![]() Gibbons, T., Warships and Naval Battles of the Civil War. I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work. But who notices that in the full flush of either battle - or invention? The South scored one victory and paid a kamikaze price in human life. So the Civil War was the great proving ground for modern submarines. They also bought a French submarine, the Alligator. Perhaps that was a tribute to the Whale's intelligence. They called it the Intelligent Whale, but they didn't use it in combat. That was the first time a sub destroyed an enemy ship. But it never came back to the surface from that Pyhrric victory. Finally, in 1864, the Hunley sank the ironclad Union sloop Housatonic. The South hurled it into battle over and over. The Hunley's weapon was also a spar torpedo. It also warned the crew by flickering out when too little oxygen was left. An eight-man crew turned a hand-cranked propeller in that terrible small space. It was made from a steam boiler forty feet long and less than four feet in diameter. Please note that it is necessary to climb a flight of 17 steps to view the Hunley. Tickets can be purchased by either calling toll-free 1-87 (1-877-4HUNLEY) or by clicking the tour dates below. The first real submarine was the Confederate Hunley. April 9th (Easter Sunday), October 28th, November 4th, December 23rd and December 24th, 2023. The South built twenty more Davids, and some of them damaged Union boats. But the hole was above the waterline and the ship survived. The David attacked a Union ironclad and managed to blow a hole in its side. The trick was to ram it into the enemy and hope you suffered less damage than he did. ![]() Union forces retaliated by forming a blockade of ships in the harbor and bombarding Charleston with constant artillery fire. A long underwater pole held an explosive charge out in front. Fort Sumter, a Union garrison in Charleston Harbor was fired upon by Confederate forces in 1861, announcing the opening salvo of the Civil War. So her smokestack and breathing tube protruded above the surface.ĭavid's claim to the title submarine is flimsy, but her offensive weapon was a spar torpedo. The steam-driven David couldn't burn fuel to make steam if it was fully submerged. Civil War ironclads had lowered themselves further and further down into the protective water. David wasn't a pure submarine, but it came close. ![]() They launched a boat called the David in 1862 and sent it at the Union Goliaths. Years later, he made a submarine for the French and tried without success to sink the enemy with it.ĭuring the Civil War, the Confederacy made a far more serious, far more desperate, try at submarine warfare. One person who got the point was Robert Fulton. His one-man, hand-cranked machine did little harm to the English in 1776, but it made the point. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.īushnell's Turtle was the first submarine used in war. Today, we invent the submarine, against all odds.
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