H.L. Hunley
History
H.L. Hunley was a Confederate submersible
which demonstrated the advantage and danger of undersea warfare. Although
not this nation's first submarine, Hunley was the first submarine
to engage and sink a warship.
Privately built in 1863 by Park and Lyons of Mobile, Alabama, Hunley
was fashioned from a cylindrical iron steam boiler, which was deepened and
also lengthened through the addition of tapered ends. Hunley was
designed to be hand powered by a crew of nine: eight to turn the hand-cranked
propeller and one to steer and direct the boat. As a true submarine, each
end was equipped with ballast tanks which could be flooded by valves or
pumped dry by hand pumps. Extra ballast was added through the use of iron
weights bolted to the underside of the hull. In the event the submarine
needed additional buoyancy to rise in an emergency, the iron weights could
be removed by unscrewing the heads of the bolts from inside the vessel.
On 16 February 1864, the Confederate submarine made a daring late night
attack on USS Housatonic, an 1800-ton sloop-of- war with 23 guns,
in Charleston Harbor off the coast of South Carolina. H.L. Hunley
rammed Housatonic with a spar torpedo packed with explosive powder
and attached to a long pole on its bow. The spar torpedo embedded in the
sloop's wooden side was detonated by a rope as Hunley backed away.
The resulting explosion that sent Housatonic with five crew members
to the bottom of Charleston Harbor also sank Hunley with its crew
of nine. H. L. Hunley earned a place in the history of undersea warfare
as the first submarine to sink a ship in wartime.
The Wreck
The search for Hunley ended 131 years later when best- selling
author Clive Cussler and his team from the National Underwater and Marine
Agency (NUMA) discovered the submarine after a 14-year search. At the time
of discovery, Cussler and NUMA were conducting this research in partnership
with the South Carolina Institute of Anthropology and Archaeology (SCIAA).
The team realized that they had found Hunley after exposing the forward
hatch and the ventilator box (the air box for the attachment of a snorkel).
The submarine is resting on its starboard side at about a 45 degree angle
and is covered in a 1/4 to 3/4 inch encrustation of ferrous oxide bonded
with sand and shell particles. Archaeologists exposed a little more on the
port side and found the bow dive plane on that side. More probing revealed
an approximate length of 34 feet with most, if not all, of the vessel preserved
under the sediment.
This discovery will undoubtedly add new information about Hunley's
history and the events that led to its loss. This unique find also brought
great excitement, not only to South Carolina, but to the entire nation.
A federal oversight committee made up of the National Park Service, the
U.S. Navy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the General
Services Administration, and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation
was formed to oversee and review recovery proposals. NUMA defined three
options for Hunley: leave the submarine undisturbed in its grave,
perhaps protecting the site in perpetuity; conduct an underwater archaeological
survey and other testing, then rebury the vessel and protect the site; or
recover the vessel and conduct the necessary archaeological and scientific
studies and conserve the submarine for future generations. After careful
consideration, the third option is perhaps the best choice now, because
with Hunley's location known, it would be almost physically and economically
impossible to maintain constant protection. Few answers would be found through
simply documenting the vessel' s outer hull because the answers to its greatest
mysteries are entombed within the submarine.
Additional Information:
Press Release on 1996 Expedition
Last update: 1 October 96