We’re diving into an incredible chapter of American ingenuity and bravery, a story forged in the depths of the Civil War. Imagine the CSS Hunley, a truly unique human-powered submarine that was more than just a vessel; it was a bold gamble for the Confederacy. This innovative craft, built with the ambition to break the Union blockade of Charleston Harbor, pushed the boundaries of naval warfare. Its early days were fraught with peril, as crews painstakingly tested its limits, sometimes at the cost of their lives, always driven by the dream of a successful attack.
On a dark night in February 1864, the Hunley and its courageous crew, led by Commander Dixon, embarked on their historic mission. Silently, they approached the formidable USS Housatonic, launching the first successful submarine attack in history. The blast shook Charleston Harbor, sending the Union warship to the bottom. Yet, in a twist of fate that baffles historians to this day, the CSS Hunley itself vanished, never to be seen again, leaving behind one of the greatest maritime mysteries of the Civil War.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
Speaker 1: This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Those who search for the Our American Stories podcast go to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Up next, the story from the South Carolina Military Museum in Columbia, the State Capitol. The first successful submarine attack on February seventeenth, eighteen sixty-four, was only a partial success. When it was all said and done, the USS Hoosatonic laid on the bottom of Charleston Harbor, but so did the sub, the CSS Honley. Here’s John Freeman with the story.
00:01:00
Speaker 2: Wasn’t built here. It wasn’t even the first submersible-type craft used by the Confederacy. So, they had something else called the David, which was called a semi-submersible. It was a boat that it rowed really low in the water, and because of it, thought, well, it’d be difficult detect, difficult to hit. But it would call it a torpedo boat because it was supposed to be doing what the Honey, similar to they did, which is take a torpedo—which torpedoes at that time were more mines—and run at the side of enemy ships. Well, the Honley was built elsewhere; it was brought to Charleston, and it was brought here for testing. Actually, it was hopeful that after testing it could break the blockade that was going off the harbor by the Union Fleet. And so, when they initially built it, there was actually a rope and a floating mine behind them, and what they thought they would do is they would paddle or row. Neither of those are properties. It was person-powered. The Honey was; there was like a crankshaft. They were all sitting there, hunched over in this little tin can, and they’re working with their arms, just getting this thing to go. Those man powers. What they’re supposed to do was go out of the harbor, head out towards the fleet, which wasn’t in the harbor. It was actually outside the harbor, so the fleet wasn’t called it offshore, but it was a decent ways out. You had to get there by hand, and then when they got close, they would actually submerge, and then they would drag this mine, which was floating, into the side of the ship to destroy the ship. Well, during training, they realized that wouldn’t work because at one point during training, due to the tides, they came to a stop, and they turned around and looked behind the boat, whether it’s on the surface, and the mine was coming up on them pretty fast, and they said, “Well, hang on, this might be a bad idea.” We need, we need to figure something else out so we don’t just blow ourselves out of the water. So, what they did is actually went to a spar system off the front of the Hunley. And for the longest time, I remember as a kid, I grew up in Charleston, there was a reproduction of the Huneley in front of the Charleston Museum, and it had the spar mounted to the top of the Hunley, and you can still find tons of publications and photos and paintings of the spar mounted to the top of the front of the Hundlay of the bow and just sticking out straight. And that’s why everyone thought it happened. And so, they actually went and they recovered the Hundley in the harbor, and they realized the bar was mounted to the bar bottom and stuck upwards at more of an angle so it could hit in the bottom of the boat better. So, they went to a bar mountain on the bottom. Unfortunately, there were some—there are some accidents during training. I think they lost multiple crews where something would happen: the billows would leak, or a hatch would somehow be left open, if I recall, and they would just flood, and they would lose cruise, and they’d always go out, and it was too vital. They couldn’t leave it. They’d always go out. They’d always recover it. They’d always managed to recruit it a crew for it. So, the night, the night of the attack, they got the crew in there. And I want to say, one of the members is Dixon. Is the name of the commander of the boat. Anyways, so, Dixon, he’s seen combat before, you know, he’s been on the battlefield. He’s actually got a gold coin in his pocket because on the battlefield he got shot, and the gold coin actually caught the bullet and prevented it from him losing him losing an appendage or something like that, and it actually may have saved his life due to the medicine at the time. So, it keeps it as a good luck charm: gold coin that’s cupped out, looking like the top of a mushroom. So, they go out, and they have signals they give to the shore of when they’re leaving them, when they’re successful, just so they have some form of communication between shore and the Honley. So, it’s nighttime they’re rowing out to the fleet, and out at the fleet is the Housatonic, which is a fairly large boat with pretty big guns, so the Hunley won’t actually approach completely underwater; otherwise, they’d have no idea where they were going. However, they have these little conning towers with these little glass viewports on them, so they can sort of see where they’re going. So, they start approaching the Housatonic. One of the lookouts sees it and raises the alarm, and they never get any heavy fire like cannons onto the Honey, but there are some small arms fire. But then the whole boat is just shuddered by a blast, and it actually goes down in a decent, decently short amount of time. Well, the Huntley is never seen again after this. However, lookouts on the coast claim that they see the lights from the Honey signaling that they’re going to return, which is what is part of the mystery of it never shows up. They never returns. How did it sink? Some people believe that maybe small arms fire penetrated one of those lookout portholes and actually took on water and sunk. Some think that when the blast went off, because what was supposed to happen is the mine hits the side of the boat, and then the Honey actually kicks it reverse. I guess they row their arms the other way, and they start backing away from the Hoosatonic, and there’s actually a rope that comes out, and as that rope hits a certain point, there’s a safe distance away. It’s supposed to go off on the side of the boat. So, they’re thinking, well, maybe went off an impact. Maybe it went off before it was supposed to, and it actually, because the effects of an acoustic blast like that underwater are just devastating the human body. Maybe that caused it. Maybe it’s sunk due to small arms fire, and no one knows, but doesn’t explain this supposed, the lights that the lookout saw on shore, because that was after the Whostonic would have sunk. They received the lights saying, “We’re coming in.” So, it’s always been a bit of a mystery, and where it’s sunk as well. In the finding of it is also an interesting story in itself. There’s two claims to the find of the Huntley. Eli Spent claims to have found a magnetic anomaly in the location where the Hunley was found, and therefore he found the Hunley. Another one is by big-money bookseller Clive Custler also claims he’s the one who’d who found it. He’s actually the one who funded a lot of it through NUMA, pulling the thing up, everything like that, so he tends to get the line share of it, but Spent still claims he’s the one who found the Hunley. To the stay, anyways, get to the end of it. I believe the Hunley is now done with conservation. I think they’re actually looking to get it on permanent display sometime in the next couple of years. But in the process of going through, you know, they have to be delicate because there’s remains. It’s become a tomb for over one hundred years. But when going through the remains and going through and cleaning out the inside, they find a gold coin, and it’s the gold coin that actually has the bullet and the dimple of it. Because it never knew if that was actually truthful, in that there was always a “Is that a myth? Is it a legend as a rumor?” to even take it with him when he went on the boat. Up finding the coin in the boat, and it’s sort of an awesome little story that he took it with him to the very end. And it’s still some debate of how it sunk exactly, but debate or not, it does stand as the first submarine in history to sink an enemy.
00:07:12
Speaker 1: Vessel. And a terrific job on the storytelling and the production by our own Montay Montgomery. The first successful submarine attack. More interesting things you learn right here on Our American Stories.
00:07:29
Speaker 2: Folks.
00:07:29
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