How does the old saying go, necessity is the mother of invention?

These trite few words certainly pertain to a number of aspects of America’s Civil War, and apply to every conflict this old world has ever witnessed.

The fact remains, no part of those four years of national trial witnessed more of a disparity between the two protagonists than did the Union and Confederate navies.

To say the U.S. Navy had a decided advantage over its fledgling counterpart would be to say a grown man is bigger and more powerful than a young boy.

The Union had more ships, more men, more guns and far more resources.

For all it lacked in these four areas, the Confederate Navy nearly made up for it in both innovation and invention.

Confederate ironclad ships brought vast improvement in armament to formerly all-wooden vessels, although with limited effect on the war’s outcome.

No innovation, North or South, came close to the submersible boat, or submarine, than did the CSS Hunley.

Like its ironclad brethren, it played a small part in the war, yet a large part in the history of naval warfare.

While the one-man-submersible Turtle was developed during the Revolutionary War to attack British warships and attach explosives to ship’s hulls, it never was successful as a weapon of war.

The CSS Hunley was. Named for its builder, Horace L. Hunley, the first submarine used in battle was 40 feet long and was built in Mobile, Ala.

It was launched in July 1863, as the Confederacy was reeling from history-turning events such as Gettysburg and the fall of Vicksburg.

The boat, at first called Fish Boat, was shipped by rail to Charleston, S.C., where it sank Aug. 29, 1863, during a training exercise that took five members of the eight-man crew with it.

It sank again Oct. 15, 1863, killing the entire second crew, including Hunley himself.

The CSS Hunley again was raised and returned to service, and this time, it became the first successful submersible boat in naval history to attack and sink an enemy vessel.

On the night of Feb. 17, 1864, CSS Hunley and her eight-man crew attacked the USS Housatonic, a 1,240-ton steam-powered, 12-gun sloop-of-war stationed at the entrance to Charleston Harbor, about five miles off the Carolina coast.

It was with more than a bit of irony the attack occurred in the same harbor shared by Fort Sumter, where the Civil War had begun in 1861.

In an effort to break the stranglehold the Union Navy had with its blockade of Confederate shipping along the East Coast, Lt. George E. Dixon and his seven-man crew of volunteers attacked the Housatonic, jamming a barbed spar torpedo the Hunley carried on its bow into the wooden hull of the Union ship.

The torpedo soon did its job, exploding as the Hunley backed away, sending Housatonic and five crew members to the bottom of the sea in just five minutes.

There is historical evidence the Hunley survived up to an hour after the attack, since the commander of a nearby coastal artillery battery reported he received “two blue lights” from the submarine — a pre-arranged signal.

The Hunley tried to return to nearby Sullivan’s Island, but its actual fate is unclear. It possibly was damaged in the explosion of the torpedo, which was designed to detonate 150 feet from the target, yet exploded when the Hunley was barely 100 feet away, according to witnesses.

Or, since the crew operated the Hunley using a hand-cranking system, it is speculated they furiously were fighting both tide and waves, and simply ran out of oxygen in the cramped submersible’s sealed compartment.

After being discovered in the 1990s, the wreck of the Hunley was raised Aug. 8, 2000, by an underwater archaeological team bent on preserving the famous craft.

CSS Hunley was raised from the Atlantic just over 3.5 nautical miles from Sullivan’s Island.

When the vessel broke the surface of Charleston Harbor for the first time in 136 years, cheering crowds greeted the famous submersible from shore and surrounding boats.

Fittingly, the remains of the brave men who manned CSS Hunley were laid to rest at Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston.

Tens of thousands attended the ceremony, along with 6,000 Civil War re-enactors. Color guards from all five branches of the U.S. armed forces were present in modern dress uniform, adding military solemnity to the historic occasion.

As it turned out, only four of the Hunley’s crew were American born, the others all born in Europe.

The crewmen, it was found, died at their stations and were not trying to escape the sinking craft — going to their graves as a solemn footnote to American naval history.



Christy is news editor at the News & Eagle and may be reached at davidc@enidnews.com