Images courtesy of Friends of The Hunley
by John Whipple
(above) A computer rendering of H.L. Hunley (right) Horace Lawson (H.L.) Hunley, inventor and builder of Hunley.
The Birth of Undersea Warfare – H.L. Hunley On April 19, 1861 – just days after the fall of Fort Sumter and the beginning of the American Civil War – President Abraham Lincoln ordered a naval blockade of all major southern ports in an effort to cut off Confederate weapons and supplies. Home to not only Fort Sumter but also the largest port in the south, Charleston, S.C. soon became the focus of the Union blockade, and the naval war itself. Nearly three years later, the blockade continued to maintain a near stranglehold on the city. The Confederates still held the city itself, but the situation was becoming dire as fewer and fewer supply ships broke through the massed Union forces. It was in these desperate times that a steam-gauge manufacturer from New Orleans and a lawyer from Tennessee named Horace Lawson Hunley would join forces to support the South, and ultimately aid the beleaguered people of Charleston. Betting on technical ingenuity and sheer determination, these men led an effort to design, build, and send into battle what became the first submarine to sink a ship in wartime. Suffering many losses – including Hunley himself, for whom the vessel was later named – the success of the H.L. Hunley garnered great attention from both Union and Confederate commanders. Although it was not an American Navy’s first submarine, Hunley was the first to indisputably prove the concept of undersea warfare, thus inspiring future generations of shipbuilders and redefining naval strategy forever.
With the Union’s blockading ships not only cutting off Southern supplies but also occasionally bombarding port cities all along the coast, the Confederate authorities were desperate for a means to strike back at the U.S. Navy’s dominating presence. They deployed explosive “torpedoes” – which today would be called mines – in many harbors to keep the ironclads and other enemy vessels at bay. However, what was really needed was some means to increase the success of their blockade runners. For that purpose, they endeavored to build a series of novel attack craft that could use torpedoes offensively and attack the blockade ships unseen. Within the Confederacy, a spirit of both nationalism and the hope of financial gain fostered great interest in submersible design and construction in southern coastal cities, especially when high bounties were offered for sinking ships of the blockade. Unbridled by the inherent bureaucratic delays of U.S. Navy contracting, the Confederates encouraged a growing number of southern profiteers and ultimately enlisted approximately 50 for the Confederate cause.1 One of these men was James McClintock, who – with business partner Baxter Watson – had already sold the South two machines for making bullets. In closing their first deal to supply a combat submersible, they established the core design and engineering team that would, using trial and error, build a series of vessels that eventually culminated in the successful Hunley.2 Early Predecessors: Pioneer and American Diver The first of a series of submarines designed and built by McClintock and Watson began construction late in 1861 in New Orleans. Fabricated from quarter-inch iron plates, Pioneer was 30 feet long and four feet in diameter, with dive planes and a propeller at one end powered by two crewmen working a hand crank. Although McClintock himself later admitted that the overall configuration was faulty, the submarine reportedly sank a schooner and two target barges during sea trials by means of towed torpedoes. Despite its purported successes, Pioneer never saw battle U N D E R S E A WA R F A R E F A L L 2 0 0 6
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