This Day in History: A Confederate sub sinks USS Housatonic

On this day in 1864, a Confederate submarine torpedoes and sinks USS Housatonic. The H.L. Hunley changed naval warfare forever. It was the first submarine to successfully sink a warship!

Americans had been trying to develop submarines for use in warfare for decades. As early as 1776, an attempt was made to use a submarine during the American Revolution. In the mid-1800s, as the Civil War began, both Union and Confederate forces were still trying to develop this technology.

"Submarine Torpedo Boat H.L. Hunley, Dec. 6, 1863," by Conrad Wise Chapman

Confederate forces succeeded first. In 1863, H.L. Hunley was completed in Mobile, Alabama. The road to success was a tough one. Several men were killed during the Hunley’s first expeditions. One of these was Hunley’s designer, Horace L. Hunley, who drowned during a training run.

In the meantime, Union forces had learned of Hunley from Confederate deserters. Naval forces prepared for the possibility of an attack. The commander of a blockade around Charleston Harbor warned his men of a boat similar to a torpedo boat, “which is nearly submerged and can be entirely so. It is intended to go under the bottoms of vessels and there operate.”

Crews were ordered to drop netting overboard and to leave space between boats “so as to be entirely clear of each other’s fire if opened suddenly in the dark.” They were also advised “not to anchor in the deepest part of the channel, for by not leaving much space between the bottom of the vessel and the bottom of the channel it will be impossible for the diving torpedo to operate except on the sides, and there will be less difficulty in raising a vessel if sunk.”

On the night of February 17, an officer aboard USS Housatonic noticed “something on the water, which at first looked to me like a porpoise, coming to the surface to blow.” Another crew member also saw the “strange object” and thought it had the “appearance of a log.” The object moved quickly and, almost before anyone could react, an explosion occurred.

Hunley had torpedoed Housatonic, which quickly began to sink. The ship was in a shallow area, so its riggings never went under water. Most of the crew escaped in lifeboats or by hanging on to the rigging until help arrived.

The crew of Hunley was less fortunate.

After the attack, the plan was for Hunley to signal success by flashing a blue light. Those ashore would see the light, and they would light a fire to help lead Hunley back to shore. Hunley apparently did signal its success with a blue light, as planned. But then, strangely, the crew disappeared. Neither the submarine nor the crew ever returned to shore.

What had happened? No one knew.

Did water sweep into the open hatch as Hunley was signaling its victory? At least one large Union ship rushed immediately to the aid of Housatonic, so perhaps its wake unknowingly swamped Hunley’s crew. Or maybe the crew was waiting for rescue ships to clear out before returning to shore, but then waited too long? Perhaps they simply ran out of oxygen.

A more recent theory is that Hunley sunk herself with blast waves from her own torpedo. “The secondary blast wave from this would have easily caused pulmonary blast trauma that killed the whole crew instantly,” theorizes Rachel Lance, a U.S. Navy biomedical engineer.

Hunley lay on the sea floor for well over 100 years before finally being re-discovered in 1995. Her crew was found, each man seated at his station without any signs of a struggle. Scientists continue to discuss the clues found in the wreckage.

Do you think we’ll ever definitively know what happened during Hunley’s final minutes?

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Primary Sources:

• Friends of the Hunley website

• H.L. Hunley: Recovery Operations, Naval History and Heritage Command (Robert S. Neyland & Heather G. Brown eds. 2016)

• Brian Hicks & Schuyler Kropf, Raising the Hunley: The Remarkable History and Recovery of the Lost Confederate Submarine (2002)

• The Sinking of the USS Housatonic by the Submarine CSS H.L. Hunley, off Charleston, South Carolina, 17 February 1864: Original U.S. Navy Documents (courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command)

• Evan Lubofsky, One Scientist May Have Finally Figured Out the Mystery of Why a Civil War Submarine Sank (Smithsonian Mag.; Aug. 23, 2017)