Think of the destruction this infernal machine effected. . . . The successes of the Confederates have made the torpedo, which before was looked on with loathing—a name not to be spoken except contemptuously—a recognized factor in modern naval warfare.
—Unnamed Union reporter
A gentle breeze ran over the damaged rooftops of Charleston, carrying the sounds and smells of the war zone out to sea as the sun began to set behind her crumbling skyline. She was “the most bombarded mainland city in US history,” and the scope of her destruction meant that she would hold the title, without question, for centuries to come.
The soldiers and sailors on the long, sandy island north of her harbor mouth had watched and felt the same destruction. They had patiently endured thousands of bombs lobbed into their forts and encampments, and they had shared in the mass starvation that was occurring slowly because warships were blockading the harbor entrance. Not even the officers or the wealthy had been spared.
One small group of sailors had a plan, though. They had a dark metal submarine, built by hand, and they would use it to break this blockade. The complete and abject fear that such a weapon of stealth and power would instill would be too great, they believed, for the crew of any Union ship to suppress the panicked urge to flee in terror. They would have to take their ships and run back home to the North, opening Charleston to receive fresh supplies. This “infernal machine” would help the submariners summon the horrors of hell and visit them upon their enemies.
The cigar-shaped sub bobbed peacefully in the protected waters behind Sullivan’s Island. Her crew had been waiting for the Atlantic to grow sufficiently smooth so that waves and chop would not swamp their little boat. And on February 17, 1864, the water was finally calm. The crew assembled.
The men in the middle of the boat would have filed in first, with six-foot-one Virginian Frank Collins folding himself into the third crank spot, and Europeans Carlsen and Miller taking their places at handles four and five. Next to the three of them slid arthritic Lumpkin at the second handle, who’d walked to the dock with a slouch but would have conformed nicely to the curved interior of the submarine. European Arnold Becker, also a young man, had nonetheless already lived a hard life of physical activity by his fresh age of twenty. He was now fully trained in the duties of the first crank position as well.
Wicks climbed in the rear conning tower, wrapped in his warm coat, to sit at position six, and he was followed by Joseph Ridgaway at crank location seven, sporting a slouch hat. The men tucked their canteens of water under the bench near their feet, among the various metal blocks arranged in the bilge for ballast weight. They were prepared for the long journey out to the nearest Union ship.
George Dixon dropped into the front conning tower last, taking his seat on the small personal bench reserved for the captain. He was in his mid-twenties, with a full head of blond hair.
The crew knew all about the previous sinkings. They knew about the accidental triggering of the dive planes, and they knew about the incident that got the boat rechristened Hunley. They knew that the bloated bodies of previous sailors in their seats had been removed in pieces, their rotted flesh scrubbed off the interior walls by slaves. They knew that Horace Hunley himself had died curled in the conning tower, clutching a candle and trying to escape. But this crew needed the blockade to be lifted, and they were being paid well to do it, and so they climbed through the hatches anyway.
They all carried items in their pockets that spoke deeply of their belief that they would continue living after this night, that they would return home instead of sinking forever into a watery grave. The smokers brought their pipes. Dixon brought with him his pocket watch and several pieces of expensive diamond jewelry. Most notably, secured in Dixon’s left pants pocket, right above his old wound, was his lucky gold coin. At his signal, the crew began to crank.
They had timed their departure with the outgoing tide. The waters of nearby Breach Inlet were notoriously swift during ebb tide, and the men would use this current to boost their speed and propel them toward their floating target. They were aiming for the USS Housatonic, the nearest ship offshore and one of the few without protective chains or nets dangling in the water to entrap them. As they threaded the little inlet to reach the ocean beyond the protection of Sullivan’s Island, they signaled to the men at Battery Marshall, who would spend the night waiting for their return.
After long hours of cranking, Dixon looked out the small glass windows of the fore conning tower over the dark waters ahead of him and saw that they were in range of their target. The lower corner of the wedge-shaped, cast-iron bow boasted a hefty bolt, which served as a pivot for the submarine’s 16-foot narwhal tusk of a spar. Someone in the crew slowly, carefully let loose the line that controlled the spar. The line spooled out, and the spar pivoted down. As the spar rotated, the massive orange cylinder at the far end dipped below the surface of the water.
This torpedo was the end result of the sweat and labor of dozens if not hundreds of Confederates all working with the same goal of breaking the blockade. Gabriel Rains first drafted the design, with a trigger modified by one of his crew after his departure from Charleston. It was filled with 200 pounds of black powder that had been made and shipped by younger brother George Washington Rains to replenish the city after a recent battle. The copper had ensured the torpedo stayed barnacle-free during long nights of bobbing in the salt water, and the thick metal wall with its welded seams would ensure proper confinement. The pressure-sensitive trigger would control the bomb so that it would explode only once it was in the perfect position, lowered in the water, well beneath the target’s hull. When it was in the worst possible position for the safety of both crews.
Her torpedo now lowered like the lance of a knight, the Hunley charged forward. Cranking at full speed, the submariners propelled their vessel to slice through the cold ocean waters, hurtling headlong for the wooden hull of the Union sloop before them.
The scene on the deck of the Housatonic was sedate at first, nothing in comparison to the furious cranking happening inside the submarine. This crew had not yet spotted the oncoming threat. Robert F. Flemming patrolled the starboard bow, inspecting the waters that separated his ship from the Confederate lands. John Teddeman performed his regular duties on board. Beneath the deck, Capt. Charles Pickering pored over documents.
Flemming spotted the smooth black sliver moving swiftly against the current of the outgoing tide, and raised the alarm. The gong was sounded. The crew of well over 100 men simultaneously bolted to their battle stations. Pickering dashed upstairs, into the chilly night air. He grabbed a rifle, jumped onto the horse block to get a better downward angle, and began to fire. The men trying to train the heavy artillery all failed to hit the rapidly approaching menace.
The submarine reached her target. The torpedo, buried from view by the water and the waves, jammed into the wooden hull of the Housatonic. A retaining wire holding a firing pin in place snapped. The pin, now free, was pushed backward by the spring wrapped around it. Its blunt end smashed into a mercury fulminate cap. The mercury fulminate began to react from the heat generated by the force of the impact. Its flame began to spread.
The fine granules of black powder nearest the cap began to burn first. The grains were consumed from the outside in, each disappearing in a flash, generating a small amount of heat and spewing flaming particles out toward its neighbors. The neighbors began to catch. The fire continued to spread. The heat was enough to start the larger particles burning, the coarser grains that filled the rest of the bomb. The burning front of the growing flame raged through the length of the torpedo, starting at the end near the trigger and moving backward toward the spar of the Hunley. Each granule turned into gas. The hot gas began to shove against the walls of the torpedo, trying to break free.
The first split began to form in the copper at the end brushing against the hull of the Housatonic. The crack began to grow. Now the gas had an escape route, and it blasted out of its prison with abandon, shredding the copper casing into ribbons and forcing it backward in curls over the tip of the spar. The massive, superheated ball of gas erupted free. It was not enough to create a shock wave, but it was enough to send a terrifying spike of pressure hurtling out through the water in every direction.
The downward angle of the spar ensured that the blast occurred several feet below the underbelly of the submarine. The pressure wave traveled up and toward it. When the wave hit, the hull material flexed, quickly, much more quickly than the submarine as a whole could bounce and respond to jostle the crew inside, and this rapid little jounce of the hull wall forced a second pressure wave inside the boat. Trapped inside the enclosed hull, this second pressure wave began to reflect. It built on itself like a scream in an echo chamber, amplifying the effects of its own destruction.
Also inside the chamber were the crew, hunched over the handles of their cranks. The reflections hit them from all sides and sped rapidly through their flesh. The waves came to a nearly dead stop once they hit bubbly lung, and the blood vessels in the lung walls, unable to absorb the energy, burst wide open. Blood sprayed inward. Breathing stopped. Vessels may have ruptured on the surfaces of their brains. Some may have had minor fractures in the fragile bones surrounding their sinuses. Some simply slumped over, no damage to any tissue but the lungs, dead where they sat.
Those who died immediately would not have even had time to realize the twinned truths of their victory and demise.
A part inside Dixon’s gold watch snapped, locking the hands forever at 8:23. Dixon’s head dropped against the side of the hull. His ankles were lightly crossed, and one hand fell to his thigh. His body was propped up by the hull wall and his small captain’s bench. He never knew that he made history.
If any still lived, they lived only minutes more. Those who survived struggled to breathe, gasping for air against the stabbing compressive pain in their chests. Unable to move from the pain, they would have quickly entered a state of shock. Their heart rates dropped. Their blood pressures plummeted. Their brains and extremities stopped receiving the life-saving oxygen normally sent by the heart. Their breathing slowed . . . then stopped. They too collapsed into the bilge.
The deck of the Housatonic had sprayed into a million shards of wood and metal hurtling into the air, deadly projectiles that then rained down onto the crew. Pickering was hit and injured by the thunderstorm of detritus, as was steward John Gough. Most of the crew had already run for the bow and safety, but as the ship gave a mighty heave to port, the few remaining joined in the mad dash forward. A cloud with the noxious stench of rotten eggs drifted off across the smooth surface of the calming ocean.
Some of the crew clambered into small boats, heading for the nearby USS Canandaigua to get help. Robert Flemming looked back along the length of his fatally wounded ship and saw the black line of the Hunley still floating nearby. The rest worked their way carefully into the rigging. Pickering was fished out of the water and draped among the rigging, soaked and injured. As they waited for rescue, the effects of the cold began to set in. Five had been killed.
The submarine, now filled with silent ghosts, drifted untended on the outgoing tide. A small wave hit her, splashing some water in through a broken window or the unlatched front conning tower, and as a result she dropped slightly lower in the water. A second wave hit as she floated farther, and a third, each contributing a small volume of salt water to slosh in her interior. With no one alive to operate the bilge pumps, the water level slowly began to rise around the ankles of the corpses. Eventually, it became too much. She started to sink. Water rushed through the forward conning tower, bringing the little boat to the sand but leaving an air space inside for stalactites to grow. The HL Hunley and her dead crew settled to a quiet grave 30 feet beneath the dark-blue waves.