SUBMARINES AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
In a conflict where several technologies were used for the first time on the battlefield and elsewhere, these hazardous inventions formed some of the earliest attempts to take war beneath the waves
‘ S
trike, mad vessel! Shower your useless shot! And then, you will not escape the spur of the Nautilus!’ So utters a vengeful Captain Nemo in
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas,
Jules Verne’s classic science fiction novel of 1870. The submarine under his command, the Nautilus, is a wondrous creation. Electrically powered, it boasts a library of 12,000 books, a dining room and a pipe organ played by the mysterious seafarer. As Nemo demonstrates, the ‘spur of the Nautilus’ can also send any craft to the depths of the sea.
Fantastic as Verne’s creation is, the submarine was already a matter of fact by the time he wrote his fictional work. Although less sophisticated than the Nautilus, engineers had only a few years earlier pioneered the use of underwater vessels for both defensive and offensive purposes during the American Civil War. And, before the Nautilus voyaged through the imaginations of readers, one of these submarines had for the first time in military history successfully sunk an enemy ship.
The concept of the submarine dates back much earlier than the American Civil War. British mathematician William Bourne formulated plans for a submersible vessel in the late 17th century; Dutch inventor Cornelis Drebbel went further by constructing a prototype submarine which dived beneath the River Thames in 1620 to the wonder of spectators including King James I. American engineer Robert Fulton also tested a submersible named Nautilus (the name later taken by Jules Verne) in France, but could not persuade a sceptical Napoleon Bonaparte of its military potential.
Napoleon might not have been convinced but the first attempted combat use of a submarine had already taken place, during the American Revolutionary War. In the early morning of
“WHAT THE PERPLEXED DESK OFFICER HAD FIRST THOUGHT TO BE A PORPOISE WAS IN FACT A SEVEN-TON UNDERWATER VESSEL BUILT OF BULLETPROOF IRON”
7 September 1776, army volunteer Ezra Lee piloted an oval-shaped wooden vessel named the Turtle underneath the British flagship HMS Eagle, but failed to force the Turtle’s explosive into the enemy ship’s hull.
Lincoln’s submarines
The American Civil War of 1861-65 was nonetheless a watershed in the technological advancement and combat application of submarines. The conflict was determined on land in some of the most famous battles in military history, yet the advancement of submarine technology shows how one development in warfare begets further innovation. The Civil War witnessed the first military action of ironclads, which succeeded the wooden ships of earlier wars. No sooner had the Union and Confederacy launched these seemingly invulnerable vessels, than both sides started to devise the means to sink them. ‘These infernal machines,’ as they came to be known, offer an inspiring but cautionary tale about both the strengths and limitations of humankind’s efforts to overcome the forces of nature.
The competition between the Union and the Confederacy to construct a submarine resulted in losses and wins for both sides.
On 13 June 1862, the Union Navy accepted a submersible vessel named the Alligator for military service. The submarine was based on a design by the French engineer Brutus de Villeroi.
De Villeroi was a flamboyant character. Following his move to the United States, he listed his occupation as ‘natural genius’.
The aristocratic ‘de’ in his name was also an affectation. There has even been speculation that he once taught Jules Verne, and like Robert Fulton helped inspire the fictional Nautilus. What we do know
is that clashes between navy
officials and the temperamental Frenchman eventually led to his dismissal from the daring construction project.
“I propose to you, a new arm of war, as formidable as it is economical,” Villeroi had earlier written to President Lincoln. However, the submarine built at the Philadelphia Navy Yard honoured neither commitment.
The Alligator was 14 metres long, with a crew of 18. The machine relied on human muscle for movement, first by paddles and later a hand-cranked propeller that maximised its speed to four knots. Among its most important innovations were an air purification system. The Alligator also boasted an airlock intended to allow divers to leave the vessel to attach mines to the hull of enemy surface ships and return to the safety of the submarine.
Numerous missions were proposed for the navy’s new underwater weapon. Yet for a number of practical reasons, not least insufficient water depth for it to dive, the Alligator undertook none of them. Eventually it was decided to use the submarine in support of a naval assault on the harbour defences in Charleston, South Carolina.
On 31 March 1863, a wooden steamer towed the crewless Alligator along the Potomac River out of Washington and into the Atlantic Ocean. Two days later, as the steamer travelled along the North Carolina coast, weather conditions took a serious turn for the worse. When the port towline snapped, the submarine pitched on the swelling waves and started taking on water. Realising that the Alligator could also take down his boat, the steamer captain took the only course of action and cut the submarine adrift. It sank without a trace. The Union assault on Charleston ended in failure.
Northern inventors persisted during the rest of the war with submarine design and assembly. Their creations, including the Intelligent Whale and the Explorer, nevertheless remained incomplete by April 1865 when the Union claimed victory over the Confederacy. Nor were their eventual trials a success.
The Confederacy sub
While the Union continued to conduct work on submarines, it was the Confederacy that most successfully demonstrated the potential of the vessels. On the evening of 17 February 1864, the USS Housatonic stood anchored in calm moonlit waters off the coast of Charleston.
The sloop-of-war was one of the Union ships enforcing a blockade of southern ports. Like the snake after which it was named, the Anaconda Plan had the purpose of cutting off the lifeblood of the Confederate economy, rendering it unable to export the cotton needed for hard currency or import essential supplies.
At 8:45pm desk officer John Crosby saw astern the Housatonic what he later described to a court of inquiry as: “Something on the water, which at first looked to me like a porpoise coming to the surface to blow.” As it came closer, however, Crosby realised this was no shy harbour animal and he sounded the alarm.
Captain Charles Pickering fired several musket shots that did nothing to stop the object’s approach. Suddenly, there was an explosion in the ship’s starboard quarter. It took only eight minutes from Crosby’s first sighting to