Inside History

The CSS Hunley

On the night of 17 February 1864, the submarine CSS Hunley became the first weapon of its kind to sink an enemy ship, before meeting its own demise in the attack.

Constructed by the firm Park and Lyons in Mobile, Alabama, the submarine was the brainchild of Horace L Hunley, a lawyer, planter and innovator from New Orleans. Other experiments had been disappointing, but the Hunley design was believed workable, even after two trial deployments ended in tragedies that cost the lives 13 men, including Horace Hunley.

Under control of the Confederate Army,

Hunley slipped beneath the harbour waters in Charleston, South Carolina, that fateful night and proceeded toward a cluster of US Navy warships blockading the major Confederate seaport. Under the command of Lieutenant George E Dixon, the crew of eight steered toward the 16-gun sloop of war USS Housatonic, which was patrolling 6km off the harbour mouth. Hunley carried a single torpedo full of black powder attached to a fivemetre spar, intending to shove the spar into an enemy ship below the waterline, then inflicting a mortal wound.

In the murky darkness, Hunley crept closer to Housatonic, finally ramming the torpedo home. The resulting explosion sent Housatonic to the bottom in five minutes. However, Hunley failed to return, its crew slipping to a watery grave – probably due to the same explosion that doomed Housatonic. Scholarly debate continues as to the exact cause of the submarine’s loss.

For more than a century, Hunley’s wreck lay submerged in Charleston harbour. In 1995, it was discovered and in the summer of 2000 raised to the surface for the first time in 136 years. Since then, archaeologists and conservators have worked to preserve, interpret and tell the story of Hunley, which is on display today in North Charleston, near the site where its fateful final mission began.