CIVIL WAR SUBMARINE H.L. HUNLEY HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY SITE ASSESSMENT

SOFTBOUND BOOK in ENGLISH PREPARED FOR THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER AND THE SOUTH CAROLINA INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY

ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT

PREDISTURBANCE REMOTE SENSING SURVEY

FIELD OPERATIONS

SITE DESCRIPTION

SITA ANALYSIS

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Additional Information from Internet Encyclopedia

H. L. Hunley, also known as the Hunley, CSS H. L. Hunley, or CSS Hunley, was a submarine of the Confederate States of America that played a small part in the American Civil War. Hunley demonstrated the advantages and dangers of undersea warfare. She was the first combat submarine to sink a warship (USS Housatonic), although Hunley was not completely submerged and, following her attack, was lost along with her crew before she could return to base. Twenty-one crewmen died in the three sinkings of Hunley during her short career. She was named for her inventor, Horace Lawson Hunley, shortly after she was taken into government service under the control of the Confederate States Army at Charleston, South Carolina.

Hunley, nearly 40 ft (12 m) long, was built at Mobile, Alabama, and launched in July 1863. She was then shipped by rail on 12 August 1863 to Charleston. Hunley (then referred to as the "fish boat", the "fish torpedo boat", or the "porpoise") sank on 29 August 1863 during a test run, killing five members of her crew. She sank again on 15 October 1863, killing all eight of her second crew, including Horace Lawson Hunley himself, who was aboard at the time, even though he was not a member of the Confederate military. Both times Hunley was raised and returned to service.

On 17 February 1864, Hunley attacked and sank the 1,240-ton United States Navy[2] screw sloop-of-war Housatonic, which had been on Union blockade-duty in Charleston's outer harbor. Hunley did not survive the attack and sank, taking all eight members of her third crew with her, and was lost.

Finally located in 1995, Hunley was raised in 2000 and is on display in North Charleston, South Carolina, at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center on the Cooper River. Examination in 2012 of recovered Hunley artifacts suggested that the submarine was as close as 20 ft (6.1 m) to her target, Housatonic, when her deployed torpedo exploded, which caused the submarine's sinking.

Historical context

The Civil War, April 12, 1861 – April 9, 1865, was a domestic American war where the Union (also called the north) was locked in combat with the rebellious Confederates (also called the South). The Union comprised California, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin. The Confederacy comprised Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

In the beginning of the war, combat was fought with bayonets, horses, wooden ships, and imprecise artillery. During the course of the battle the weaponry changed and such things as: mines, accurate guns, more deadly bullets, torpedoes, and "ironclad" ships became a new standard. Though most of the fighting occurred on land, a critical element of the war was the power struggle at sea. Whichever side controlled the coastline also controlled the shipping imports from Europe and Coastal America, which contained critical resources such as clothes, food, artillery, medicine, and, at times, reinforcements. The Hunley was created to destroy the Union blockade and help gain this all-important coastline advantage.

Construction of Hunley began soon after the loss of American Diver. At this stage, Hunley was variously referred to as the "fish boat", the "fish torpedo boat", or the "porpoise". Legend held that Hunley was made from a cast-off steam boiler—perhaps because a cutaway drawing by William Alexander, who had seen her, showed a short and stubby machine. In fact, Hunley was designed and built for her role, and the sleek, modern-looking craft shown in R.G. Skerrett's 1902 drawing is an accurate representation. Each end was equipped with ballast tanks that could be flooded by valves or pumped dry by hand pumps. Extra ballast was added using iron weights bolted to the underside of the hull. If the submarine needed additional buoyancy to rise in an emergency, the iron weight could be removed by unscrewing the heads of the bolts from inside the vessel.

The hull of the ship is estimated to originally have been 4 feet 3 inches (1.30) in diameter. The two hatches, accessible by means of conning tower, located in the forward and aft of the vessel, are estimated to have originally measured at 16.5 inches (420 mm) in width and 21 inches (530 mm) in length. The small sizing of the hatches and the cramped quarters made entering, exiting, and maneuvering about the ship remarkably difficult. Hunley was designed for a crew of eight, seven to turn the hand-cranked ducted propeller at about 3.5 horsepower (2.6 kW), and one to steer and direct the boat. At the height of its speed, Hunley could reach 4 knots [Wills, 2017].

Hunley was initially intended to attack by using a floating explosive charge with a contact fuse (a torpedo in 19th-century terminology). The Hunley’s methodology of deploying the explosive charge consisted of them diving beneath the ship and catching the charge on the side/hull of the vessel and re-emerging outside of the blast range of the explosive. This plan was discredited and not used as the possibility of Hunley becoming entangled in the rope, the rope drifting away from the ship, or the charge exploding on the submarine was too great.

Instead, a spar torpedo—a copper cylinder containing 135 pounds (61 kilograms) of black powder—was attached to a 22-foot (6.7 m)-long wooden spar, as seen in illustrations made at this time. Mounted on Hunley's bow, the spar was to be used when the submarine was 6 ft (1.8 m) or more below the surface. Previous spar torpedoes had been designed with a barbed point: the spar torpedo would be jammed in the target's side by ramming and then detonated by a mechanical trigger attached to the submarine by a line so that as she backed away from her target, the torpedo would set off. However, archaeologists working on Hunley discovered evidence, including a spool of copper wire and components of a battery, that it may have been electrically detonated. In the configuration used in the attack on Housatonic, it appears Hunley's torpedo had no barbs and was designed to explode on contact as it was pushed against an enemy vessel at close range.[13] After Horace Hunley's death, General Beauregard ordered that the submarine should no longer be used to attack underwater. An iron pipe was then attached to her bow, angled downwards so the explosive charge would be delivered sufficiently underwater to make it effective. This was the same method developed for the earlier "David" surface attack craft used successfully against the USS New Ironsides. The Confederate Veteran of 1902 printed a reminiscence authored by an engineer stationed at Battery Marshall who, with another engineer, made adjustments to the iron pipe mechanism before Hunley left on her last fatal mission on 17 February 1864. A drawing of the iron pipe spar, confirming her "David" type configuration, was published in early histories of submarine warfare.

Hunley's discovery was described by William Dudley, Director of Naval History at the Naval Historical Center as "probably the most important find of the century."

The discovery of Hunley has been claimed by two different individuals. Underwater archaeologist E. Lee Spence, president, Sea Research Society, reportedly discovered Hunley in 1970, and has a collection of evidence claiming to validate this, including a 1980 Civil Admiralty Case. The court took the position that the wreck was outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. Marshals Office, and no determination of ownership was made.

On 13 September 1976, the National Park Service submitted the Sea Research Society's (Spence's) location for H. L. Hunley for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. Spence's location for Hunley became a matter of public record when H.L. Hunley's placement on that list was officially approved on 29 December 1978. Spence's book Treasures of the Confederate Coast, which had a chapter on his discovery of Hunley and included a map complete with an "X" showing the wreck's location, was published in January 1995.

Diver Ralph Wilbanks located the wreck in April 1995 while leading a NUMA dive team originally organized by archaeologist Mark Newell and funded by novelist Clive Cussler, who announced the find as a new discovery and first claimed that the location was in about 18 ft (5.5 m) of water over one mile (1.6 km) inshore of Housatonic, but later admitted to a reporter that that was false.[38] The wreck was actually 100 yd (91 m) away from and on the seaward side of Housatonic in 27 feet (8.2 m) of water. The submarine was buried under several feet of silt, which had concealed and protected the vessel for over a hundred years. The divers exposed the forward hatch and the ventilator box (the air box for the attachment of her twin snorkels) to identify her. The submarine was resting on her starboard side, at about a 45-degree angle, and was covered in a 1⁄4 to 3⁄4 inch (0.64 to 1.91 cm) thick encrustation of rust bonded with sand and seashell particles. Archaeologists exposed part of the ship's port side and uncovered the bow dive plane. More probing revealed an approximate length of 37 feet (11 m), with the entire vessel preserved under the sediment.

On 14 September 1995, at the official request of Senator Glenn F. McConnell, Chairman, South Carolina Hunley Commission, E. Lee Spence, with South Carolina Attorney General Charles M. Condon signing, donated Hunley to the State of South Carolina. Shortly thereafter, NUMA disclosed to government officials Wilbank's location for the wreck which, when finally made public in October 2000, matched Spence's 1970s plot of the wreck's location well within standard mapping tolerances. Spence avows that he discovered Hunley in 1970, revisiting and mapping the site in 1971 and again in 1979, and that after he published the location in his 1995 book he expected NUMA to independently verify the wreck as Hunley, not to claim that NUMA had discovered her. NUMA was actually part of a SCIAA expedition directed by Dr. Mark M. Newell and not Cussler. Dr. Newell swore under oath that he used Spence's maps to direct the joint SCIAA/NUMA expedition and credited Spence with the original discovery. Dr. Newell credits his expedition only with the official verification of Hunley.