Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Phillips speaks at museum about Civil War submarine
On Feb. 17, 1864, they carried out the attack. Union ships were in Charleston Harbor. The Hunley approached the Housatonic, one of the strongest ships in the Union navy, with a mine. The mine blew a hole in the Housatonic, sinking the ship and killing five sailors.
BELLA VISTA — Bella Vista Civil War Round Table President Dale Phillips presented Thursday night at the Bella Vista Historical Museum about the Hunley, a Confederate submarine that carried out a successful attack during the Civil War.
Phillips said Horace Hunley was a successful lawyer in New Orleans, and he decided to try to build a submarine because a $50,000 reward was offered to anyone who could destroy the Union blockade. He and two engineers began to build a prototype, Pioneer One. It was made of iron and designed for a crew of two or three. It was tested and it worked.
Hunley and his friends went to Mobile and, with the full support of Confederate authorities, started on a second prototype, Pioneer Two, or the American Diver. They tested it in Mobile Bay and it sank to the bottom and was never found. They had experimented with a battery-operated propulsion system, which failed, so they settled on the original hand-crank design, Phillips said.
They decided to design a much bigger submarine that could hold a crew of seven. This became the Hunley. The original weapons delivery system was for the sub to tow a torpedo and dive under a ship and destroy it. There were problems with the design. The Hunley made several successful dives in Mobile Bay, and they decided to take it to Charleston, S.C. It took two railroad cars to move the Hunley.
General Beauregard was skeptical about the Hunley, Phillips said. After a few more tests, Beauregard got impatient and found his own crew and seized the vessel. As the crew was docking it after their test, they sank it. The lieutenant and two crewmen escaped, but five crew members drowned.
The submarine sat in 42 feet of water for a time, and then authorities decided to hire a company to recover it.
They returned it to Hunley, and his original team was recalled. The bodies of the crew that drowned were buried, and slaves cleaned up the sub, because white workers would not touch it, Phillips said.
Hunley and seven crew members took the submarine out for a test, and it sank again for unknown reasons. Hunley and the rest of the crew all drowned.
The Hunley was raised again, and a Lt. Dixon was given the job of finding a third crew. Beauregard told Dixon to be honest with anyone who asked that the submarine had killed two crews. However, Dixon found a third crew, and they began training in Charleston Harbor.
One test they did was going to the bottom to see how much oxygen it would hold. When a candle went out they knew it was time to surface, and they ended up having two and a half hours of oxygen.
On Feb. 17, 1864, they carried out the attack. Union ships were in Charleston Harbor. The Hunley approached the Housatonic, one of the strongest ships in the Union navy, with a mine. The mine blew a hole in the Housatonic, sinking the ship and killing five sailors.
What happened to the Hunley after that is a mystery. After the attack, Dixon was to light a lantern with a blue lens to signal Confederate sailors. Union sailors reported seeing it.
Some believe after signaling the Confederate sailors, Dixon went to the bottom to wait out a flurry of Union ships going to aid the Housatonic. Fighting the tide was likely a factor as well, and, knowing they had two and a half hours worth of oxygen, they likely settled on the bottom to wait. However, they would have used up more oxygen than during the candle test because of all the hand-cranking to reach their target. This could have resulted in a lower oxygen reserve. Another theory was that the whole crew simply went to sleep and, as the oxygen ran out, never woke up.
The Hunley was found in 1995 and raised in 2000 using modern equipment. All the crew members were found at their stations. They were buried in Magnolia Cemetery, where the crews from the other sinkings were buried.