Military Officer - October 2008 - (Page 58) An artist’s rendition (above) shows what the CSS H.L. Hunley might have looked like in 1864. A Seawolf-class sub (previous spread) fires a torpedo. That night, the Federal sloop-ofwar USS Housatonic was sent to the harbor bottom, and the Confederate ship CSS H.L. Hunley passed into history as the first submarine to sink another vessel. But it was a Pyrrhic victory: The Hunley, too, was lost that night, with all hands aboard. The Hunley was by no means the first submarine — or even the first sub58 MILITARY OFFICER OCTOBER 2008 T mersible warship. In the book Jane’s Submarines: War Beneath the Waves from 1776 to the Present Day (HarperCollins, 2005), Robert Hutchinson notes submarines were being designed as far back as the 1500s. The first true submarine wasn’t built until the 1620s, by Cornelius Drebbel. It was followed by the Turtle in 1776 as well as several other ill-fated experiments by France and Germany in the 1800s. TH E N I G HT O F F E B . 17, 18 64 , a shadowy vessel riding low in the water slipped its moorings and quietly made its way through Charleston Harbor in South Carolina. In her cramped interior sat eight strong men, cranking a long driveshaft connected to a single propeller. Her only weapon was an explosive package mounted on a forward spar, but it was enough. The idea of a ship that sank on purpose must have seemed ludicrous to mariners of the time, and the fate of the Hunley and other early designs was a stark reminder of how many challenges lay ahead for this new kind of warship. But the evolution of the submarine had begun, and from those first humble submersibles came the warships that played a vital role in the history of maritime combat. PHOTOS: ABOVE, COURTESY FRIENDS OF THE HUNLEY/DAN DOWDEY; PREVIOUS SPREAD, JUPITER IMAGES
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