Finally, in 1864, the Hunley sank the ironclad Union sloop Housatonic. The South hurled it into battle over and over. The Hunley's weapon was also a spar torpedo. It also warned the crew by flickering out when too little oxygen was left. An eight-man crew turned a hand-cranked propeller in that terrible small space. It was made from a steam boiler forty feet long and less than four feet in diameter. The first real submarine was the Confederate Hunley. The South built twenty more Davids, and some of them damaged Union boats. But the hole was above the waterline and the ship survived. The David attacked a Union ironclad and managed to blow a hole in its side. The trick was to ram it into the enemy and hope you suffered less damage than he did. A long underwater pole held an explosive charge out in front. So her smokestack and breathing tube protruded above the surface.ĭavid's claim to the title submarine is flimsy, but her offensive weapon was a spar torpedo. The steam-driven David couldn't burn fuel to make steam if it was fully submerged. Civil War ironclads had lowered themselves further and further down into the protective water. David wasn't a pure submarine, but it came close. They launched a boat called the David in 1862 and sent it at the Union Goliaths. Years later, he made a submarine for the French and tried without success to sink the enemy with it.ĭuring the Civil War, the Confederacy made a far more serious, far more desperate, try at submarine warfare. One person who got the point was Robert Fulton. His one-man, hand-cranked machine did little harm to the English in 1776, but it made the point. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.īushnell's Turtle was the first submarine used in war. Restoration work will continue on the submarine as scientists attempt to remove corrosion from the submarine’s hull and preserve its outer skin.Īlthough it is currently on display in a tank of fresh water to prevent rust, it will eventually be displayed in open air.Today, we invent the submarine, against all odds. Nonetheless, the Hunley was the first submarine designed for the open ocean and built specifically for warfare. That title is held by the Turtle, which was a wooden-hulled submarine used in New York Harbor during the Revolutionary War. When it was finally raised in 2000, scientists had to remove 10 tons of sediment as well as skulls, bones and other human remains from the vessel.Īlthough innovative, the Hunley was not the world’s first submarine. Hunley by Champan, circa 1863Īfter sinking, the Hunley remained lost until 1970. Yet another theory suggests the crew ran out of oxygen and suffocated after attaching the explosives. It is not known exactly what caused the submarine to sink, although one theory suggests that it was rammed by the Union ship USS Canadaigua, which was on its way to rescue the Housatonic’s crew.Īnother theory suggests the submarine did not get far enough away from the Housatonic before the charge detonated and may have sustained damage in the blast. The Hunley sank for the last time shortly after it destroyed the Union ship, the Housatonic, with a 135 pound torpedo in February of 1864. It sank a second time a few months later in October, this time killing all eight members of the crew, including Horace Hunley himself, who was steering the submarine.Īfter each sinking, the Confederates hauled the submarine back up to the surface, removed the bodies and planned the Hunley’s next attack.Īccording to a recent article by Reuters, historical documents describe workers cutting bodies into pieces to remove them from the sunken submarine. It first sank in August of 1863 during a training exercise, killing five members of the crew. Launched in 1863 off the coast of Charleston, the Hunley sank enemy ships during the Civil War by ramming spikes tethered to explosive charges into ship’s hulls.ĭesigned by Horace Hunley and built in Mobile, Alabama, the Hunley is made from cast iron and wrought iron and maneuvered through the water with hand-crank propellers.Īlthough highly effective at destroying enemy ships, the Hunley sank at least three times during its military career, killing a total of 13 crew members, including its inventor Horace Hunley.
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