![]() ![]() The submarine’s development was supported by the Confederate Army, which assigned British-born lieutenant William Alexander of the Twenty-first Alabama Infantry to assist in the project. The group moved its operations to the Park and Lyons Machine Shop in Mobile, Mobile County, where staff built a second submarine, the American Diver, sometimes referred to as the Pioneer II. Navy admiral David Farragut’s fleet advanced upon the city of New Orleans. It was tested in the Mississippi River in February 1862 and was later taken to Lake Pontchartrain for further testing. The first submarine, Pioneer, was constructed in New Orleans in late 1861 and early 1862. The Hunley was the third submarine vessel to be constructed under the direction of riverboat captain James McClintock, engineer Baxter Watson, and lawyer Horace Lawson Hunley, whom the boat was eventually named after. ![]() The remains of all eight crewmen were found inside the submarine and were interred in Charleston’s Magnolia Cemetery in 2004. The submarine’s location was discovered in 1995, and the ship was raised in August 2000. Five crewman died on the Housatonic, but the Hunley sank with all hands. In February 1864, the Hunley launched from Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, and attacked and sank the 1,800-ton steam-powered sloop-of-war USS Housatonic about two and a half miles out. The boat accurately reflected both the dangers and advantages of attacking enemy ships with underwater explosives. ![]() Hunley was the first submarine to successfully sink an enemy ship in combat and was a remarkable vessel for the time in which it was constructed. Gibbons, T., Warships and Naval Battles of the Civil War. I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work. But who notices that in the full flush of either battle - or invention? The South scored one victory and paid a kamikaze price in human life. So the Civil War was the great proving ground for modern submarines. They also bought a French submarine, the Alligator. Perhaps that was a tribute to the Whale's intelligence. They called it the Intelligent Whale, but they didn't use it in combat. That was the first time a sub destroyed an enemy ship. But it never came back to the surface from that Pyhrric victory. 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. Today, we invent the submarine, against all odds. ![]()
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