The Navy’s First Submarine

Submarines are one of the biggest parts of any country’s defensive doctrine. In the 21st century, this is truer than ever. We rely on Ohio-class SSBNs to ensure that any attack against the US is met with the consequence of making the attacking country a parking lot. We rely on Virginia and Los Angeles-class attack submarines to sink enemy warships and merchant shipping, ensuring we control the seas.

So yeah, I guess you could say they’re pretty damn important.

How did these sinking monsters become so important? Let’s have a look back and see a few of the most pivotal moments in US submarine history.

The H.L. Hunley

We know, technically the Hunley wasn’t part of the US Navy. The Hunley was commissioned as a sort of experiment by the Confederate States. The goal of the 40-foot long wooden submarine was to see if it was even viable to use such a device in war. A previous submarine, the Turtle, had been built and used during the American Revolution, but had failed when trying to attack a British ship in harbor. This raised the question: does such a device have a place in war?

The answer? Holy sh*t yeah, it does.

The Hunley was launched in 1863 by a private group led by a marine engineer by the name of Horace Lawson Hunley, which, you may be unsurprising to find out, is where the boat got its name. The Hunley was seized by the Confederate government that same year, at which point it entered into service for testing.

Hunley wasn’t always a success. During testing in August of 1863, as the wooden submarine was running on the surface, Lieutenant John A. Payne, an officer involved with testing the submarine, stepped on the control that activated the submarine’s dive planes, and the submarine dived with the hatches still open, drowning five crewmen. Only a couple months later in October 1864, H.L. Hunley himself was killed when the submarine failed to surface after another mock attack along with seven others.

The Hunley is probably best known for the attack against the USS Housatonic. During this time, the Union Navy was blockading the port of Charleston, where Hunley had been moored. On February 17, 1864, Hunley set sail toward the Housatonic armed with a spar torpedo, essentially a black powder charge attached to a spear. The Hunley approached silently but was detected by the Housatonic immediately before attaching their torpedo to Housatonic’s hull.

The Housatonic being a sailing vessel, it didn’t have any of the fancy-schmancy turrets we would see on other naval vessels, like the USS Monitor. She wasn’t able to fire a broadside at the Hunley, and the instead settled for shooting the crap out of the tiny wooden sub with small-arms.

The torpedo detonated shortly thereafter, sinking the Housatonic and killing five sailors. While reports can’t seem to agree whether or not the Hunley survived the initial explosion, she was never seen again and went down with all hands. The vessel was recovered in 2000, and archaeologists who looked her over have hypothesized that the Housatonic may have gotten the last laugh, as a crewman fired a rifle into one of the view ports of the Hunley, causing her to sink.

This is just one theory of how she went down, and there are many. It could have been damage from the explosion, or an unsecured hatch, or the crew running out of oxygen and becoming unconscious.

We may not know exactly what happened to the Hunley, but she still entrenched herself in world history: she was the first submarine ever to sink a ship in combat, but certainly not the last.

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