Home : Heath Elliot Johnmeyer, United States Navy :

McClintock And Watson Built A Sub In 1861

The sun set in a clear sky behind Charleston the afternoon of February 17, 1864. The besieged city lay in defiant silence, watching the Federal monitors at the entrance to the harbor. Out at Fort Sumter, where the war had begun, the faint boom of the sunset gun proclaimed that the little pile of rubble, now scarcely more than a symbol of resistance, was still held by its Confederate garrison. As the shadows lengthened, picket boats put out from the ironclads to begin the nightly vigils which the Federal Admiral John Dahlgren had so insistently prescribed.

Outside the bar, where the wooden ships comprising Dahlgren’s second line of blockade lay guarding the harbor’s entrance, the handsome sloop of war U.S.S. Housatonic prepared for a quiet night. A slight mist lay on the water as lookouts of the first watch took their stations. They were watchful but relaxed; it was not the sort of night a blockade-runner would choose for crossing the bar, and besides, the hard-driving Dahlgren was away on a trip to Port Royal.

About 8:45, Acting Master J. K. Crosby, officer of the deck, observed a slight disturbance in the water about a hundred yards distant and abeam. Crosby thought it was a porpoise, or a school of fish, or even a plank moving in the water. Whatever it was, it came on directly toward the ship. Crosby looked once more, decided to take no chances, and gave orders to slip the chain, beat to quarters, and call the captain.

His decision was a wise one. The Housatonic’s was about to experience the only submarine attack of the Civil War. The Confederates’ Hunley was the first submarine to sink an enemy warship, but her crude design made her a coffin for her crew.

The Housatonic’s dubious distinction came about by chance. If David Farragut had waited longer to capture New Orleans, Acting Master Crosby would have stood an uneventful watch. For the story of the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley, known variously and mistakenly as the Fish, the American Diver, and the David, and nicknamed with grim accuracy the Peripatetic Coffin, really began in New Orleans. But for the early fall of that city, the Hunley’s builders would never have begun a journey that led, eventually, to Charleston.

Sometime in 1861, James R. McClintock and lîaxter Watson of New Orleans, marine engineers and machinists, determined to build a submarine at private expense and operate it against the Federal blockade at the mouth of the Mississippi.

No submarine in recorded history had ever sunk a ship in combat, but McClintock and Watson were not discouraged by this. David Bushnell’s one-man submersible, the Turtle, had almost done the trick during the Revolutionary War, and Robert Fulton’s later submarine demonstrations left no doubt that men of daring and ingenuity could make and operate a lethal undersea weapon. Caught up in the fervor of the war’s first year, the two engineers determined to try.

To patriotism was added another motive, profit. At the start of the war, Jefferson Davis had invited applications for letters of marque authorizing private citizens to wage war against Union vessels. The Confederate government was ready to pay handsome financial prizes for the destruction of enemy men-of-war. A submarine operated with any success in the waters of a blockaded port might pay its way and show a return on the investment without ever going to sea.

Work on the boat began late in 1861. As expenses mounted, others joined in the project—John K. Scott, Robin R. Barron, H. J. Leovy, and Horace L. Hunley, a man whose enthusiasm for submarines was to grow with every setback. In the spring of 1862 the submarine, christened the Pioneer, was ready for a trial run in Lake Pontchartrain. When she destroyed a target barge, the enthusiasm of her owners was boundless. A letter of marque was obtained and plans were laid for action against the blockade.

At this point, Farragut entered the picture. He moved up the Mississippi late in April and captured New Orleans. The Pioneer disappeared, sunk either by accident or design, and was forgotten until it was found and raised many years later. McClintock, Watson, and Hunley packed their bags and moved to Mobile.

Farragut would come to Mobile, too, but not until the summer of 1864. When the ardent trio of submarine builders from New Orleans arrived, the city-seemed an ideal spot for their work. There were plenty of enemy vessels for their craft to operate against when they built it; there were shops in Mobile and about as much raw material for the construction as could be found anywhere in the blockaded South; and the city was under the command of an imaginative officer, Major General Dabney H. Maury, who was sympathetic toward projects involving underwater torpedoes. He welcomed the three men heartily, approved their plans for private financing of the project, and ordered the boat to be built in the machine shops of Park & Lyons. Furthermore, he extended technical assistance. Two young engineers from the 21st Alabama Infantry, Lieutenants George E. Dixon and William A. Alexander—the latter an Englishman who had come to America in 1859—were detached for special duty at the shops.

A submarine was built and towed off Fort Morgan to be manned for an attack on the blockading fleet. It promptly sank, and the job had to be done all over again. It is with this third effort that we are concerned. Somewhere an iron boiler was found, about twenty-five feet long and four feet in diameter, and the builders went to work to make a submarine out of it. They cut it in two longitudinally, tapered it fore and aft, inserted boiler-iron strips in the sides, and attached bow and stern castings. Inside the castings, bulkheads were riveted across to form water-ballast tanks for use in raising and lowering the boat. Of the tanks, Alexander noted later that “unfortunately these were left open on top”—a colossal understatement.

A strip twelve inches wide was riveted the full length on top, and flat castings were fitted to the outside bottom for ballast, fastened by bolts which passed through stuffing boxes inside the boat so they might be loosened to drop the ballast if necessary. Sea cocks were installed in the water-ballast tanks, and force pumps to eject the water.

Propulsion was the big problem. Coal could not be burned below water, both because of the limited air supply and for lack of a smokestack. A storage battery adequate to operate even the smallest submarine had not yet been invented. The builders spent weeks trying to devise some kind of electromagnetic engine but finally gave it up and settled for manual power. A propeller shaft was installed almost the length of the boat, supported on the starboard side by brackets, with eight cranks spaced so that the crew could sit on the port side and turn the cranks. The arrangement left no room to pass fore and aft, but at least it assured some motion in the water.

For depth control another shaft was installed, passing laterally through the boat just forward of the end of the propeller shaft. This controlled lateral fins, live feet long and eight inches wide, on the outside. A lever amidships allowed the fins to be raised or lowered. For the pilots guidance, a mercury gauge was attached to the shell near the forward ballast tank to indicate the depth of the boat when submerged, and a compass was installed nearby. A wheel, acting on rods that ran the length of the boat, operated the rudder.

Fore and aft on the boat’s flat deck, hatchways were installed with coamings eight inches high. Glass panes installed in the coamings provided the only means of seeing out of the boat when the hatches were closed. There was no periscope. An air box was set between the hatchways and equipped with a pipe so that fresh air could be taken in on the surface without opening the hatches. All in all, it was a fantastically primitive affair.

The boat was boarded from both ends, part of the crew passing through the forward hatch with the skipper entering last, and the rest entering through the after hatch with the second officer in the rear. The seven crew members took their seats facing the propeller shaft, the two officers fastened down the hatch covers, and the skipper lit a candle which would provide illumination under water and also give warning when the oxygen supply ran low.

When all was ready, the first and second officers let water into the ballast tanks until the water level outside reached the glasses in the hatch coamings, an indication that the deck was about three inches under water. Then the sea cocks were closed, the second officer took his seat with the others at the propeller shaft, and the cranking began. The captain, still standing, lowered the fin lever and the boat slid deeper under the water, the mercury gauge indicating its depth. When he was ready to rise, he raised the lever, elevating the forward ends of the fins; as the boat reached its normal ballast trim of three inches below the surface, or earlier if the captain chose, he and the second officer operated the pumps to force water from the tanks, lightening the boat. When they were safely afloat and ready to land, the second officer opened his hatch cover, climbed out, and passed a line ashore.

She could go four miles an hour in smooth water and remain submerged as long as the air lasted. She was named the H. L. Hunley, in honor of her chief financial backer. The torpedoes were copper cylinders holding charges of ninety pounds of explosive each, with percussion and friction primer mechanisms set off by flaring triggers. The plan for firing them was as desperate as everything else connected with the project. A torpedo attached to the submarine by a line two hundred feet long would float behind the boat, which would approach its prey, dive under it, and surface on the far side. The torpedo would thus be dragged against the target and explode.

Almost from the moment she was put into the water, the Hunley was plagued with trouble and disaster. Her first trial in the smooth waters of the Mobile River was a success; as General Maury watched, she towed a floating torpedo, dived under an old flatboat and scored a hit, blowing fragments a hundred feet into the air. But once she was taken out into the choppy waters of the bay, it was another story. She responded poorly, she was in constant danger of swamping, and that deadly torpedo trailing behind her was continually swinging in the direction of the wrong boat.

In later months, when the Hunley’s latent tendency to drown her crews had become virtually a fixed habit and she had become known as the Peripatetic Coffin, it was generally reported that she sank first in Mobile Bay, drowning a full crew of nine men. This is apparently incorrect; but though she did not sink until later, General Maury and her owners alike agreed that her future in Mobile Bay was exceedingly dubious.

They talked it over and decided Charleston would be a better base of operations. Nowhere was the need for aid more acute than at this beleaguered port in the summer of 1863. Fort Sumter was under almost constant bombardment, a combined land and sea attack was underway, and the magnificent Federal ironclad, the New Ironsides, loomed as one of the greatest threats to the city. If the Hunley could slip out some night and sink that great ship, it would be a tremendous blow for the Confederacy.

Maury, accordingly, offered the privately owned boat to General P. G. T. Beauregard, commander of the city’s defenses. Beauregard had been trying in vain to establish a fleet of torpedo boats, but the big brass of the Confederate Navy had been slow to assist him. Why waste money on torpedo boats when you can build ironclads?

To Beauregard, the offer must have come almost as an answer to prayer. He accepted, the Hunley was loaded on two flatcars for what must have been one of the most remarkable railroad trips of the war, and destiny’s date with the Housatonic drew nearer. And now the Hunley’s difficulties began in earnest.

Beauregard asked Commodore John R. Tucker, flag officer at Charleston, for naval volunteers to operate the deadly-looking little boat. Lieutenant John Payne, an Alabamian whose valor had been demonstrated in a skirmish with enemy pickets only a few weeks before, immediately asked for the command. A crew joined him, and the Hunley was towed to Fort Johnson for trial runs.

A few nights later tragedy struck. The submarine was lying at the wharf, ready to go out for a dive. The crew members had already taken their places, and Payne was standing forward ready to close the hatchway, when the swell from a passing steamer poured over the deck. The Hunley swamped and went down like a rock.

Payne escaped through the open hatch, watched the bubbles rising where the boat had sunk, and grimly asked permission to raise the boat, collect another crew, and try again. The experiment might have been given up at this point except for an event that electrified Charleston, delighted Beauregard, and redoubled the optimism of the Hunley’s backers.

While the Hunley had been traveling across country on her flatcars, work was being completed at Charleston on a small iron boat that lay low in the water with a long pole extending from its bow. It was called the David, and the projection off its bow was a spar torpedo—a pole capable of being raised or lowered from the boat, with a torpedo fitted into a socket at the end of it. It was operated by a crew of four men.

On the night of October 5, the David, under command of Lieutenant William T. Glassell, steamed out to the New Ironsides, rammed her with the torpedo, and damaged her so badly that she was out of action for the remainder of the siege of Charleston. The explosion poured water down the David’s little smoke-stack and drowned her boiler, and sailors on the ironclad were peppering her with shot; Glassell gave the order to abandon ship. He and James Sullivan, the fireman, were captured in the water, but Engineer James H. Tomb after a while noted that the David was drifting away from the ironclad. Returning to the boat, he found Pilot J. Walker Cannon, who could not swim, hanging to it, and the two re-entered it, got the engine going, and brought it back into port. This was another first, the first time a warship had been damaged by a torpedo boat, and at Charleston enthusiasm reached fever pitch. In this atmosphere, Lieutenant Payne had no difficulty in finding a second crew for the Hunley.

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