The Hunley And The Sinking of the USS Housatonic -- February 17, 1864

The Final Mission by American Artist Mort Kunstler (2005)

On the evening of Wednesday, February 17, 1864, just after 6:30 PM EST, First Lieutenant George E. Dixon, Confederate States Army, ordered his seven crewmen to board their tiny vessel, the submersible H.L. Hunley.

His crew knew the drill well. The first men to board stowed several canteens under the crew bench and checked to make sure they were carrying enough provisions. Dixon was last to board. Southern troops from nearby Battery Marshall always saw the sub off and gave it a push for momentum.

High tide has crested and the tide was shifting seaward again. With orders not to dive the submersible, the Hunley turned into Breach Inlet, where the current propelled it out past the breakers into Charleston Harbor. The men at Battery Marshall watched as the sub cut through the water, it continued to churn through the swells and disappeared into the darkness.

They would never see the Hunley again.

Armed with a spar torpedo -- a small metal canister full of gunpowder fitted with a spar and mounted to a rod extending out from her bow -- the Hunley crew's mission was to try and lift the Union blockade of Charleston, South Carolina.

Their target was the Union sloop-of-war, USS Housatonic, a 205 foot long, 1,240 ton vessel with an armament of twelve large cannons, stationed at the entrance of Charleston Harbor roughly five miles off the coast. The Housatonic was commanded by Captain Charles W. Pickering and had a crew of about 150 men.

The Hunley began her approach at about 8:45 PM EST.

At just before 9 PM, about an hour into his watch shift, a crewman on board the Housatonic, Robert F. Flemming Jr., was the first to spot the Hunley less than 500ft and approaching from land. Flemming recalled he told an officer. The officer, Lieutenant Lewis A. Comthwait, glanced out towards the Hunley and told Flemming "it’s a log." Flemming then pointed out the log was not floating with the tide but moving across it. Officer Comthwait disregarded his comments.

Now more sailors took notice of the commotion and insistence forced Officer Comthwait to take another look. With a second look he noticed it was no log but a torpedo boat. With only seconds to act Comthwait turned and ran to notify the rest of the officers and captain. The Hunley was now only 100 yards out.

Captain Charles Pickering heard the commotion and rushed on deck. Ordering the crew to slip the anchor and fire up the engine. Grabbing his double barrel shotgun captain Pickering jumped onto the ships horse block and got his first and only look of the Hunley, he took aim and fired. Other officers and crew began to fire small arms since the Hunley was now under cannon rage and almost alongside the ship.

Within two minutes of the first sighting, the Confederate submarine rammed her spar torpedo into Housatonic's starboard side, forward of the ship's mizzenmast. Then as the Hunley's crew began to back their small craft away, the torpedo exploded jolting both ships. The 135 pounds of black powder ignited instantly, blasting a hole ten feet wide into the Union ship's hull and killing five of the sailors aboard, wounding an unknown number of others.

The Housatonic went down in less than five minutes, most of its surviving crewmen hanging onto the ship's masts until rescue came nearly an hour later.

The eight member crew of the Hunley were all killed instantly, possibly due to the shockwave of the explosion.

The Confederate submarine Hunley was the first submarine to successfully sink an enemy
warship, the USS Housatonic, on the night of Wednesday, February 17, 1864 in Charleston harbor.

Thus ended the first successful submarine attack on an enemy warship in the annals of naval history. While their accomplishment would become legendary, the fate of the submarine and its crew became a mystery until it was discovered on Wednesday, May 2, 1995 by a National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) team led by New York Times Best Selling Author Clive Cussler.

The submarine was raised from the ocean on the morning of Tuesday, August 8, 2000, seeing sunlight for the first time in 136 years. She was brought to the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in North Charleston and placed in a 75,000 gallon steel tank filled with chilled, fresh water to help protect and stabilize the submarine. The lab facility was specifically designed to excavate and conserve the vessel.

On Saturday, April 17, 2004, the remains of the Hunley crew were laid to rest in Charleston's historic Magnolia Cemetery. Tens of thousands of people attended including some 6,000 Confederate Civil War reenactors and 4,000 civilians wearing period clothing, along with Color Guards from all five branches of the U.S. armed forces in modern military uniforms who took park in the four and a half mile procession through downtown Charleston from White Points Garden to their final resting place at Magnolia Cemetery. The wooden coffins of the eight Hunley crewmen where carried by horse-drawn caissons, each covered with the 2nd Confederate national flag.

The funeral procession for the crew of the Hunley along East Bay Street in Charleston, SC.
The flag-draped wooden coffins of the crewmen were carried in horse drawn carriages
led by living history reenactors and U.S. Color Guards representing the five branches of the
armed services.

The final crew of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley:

First Lieutenant George Dixon
Seaman Joseph Ridgaway
Seaman Arnold Becker
Seaman C. Lumpkin
Seaman Frank Collins
Corporal Johan Frederik Carlsen
Seaman Augustus Miller
Boatswain’s Mate James A. Wicks

The 1864 painting of submarine H. L. Hunley by Conrad Wise Chapman.

 

"And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works."  ~Revelations 20:13 KJV