Civil War Sub

[Mr. Ford95]

Being a history buff and major, totally cool that the public can finally view this full-on. Tiny little thing the Hunley was, I think the Japanese mini-subs in WW2 have been the only things smaller. 8 friggin people fit inside the Hunley.

Complete Civil War submarine unveiled for first time - Yahoo! News

[Malaki86]

Very cool. I watched a show, I think on the History Channel, of the raising of the sub.

Some friends of mine used to live close to Williamsport, MD, which is fairly close to the Antietam battlefield. There's a house a couple miles from theirs that housed soldiers either just before or after the battle. The owners of the house have never painted over where the soldiers scraped their names & date into the woodwork. I was looking through a home buyers guide there and saw an old farmhouse up for sale that was used as a hospital just after the battle.

[Mr. Ford95]

Yeah, I remember hearing about that house when I visited Antietam about 15 years ago while riding the C&O Canal on a bike. Of course living right here just a few hundred yards from the main part of Wilderness Battlefield is cool in it's own right at times, eery in others.

Of course the Hunley has gotten very little press over the years. Everyone knows more about the Monitor and Merrimac which were built like subs but stayed on the surface.

[Malaki86]

I've only been to one battlefield and that was Antietam. Just being there gave me the weirdest feelings - simply unexplainable.

A woman I used to work with went to Antietam with her family when she was young. While they were there, they were taking pictures with a Kodak 110 camera (you remember those). She said that when they got the pictures developed, all of them were perfect in color and such except for one area of the battlefield - Bloody Lane (where the soldiers were killed in the depression of the road). She said that every single picture from that area were a sepia color, almost identical to what you'd see in the original photo's. She said none of her family has set foot on another battlefield after that.

[GMAN]

I am glad that the general public can now view the sub. I remember reading about it when they first found it. I would love to see it in person.

[Mr. Ford95]

Crazy to think they put 8 people inside the Hunley and 7 of those were the prop guys. It was manually driven thru the water, I can't imagine having any room in there. I saw a drawing of what it would look like with all 8 inside. It would be like stuffing 8 men inside the cab of a truck, no room at all, lot's of man touching going on. Once you got inside that was it, you stayed put as one of the 7 prop guys.

[GMAN]

It would certainly have been cozy. I wonder how they managed to set a torpedo with everyone in the crew, other than one, having to man the props?

[Malaki86]

The torpedo was attached to the front of the sub. To place it, they rammed the other ship with the sub. Once set, they reversed the sub's direction, which left the torpedo on the ship.

[GMAN]

That had to be very dangerous.

[Mr. Ford95]

Well, they could only move at about 4 knots tops, not like they are really ramming it very hard. It was a Spar Torpedo and it usually had a barb on it so that when rammed/shoved, into a ship, it would stay put. Remember, ships back then were normally made of wood. At that point, very few ships consisted of metal or iron like they do today. The sub would then move away and "light" the fuse from a distance. Wonder how silent this thing was, I could see it very quietly sneaking up on one of ours if it moved at half it's top speed.

Speaking of house's where soldiers scribbled their names:Uncovering 1860s graffiti; in Culpeper, an expert turns the clock back to Civil War - The News Desk

[Windwalker]

The Hunley was the 3rd one that was built. The first two were destroyed because of fear that the north would get them.

The Hunley DID submerge a few times, but when I blew up the Union ship, it was the THIRD CREW that it had had. The first two crews died when the sub sank on two previous trials. It was recovered twice and a new crew tried again. From what they found out about the Hunley, it had dive planes near the bow, and ballast tanks to pump water in and out, fore and aft. They've been amazed with the technology demonstrated in the Hunley. And, made of cast iron, too.

But I suspect that the flaw in the plan was the hatch seal. What would they have used? Wood? Okum? Lead? During the mission, they were not to be submerged, but the explosion may have set up a large wave that would have swamped it with one of the two hatches open. And, if you look at it, it was never designed for men to be able to escape in case it sank. It was found something like a thousand feet from the ship it sank.

[golfhobo]

I am struck by the apparent damage to the stern. It seems to be "skewed" a bit. Maybe even enough to constrict the straight propeller shaft needed to escape.

I wonder how this happened? It seems that after planting the torpedo, it backed off and then possibly turned to starboard and accelerated trying to get away from the explosion to come. Seems they didn't clear the hull of the ship they were attacking. After "broadsiding" the ship, they may have lost forward propulsion and, due to their weight, sank under their own weight.

I would like to see charts showing just WHERE it was found. There should be remnants of the ship it sank VERY close by.

I'm very sorry for the loss of Confederate lives aboard, but... they may have saved many others by sinking what might have been a "supply ship" for those DAMNED Yankees!

Isn't it amazing that some of the most important innovations in warfare came from a war against/amongst OURSELVES?

A case could be made that, without the war of sedition between the South and "the rest of America," we would not have had the technology that helped us win the "War to end all wars" (otherwise known as WWI.)

I give special "props" to Commander Hunley who went down with his ship... unlike that azzhole in the cruise ship incident off the coast of Italy.

Americans RULE! [even those seditionist Confederates! ]

Seriously.... I think one trait is common in ALL American soldiers... the willingness to give their lives for the cause (and country) they believe in.

IF there is a heaven... they deserve a special place there! The rest of us are just freeloaders.

[Mr. Ford95]

Here's an article with some better pics: Complete Civil War submarine unveiled for first time | Reuters

It's possible something else happened to the sub, maybe there was a tidal wave from the 135lb bomb they detonated that swamped them:

Some historians say that the submarine showed a mission-accomplished lantern signal from its hatch to troops back on shore before it disappeared.

Mardikian has the lantern, which archaeologists found in the submarine more than a century later, in his laboratory.

[Windwalker]

I read that also, that they sent a signal after sinking the Housatonic. I also read that the sub was found about a thousand feet away from the wreck of the Housatonic. There is evidence that the hull has been breached about 3 times, but they don't know if it was small arms fire that penetrated the hull or if it was after it was sunk with anchors dragging across the hull.

On 29 August, while moored to a steamer, the submarine was accidently pulled over on its side and sank, drowning five members of her crew. After salvage, she was given a new crew and began a series of tests. However, during diving trials on 15 October 1863, she failed to surface. Horace Lawson Hunley, who was directing her operation, and the rest of her men were drowned. H.L. Hunley was again raised and repaired. With a third crew, and under orders to only operate on the surface, she began a series of attempts to attack United States Navy ships on blockade duty off Charleston. On 17 February 1864, these efforts were successful. H.L. Hunley approached the steam sloop of war USS Housatonic and detonated a spar torpedo against her side. The Federal ship sank rapidly, becoming the first warship to be lost to a submarine's attack.
However, H.L. Hunley did not return from this mission, and was presumed lost with all hands. Her fate remained a mystery for over 131 years, until May 1995, when a search led by author Clive Cussler located her wreck.

Another article I read said that the second crew had to be cut to pieces in order to remove them from the sub. And, since Hunley was on the second crew, he never did see the sub sink anything. But, the hatches (two of them, one fore and one aft) were only 46 inches in diameter, and oval shaped. Also, the drawings that survived were not to scale, and since everyone seems to have thought they were, artist's drawings of the sub were actually shorter by about 25%.
http://www.charlestonillustrated.com...es/topedo2.jpg
CSS H.L. Hunley (1863)*Submarine Torpedo Boat - History, Specs and Pictures - Navy Ships
I've been looking for the article that says how far from the Housatonic the Hunley was located, but I have not found it. I know I read that it was a thousand feet, in about 28 feet of water.

topedo2.jpg

[Mr. Ford95]

I read the same thing about the crews, it was so tight inside there that once you got in, you were in quite possibly for good. I do remember something about 28 feet of water but I thought that was where the Hunley was found.........they were definitely close to each other, the typical range for a spar torpedo and the accompanying fuse was normally under 1000 ft. Maybe it ended up damaged from the wave and ended up sinking while they put the lantern up. A dive plane could have been bent and pulled them under. It's all guesswork as to what really happened here nearly 150 years later.

[GMAN]

Perhaps we need to reconstruct the CSA and secede from the socialists.

[Windwalker]

I read the same thing about the crews, it was so tight inside there that once you got in, you were in quite possibly for good. I do remember something about 28 feet of water but I thought that was where the Hunley was found.........they were definitely close to each other, the typical range for a spar torpedo and the accompanying fuse was normally under 1000 ft. Maybe it ended up damaged from the wave and ended up sinking while they put the lantern up. A dive plane could have been bent and pulled them under. It's all guesswork as to what really happened here nearly 150 years later.

If you look at my last post, "TORPEDO2.JPG", you'll see that there was no fuse to light. Pulling on a lanyard released a firing pin that detonated the charge. It is possible that a thousand feet of lanyard was too short for safety. But, I'm thinking that if they used a lantern to signal, they had a hatch open. It doesn't look like it would take a lot of water to lose it. What I have not seen or read was that it was equipped with pumps to pump out the crews space. Only the ballast tanks fore and aft. That may have been the weak link in the chain.