#33: H.L. Hunley: The First Submarine to Sink a Warship
On February 17, 1864, the H.L. Hunley became the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship, driving a spar torpedo into the hull of the USS Housatonic off Charleston, South Carolina. The 12,000-pound Union sloop went down in minutes, but Hunley never returned, taking all eight of her crew to the bottom with her. She had already killed 13 men in two previous sinkings during trials.
Hunley was a 40-foot iron tube, hand-cranked by eight men sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, turning a propeller shaft in near-total darkness. Her "torpedo" was a copper cylinder filled with 135 pounds of black powder mounted on a 16-foot spar extending from her bow, essentially a bomb on a stick. Despite her primitive design and horrifying casualty rate, Hunley proved that submarines could be viable weapons of naval warfare. She was recovered from the ocean floor in 2000 and is currently undergoing conservation in North Charleston, a priceless artifact of military technology and Civil War military history.
