The CSS H. L. Hunley Rises Once more
By Robert A. Waters
“(The Hunley) is extra
harmful to those that use it than the enemy.” Accomplice
Common P. G. T. Beauregard.
George E. Dixon and Queenie
On April 6, 1862, a 12 months after the USA of America
invaded the Accomplice States of America, the 2 armies collided close to a small
village known as Pittsburgh Touchdown, in southern Tennessee. The carnage at what was
later known as the Battle of Shiloh was unprecedented within the historical past of the
Americas. In two days of preventing, tens of hundreds have been killed or wounded.
One Alabama regiment, the 21st, misplaced 200 males out of 650. Sergeant George
E. Dixon, a Kentuckian who had enlisted with the regiment in Cellular, was
among the many injured. Earlier than the battle, he had labored as a steamboat engineer in New
Orleans, however resided in Cellular when the battle broke out.
Dixon ought to have been only one extra lifeless soldier hauled from
the sector and rapidly interred in a mass grave. However he was fortunate. Earlier than he
left for battle, his teenaged girlfriend and Cellular resident, Queenie
Bennett, slipped a newly-minted twenty-dollar gold coin into his pocket as
a superb luck appeal. Within the battle, Dixon was shot point-blank. The Yankee Minnie
ball struck the coin in his trouser pocket. As an alternative of plowing via flesh and bone and
arteries, it absorbed the influence, sparing Dixon’s life.
Queenie, daughter of a affluent steamboat captain, was identified round Cellular because the “the little Insurgent.” Dixon, a blonde-haired, extremely smart
22-year-old, was smitten with d he survived the battle, they probably
would have married.
Dixon’s wound was extreme, a damaged left femur, which induced
him to stroll with a limp for the remainder of his quick life.
When he returned from Shiloh to Cellular to recuperate, Dixon grew to become
conscious of a “torpedo boat” being constructed close by. The venture was imagined to
be top-secret, concocted by native pro-Southern entrepreneurs and the
Accomplice Secret Service. A kind of loyal benefactors was Horace Lawson
Hunley, a rich marine engineer initially from Tennessee. Dixon grew to become
pleasant with Hunley because the Accomplice Navy feverishly tried to mildew the
submarine right into a viable weapon. The Kentuckian would finally be promoted to
lieutenant and given command of the torpedo boat.
The Confederacy’s function in constructing a workable submarine was
a direct results of the Union blockade of New Orleans, Cellular and different ports.
The shutting down of Southern harbors had been one of many first actions taken
by Abraham Lincoln and his battle machine. Whereas in New Orleans, Horace Hunley and
others had begun a critical quest to construct an underwater “fish” that might blow
up the blockaders.
The Torpedo Boat
Throughout 1862 and the early a part of 1863, makes an attempt to assemble
a workable submarine had failed miserably. As boat after boat sank or capsized throughout
trials, ensuing within the deaths of quite a few crew members, the venture faltered.
However because the battle progressed and the South continued hemorrhaging its restricted
manpower in battle after battle, the state of affairs grew to become dire. The charismatic
normal P. G. T. Beauregard issued a command that the brand new submarine, the
Hunley, be moved from Cellular to the besieged metropolis of Charleston, South
Carolina. On August 12, 1863, the submarine arrived by rail.
In a take a look at trial whereas nonetheless in Cellular, this underwater torpedo
boat had blown up an vintage coal-hauling barge, bringing a glimmer of hope to
these within the know.
Constructed from iron boilerplate, the submarine was formed
like a shark, 40 toes lengthy and simply vast and excessive sufficient to hold her cramped
crew. “The Hunley might dive by opening a valve and letting sea water
fill the ballast tank,” wrote Gerald Teaster. “A set of crude diving planes,
protruding the aspect of the boat, was additionally supplied for up and down movement. A
mercury manometer, or strain gauge, was mounted inside to indicate the depth. Two
small hatches have been put in on the highest of the boat for getting out and in.
Every of those had a small glass viewing port.” The propeller behind the
submarine rotated inside a round metallic shroud that protected it from
snagging on nets or different particles. Eight hand-cranks have been spaced so the crew
might sit alongside the size of the torpedo ship and drive the propeller shaft.
On its remaining voyage, the shark-boat held seven crew members as
effectively as Captain Dixon. The crew, utilizing the hand-cranks, was answerable for propelling
the ship. Dixon stood within the entrance of the boat together with his head within the ahead
hatch, looking the glass window and guiding the crew. He additionally operated the
diving planes and was answerable for setting off the explosive.
A press launch from the Hunley excavation crew
defined that “the Hunley used an revolutionary lanyard system to detonate
the torpedo. The concept was to ram the spar torpedo right into a goal after which again
away, inflicting the torpedo to slide off the spar. A rope from the torpedo to the
submarine would spool out. As soon as the submarine was at a protected distance, the road
would tighten and detonate the warhead.” The shark-boat needed to be up shut and
private to work successfully.
In Charleston, the Hunley crew took the boat out into
the harbor quite a few instances to check it. Nevertheless, on August 29, 1863, it sank,
killing all its crew. The boat was raised and refurbished and new trial runs
started. On October 15, 1863, it sank once more. 4 of its crew died, together with entrepreneur
Horace L. Hunley, whereas three survived.
After this new debacle, Common Beauregard famously stated, “(The
CSS Hunley) is extra harmful to those that use it than the enemy.” However he
reluctantly agreed to let Lieutenant Dixon have one final alternative to show
{that a} submarine might sink an enemy vessel.
Engineers once more raised the boat and started new exams.
The Assault
Like a shark, the grey boat knifed via the water. Simply
beneath the glassy sea in Charleston Harbor, the hunter had set her sights on
an outsized prey.
The evening of February 17, 1864 noticed calm seas within the harbor.
Seven miles out, the silhouettes of many Yankee ships could possibly be seen ready to
apprehend smugglers and blockade-runners. However Dixon observed a lone Union vessel
anchored simply 4 miles away. It was the USS Housatonic, a three-master
that was 207 toes lengthy. The sixteen-gun “sloop of battle” had been instrumental in
capturing a number of blockade runners. As she sat within the harbor, Captain Charles
R. Pickering saved the boilers operating and 9 guards on deck.
The Accomplice torpedo boat, CSS Hunley, was about to
make historical past. By no means within the historical past of the world had a submarine made a
profitable assault on an enemy ship.
Only a few hundred yards from the Housatonic,
Lieutenant Dixon urged on his crew as they sped the boat ahead. Apart from
Kentuckian Dixon, three got here from the states of Alabama, Florida and Maryland.
Little is understood in regards to the different 4 besides they have been of overseas descent. At
least one, who was solely identified solely as “Miller,” hailed from Germany.
100 fifty sailors manned the Housatonic. At 8:45
P.M., via the darkness, a number of males standing guard observed a wake streaking
in direction of their ship. At first, they thought it was a log, however quickly decided it
was shifting too quick to be a pure phenomenon. By then, the shark-boat was
closing quick. The Housatonic crew did what they might: they opened fireplace
with rifles. Captain Dickering rushed up on deck and fired a double-barrel shotgun
on the intruder. The small arms fireplace ricocheted off the iron pores and skin of the
submarine, and it saved coming.
Lower than two minutes later, an explosi0n rocked the Housatonic.
The copper keg, stuffed with 135 kilos of black powder, detonated slightly below
the waterline on the stern of the ship. The explosion was muffled, however despatched a
cascade of sea-water billowing towards the sky. 5 sailors died immediately, and
two have been wounded. Inside 5 minutes, the ship had sunk to the underside.
The Union sailors have been fortunate. The ship got here to relaxation with half
of its masts rising out of the shallow water. Many sailors climbed the masts,
holding on for expensive life till the USS Canandaigua appeared to rescue them.
Different crew members boarded lifeboats and have been rescued.
The Housatonic was misplaced.
However what occurred to the Hunley? Nobody knew. It by no means
returned to shore–it had simply vanished.
Elevating the primary submarine to sink an enemy ship
Quick ahead to Could 3, 1995. Archeologists from the Nationwide
Underwater and Marine Company, financed partially by novelist and adventurer Clive
Cussler, found a rusted hull on the backside of Charleston Harbor. 4
miles offshore, it lay in 30 toes of water. After mendacity on the ocean’s flooring
for 131 years, specialists recognized the ship because the fabled CSS Hunley.
In 2000, as thousands and thousands watched on tv, the ship was
raised intact from the ocean. A time capsule, it contained our bodies of the crew
and artifacts of the troopers. Due to the fragile situation of the ship,
it was positioned in a 75,000-gallon metal tank stuffed with recent water to guard
the boat. From there, archaeologists would spend years to excavating the H.
L. Hunley.
Among the many attention-grabbing finds was a $20.00 gold eagle. The coin
and a gold pocket-watch lay beneath the skeletonized stays of George
Dixon. For greater than a century, historians had debated whether or not the story of
Queenie and the gold coin that saved the younger Kentuckian was true. Many
thought the story, like numerous war-time tales, had been fabricated. However the
discovering of the coin confirmed the story. Dixon had engraved the next
assertion into the again of the coin: “Shiloh. April 6th, 1862 My
Life Preserver G. E. D.”
Along with Dixon’s artifacts, archaeologists discovered
artillery buttons, a pipe, a pencil, a leather-based pockets, and different private
gadgets. One merchandise stirred a lot curiosity. A Union canine tag was discovered beneath the
physique of crew member Joseph Ridgeway. Researchers realized that he had picked up
the memento after one of many battles he’d fought in.
How did the Hunley sink, and the way did the crew die?
These questions loomed giant all through the years as archaeologists labored to
uncover the thriller. There had been little harm to the boat, eliminating the
chance that it had been sunk by enemy fireplace or had been blown up when the
dynamite exploded.
CBC Information reported that “the crew have been killed by huge lung
and mind accidents induced not directly by their very own torpedo…The exit hatches have been
closed and the bilge pimps that will have been used if the sub began to take
on water weren’t set to pump, suggesting that the crew by no means tried to save lots of
themselves because the sub sunk.”
Dr. Rachel Lance, who graduated from Duke
College with a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, stated “There have been some holes
within the hull that have been the results of time below the ocean. However there was no precise
harm brought on by the blast itself.”
CBC Information reported that “when the cost exploded, the blast
would have induced the submarine’s hull to transmit a robust, secondary shock
wave into the submarine, crushing their lungs and mind (sic) and killing them
immediately.”
Whereas there are different theories about how the Hunley met
its doom, this appears to be the most definitely.
On April 17, 2004, the crew of the primary submarine to sink an
enemy ship have been interred. Hundreds of People, lots of them descendants of
Accomplice veterans, attended the funeral. After a memorial service and a
four-and-a-half mile march via Charleston, the eight-man crew was laid to
relaxation at Magnolia Cemetery.
My pal and fellow-Southerner, Max Northcutt, made
the journey from Tennessee to South Carolina to attend the providers. He was form
sufficient to lend me his in depth archives in regards to the Hunley, which I used for
this story.
Sources:
The Accomplice Submarine H. L
Hunley by Gerald F. Teaster
The CSS Hunley: The Biggest
Undersea Journey of the CIVIL WAR by Richard Bak
The CSS H. L. Hunley: Accomplice
Submarine by R. Thomas Campbell
The Hunley web site: The Mates of The Hunley – The World’s First
Profitable Fight Submarine
