunteered to serve as crew members.
After years of speculation about the resting place of the unfortunate Hunley, it was finally located by author and undersea explorer Clive Cussler’s NUMA (National Underwater Marine Agency) members in 1995. It took several unsuccessful expeditions spanning 13 years before the NUMA members were successful. Not one to ever give up, Cussler contracted two NUMA members, Ralph Willibanks and Wes Hall, to continue the search while he returned to his home in Colorado to write more books and raise funds to continue the search. Using the Schondstedt gradiometer that signals when iron is detected, the NUMA crew discovered the wrecks of seven Confederate blockade runners and Union ironclads before finding the lost Hunley. Then, on May 3, 1995, Cussler received a call at his home in Colorado informing him that the Hunley had been located.
The remarkably well-preserved wreck was brought to the surface in 2000, but there remains no absolute certainly regarding the cause of death of the crew. Given that the submarine was located only an approximately 20 feet from the blast site, the prevailing theory is that the explosion killed the crew while it sank the Housatonic. No one will ever know for sure, but one plausible explanation is that the proximity of the detonation may have ruptured blood vessels in their lungs. They may have died instantly, or they may have been incapacitated and unable to escape.
The Hunley now rests safely inside a huge tank at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in North Charleston, South Carolina, where its condition is continually monitored. My wife LaVon and I visited the museum on our way south in 2020. The site was well attended by visitors on that day. I sensed a somber mood among the crowd, causing me to consider that they might be latter day Copperhead wannabes. Perhaps they were simply being respectful to the memories of those who made the ultimate sacrifice. The ancient Greeks and others defined a hero as a person who risks all, who even loses his life, for a cause greater than themselves. Hercules, Paris, Menelaus, Ulysses, Aeneas, and others from classical antiquity come readily to mind. However, the question begs as to whether one who is serving an unjust cause, an economy largely sustained by cruelty, racism and slavery, should be considered a hero. Were the crew of the Hunley, then, heroes? Were they villains, not because their side lost but because they served on the wrong side? On the other hand, were they just victims?
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My enthusiasms include fly fishing, natural history and wilderness backpacking. In 1996, I published privately a memoir, Trails of Laughter/ Trails of Tears, featuring my wilderness adventures and misadventures.I serve when needed as a Licensed Eucharistic Minister in the Episcopal Church.
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