H.L. Hunley

On the night of February 17, 1864, the H.L. Hunley set out from Sullivan's Island with a torpedo attached to a seventeen-foot spar on her bow to attack the U.S.S. Housatonic, anchored four miles offshore. A Union lookout spotted the suspicious object approaching and sounded the alarm, and although engines started, an explosion tore through the Housatonic's wooden hull before the ship could get away, and she quickly sank. After sinking the Housatonic, the H.L. Hunley disappeared. After a search lasting 131 years, the submarine was found in May 1995 one thousand feet seaward of the Housatonic and was recovered on August 8, 2000. Built from an iron steam boiler, the H.L. Hunley was forty feet long, carried a crew of nine men, and could move through the water at up to four knots. Its air supply was limited, and when a candle went out after thirty minutes, the crew had to return quickly to the surface for fresh air. Two earlier accidents and the final sinking caused the deaths of twenty-two men who volunteered on this experimental "peripatetic coffin."

South Carolina · United States