The H.L. Hunley

The Anaconda Plan was proposed by Winfield Scott.  The blockade of Southern ports, which resulted from Scott’s plan, was the impetus for the creation of the H.L. Hunley by the Confederate Navy. 

From the beginning of the Civil War, the Union actively pursued a strategy, dubbed the Anaconda Plan, of strangling Southern trade through a blockade of Southern ports.  Initially, the blockade was ineffective, as there were too many Southern ports and not enough blockading ships.  As the war progressed and many Southern ports were occupied by Union troops, remaining Southern ports were more effectively blockaded.

The fledgling Confederate Navy was small and ineffective against the Union blockading fleet.  To combat the blockade, the Confederate government resorted to that most powerful of all inducements, the profit motive.  Jefferson Davis invited private citizens to apply for government approval to wage war against Union vessels.  A duly authorized citizen who captured or destroyed an enemy warship would be financially rewarded.  So it was profit, as well as patriotism, which motivated James McClintock, Baxter Watson and  Robert Barrow to begin building a submarine.

The idea of an undersea warship was not a new one.  In 1620, Cornelius Drebbel demonstrated the first operational submarine to King James I of England.  The demonstration took place on the Thames River.  The submarine could dive to a depth of fifteen feet by flooding most of the cabin of the submarine with water!  The sub was raised by pumping the water out.  Propulsion was achieved by oars in water tight sleeves.  This first submarine was not only clumsy, but very dangerous to operate.

During the American Revolution, David Bushnell, a college student at Yale, designed the first combat submarine, the Turtle.  It was armed with a mine with a time fuse.  The mine was supposed to be attached to the target ship by a detachable screw.  Sergeant Ezra Lee was the one-man crew of the Turtle.  On September 6, 1776, he moved the Turtle into attack position using the two hand-cranked screw propellers.  However, when Lee tried to attach the mine to the British flagship Eagle, the screw was deflected by the ship’s copper sheathing and the mine had to be jettisoned.  The attack was a failure. 

Twenty-one years later, the American inventor and engineer, Robert Fulton, began working on a submarine.  Working in France at the time, Fulton launched a workable submarine, the Nautilus, in 1800.  Unfortunately, Fulton couldn’t get funding from the French, British or U.S. government and abandoned the project in 1806.

McClintock, Watson and Barrow began work on the first Confederate submarine in New Orleans in late 1861.  Additional investors were recruited as the project became more expensive.  One of the new investors was Barrow’s wealthy brother-in-law, Horace Lawson Hunley. In the spring of 1862, the submarine Pioneer was completed and successfully tested in Lake Pontchartrain.  Unfortunately, for the Confederates, the Pioneer had to be destroyed when Union forces under Admiral David Farragut captured New Orleans in April of 1862.  McClintock, Watson and Hunley hastily moved their operations to Mobile, Alabama.  

In Mobile, a larger and improved Pioneer was built.  As it was being towed from Mobile to Fort Morgan for a test, the sub was swamped and sank.  It could not be recovered.  Undeterred, work was begun on a third submarine.  By now Hunley was the chief financial backer.  Consequently, the third submarine was named the H.L. Hunley.  The Hunley was built out of a twenty-five foot long iron boiler. Rounded sections were added fore and aft so that the finished submarine was thirty-feet long.  Water-ballast tanks were used to lower and raise the boat.  A propeller shaft ran the length of the boat, with eight hand cranks, turned manually by the crew, for propulsion.

The H.L. Hunley’s torpedo was attached to the submarine by a line, two hundred feet long.  The torpedo floated behind the sub.  As the submarine approached its target, it dove under the target and surfaced on the other side.  In this manner, the torpedo would be dragged against the target ship to explode.

 

 The Hunley was tested in the calm waters of the Mobile River and she performed very well.  But a subsequent trial run in the choppy waters of Mobile Bay did not go well.  She responded poorly and came close to swamping and sinking.  Even worse, the torpedo could not be controlled and it continually swung in the direction of the wrong ship!  Obviously, the Hunley was not going to be of any value to the defense of Mobile.  In the summer of 1863, it was decided to relocate her to the more sedate waters surrounding the city of Charleston, South Carol

Charleston was an appropriate choice.  Nowhere was the need for aid more acute than at beleaguered Charleston.  The Union Army and Navy had orchestrated a combined sea and land attack against the city that began in early July of 1863.  The besieged city was extremely hard pressed to resist the onslaught.  Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard was commander of the city’s defenses.  When offered the privately owned boat, he eagerly accepted.  The Hunley was loaded onto two railroad flatcars for an uneventful train ride to Charleston.

At Charleston, General Beauregard asked for volunteers from the Confederate Navy to operate the sub. Lt. John Payne was given command.  He hand picked eight men for what would be the first of many crews for the Hunley.  The boat was taken to Fort Jackson for a trial run.  When the crew was aboard, disaster struck.  Lt. Payne was about to close the hatch when a passing steamer created a swell that poured over the deck and swamped the sub.  The Hunley sank in no time and only Lt. Payne was able to escape. 

The Hunley was raised and repaired.  A second crew was chosen and the sub was taken to Fort Sumter for another attempt at a trial run.  The results were the same.  The sub was swamped and sank.  Payne and two other crew members escaped.  The submarine was raised again and new volunteers were recruited to replace the crew members who had died.  Normally, the “third time’s a charm,” but not for Lt. Payne.  Five more men died when the ship that was towing the Hunley accidentally pushed her under with the hatches open.  Payne and three crew members saved themselves.

General Beauregard began to have serious doubts about the practicality of the sub.  But Horace Hunley was convinced that the problem was with the Navy crew that obviously did not know how to handle the sub.  Horace Hunley received permission to command the sub himself.  He recruited the original crew from Mobile.  Several trial runs by Horace Hunley and the Mobile crew were completed successfully.  Then, on the morning of October 15, 1863, Horace Hunley and his crew took the Hunley down, but she failed to come up!  All hands were lost, including Horace Hunley.

The sub was raised again, but Beauregard was reluctant to continue with the project.  He was finally convinced to try one more time.  George Dixon  and William Alexander, two of the project’s engineers, recruited another crew.  They made a series of successful dives and appeared to have broken the Hunley’s jinx, although there were still problems with the torpedo on a rope.  The decision was made to place the torpedo on the end of a rigid spar that would be attached to the front of the sub.

Finally, on the night of February 17, 1864, the Hunley was ready to try the real thing, an attack on an enemy vessel.  The target was the 1,240 ton, steam sloop, USS Housatonic.  As the Hunley approached, she was spotted by a sentry and an alarm was sounded.  The Housatonic carried thirteen guns, but the sub was already so close that the guns could not be depressed sufficiently to fire at the sub.  The Housatonic tried to back away from the sub’s path, but it was too late.  Suddenly, the ship was shaken by a mammoth explosion and she went down almost immediately.  Despite the rapid sinking of the ship, only five hands were lost. 

For over a century it had been assumed that the Hunley had been caught in the explosion and had sunk with the Housatonic. In 1987, James Kloeppel published Danger Beneath the Waves and presented substantial evidence that the Hunley had survived the attack.  Kloeppel’s thesis was confirmed in May 1995, when the remains of the Hunley were found several miles from the site of the attack and less than a mile from safety.  The sub survived the attack on the Housatonic but came to grief for some unknown reason on the return trip.

Plans to recover the sub began almost immediately after it’s discovery in 1995.  But little progress was made until more recently.  Shortly after this article originally appeared in March 1998, Congress appropriated the sum of $300,000 to help the private effort to recover the Hunley.  Fund raising was given an additional boost by the television premiere of the TNT movie The Hunley July 11, 1999.  To date almost $16 million has been raised.  The money has been used to fund the recovery of the sub and to fund a seven year restoration project once the sub is recovered.

Originally, the sub was to be raised in January 2001.  But testing disclosed that the sub was in much better shape than anyone expected and recovery effort was moved up.  As I write this in late July 2000, plans are to raise the sub on August 6^th.  As you read this in September you can find out the results of that effort by checking the Official H.L. Hunley site at:  www.hunley.org.  When the sub is recovered it will be taken to the Charleston Museum for permanent display.  If you get a chance, go see it there.

Prepared by Dennis Carman for the Global Stamp News, March 1998 issue, and with additional material was reissued for the September 2000 issue.   Minor changes have been made to eliminate irrelevant material.

1998

LFC

Supplement

On May 25, 2001, The Record, a local Bergen County newspaper, carried a news article from Charleston, South Carolina, reporting the finding of Lt. George Dixon’s “lucky gold coin” which Dixon had credited with saving his life at the battle of Shiloh in 1862, by deflecting a Union bullet.  The $20 gold coin had been engraved “Shiloh / April 6, 1862 / My Life Preserver / G.E.D”

Excavation officials announced they were going to suspend the excavation as early as next week and allow the public to view the sub.  Public viewing will start on weekends beginning June 16^th and continue through the summer.

Prepared by Dan Huntley and David Perlmutt for Knight Ridder Newspapers.  Major editing changes have been made for space considerations.

July 2000

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