CHAPTER XIII

SUBMARINES DURING THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

From the death of Robert Fulton down to the commencement of the American Civil War no very startling developments in under-water warfare are to be chronicled. During the Schleswig-Holstein War of 1848–50 the modern subaqueous explosive mine first came into use in actual warfare, and mines were also employed during the Crimean War; in 1859 by the Austrians at the time of the threatened attack on Venice by the French, and by the Chinese in 1857–58 to defend the streams in the neighbourhood of Canton.

The mine and the torpedo both played their part in the American Civil War, and since then both these weapons have been adopted as valuable factors of offence and defence by all the great Powers. When the Southern Confederacy seceded from the United States in 1861, one of the first steps of its naval department was to form a torpedo section to protect approaches to places liable to attack by the Northern fleet. It was during the war that the idea was applied of taking the mine to the hostile ship by means of a boat, for the mine, besides being immovable, was liable to be picked up or cut adrift by the enemy. A charge of powder was placed at the end of a long pole carried in the bows of the boat; when darkness came on the boat crept up to the enemy, the pole and charge were run under water until in contact with the hull of the enemy, and the explosive was then ignited by means of electricity. Thus came into being the “spar” or “outrigger” torpedo, a weapon which still finds a place in the armament of the British fleet. The Confederates affixed the spar torpedo to at least one ironclad ship and many small steam vessels, and much damage was inflicted on the enemy by its employment.

It must be remembered that automobile or fish torpedoes had not been invented at this time, and that the only under-water weapons used on both sides were fixed mines and spar torpedoes.

It was in order to use the spar torpedo to the greatest advantage that the diving torpedo-boat was employed, and in this chapter we shall have to deal with a very famous incident in the history of submarine navigation, namely, the sinking of the Federal frigate _Housatonic_ by a submarine boat manned by the Confederates and armed with a spar torpedo.

Early in the war the Federal or Northern Government entered into negotiations with a Frenchman, whose name we have been unable to discover, to build and operate a submarine boat against the Confederate or Southern vessels. In particular the North desired to blow up the Confederate _Merrimac_ in Norfolk Harbour. It has been stated that $10,000 were to be paid for the boat when finished, and $5,000 for each successful attack with her. The boat was apparently constructed at the Navy Yard at Washington, and paid for by the Federals, but before they could learn the art of navigating the vessel the Frenchman, taking his gains with him, left the country. Whether the boat would have proved of much value is to be doubted, and the probability is that the inventor would have been as unsuccessful as were the Federals in working the craft.

Admiral Hichborn terms it “an absurd arrangement of duckfoot hand-worked paddles in an age when the screw-propeller was in common use.”

It was 35 feet long and 6 feet in diameter, and was built up of steel plates. Immersion was obtained by the admission of water, and the mode of propulsion on the surface or below the water was by eight pairs of oars or paddles which opened and shut like the leaves of a book, and were worked by sixteen men placed half on the port and half on the starboard. The maximum speed was 2½ knots on the surface. Fresh air was produced by two machines—one consisted of a bellows passing air over a chamber of lime, the other produced oxygen. The armament was a spar torpedo. According to one account it was towed round by a steamboat to Port Royal and foundered in a storm of wind off Cape Hatteras.

Early in 1863 the Confederates cut down a gunboat at Charleston and converted it into a half-submerged torpedo-boat. It does not appear to have done any mischief, but Mr. H. W. Wilson, in his “Ironclads in Action,” says that it may have been the vessel which on the night of April 19, 1864, approached the _Wabash_. The Northern vessel was at anchor when something was seen near her in the water and challenged. She slipped her cable and went ahead, opening a heavy fire upon the strange craft, after which it disappeared, whether as the result of a shot or not is uncertain.

On the night of October 5, 1863, an attack was made upon the United States’ ironclad, _New Ironsides_, of 3,486 old American tons, carrying twenty guns, at anchor in the midst of the blockading squadron off Charleston, by a submarine vessel owned by the Confederates. This boat was built by Theodore Stoney at Charleston, and was called the _David_, a name given by the Southerns to some subsequent under-water craft in memory of the fight between the lad David and the giant Goliath.

This first _David_ was 54 feet long and at her widest depth 6 feet in diameter. She was cigar-shaped, and was propelled by a screw driven by steam power. When in action she lay almost flush with the water, her funnel and steering chamber alone projecting above the surface. (Another report says that she was so far submerged that only about 10 feet in length of the hull was visible 2 feet above the water.) Her armament consisted of a single spar torpedo with a 60 lb. charge of gunpowder, which was folded alongside when not in use, and only run out on an iron bar to a distance of 10 feet for the actual attack, ignition being effected by an acid fuse rendered active by a collision nearly end on. Her maximum speed was 7 knots an hour.

“With a crew of volunteers Lieut. Glassell took her out, and, a little after nine in the evening, the _Ironsides_ watch saw her approaching. She looked to them like a plank, since all that could be seen was the coaming of her hatchway. Several officers were on deck, and the _David_ was at once hailed. Her only answer was a volley of musketry which mortally wounded one Federal officer. An instant later the ironclad received a violent blow from the explosion of a torpedo containing 60 lbs. of powder, which threw up a column of water, shook the ship severely and broke one man’s leg on board her. After the smoke and spray had cleared away the _Ironsides_ was found to be uninjured and the boat had disappeared. Her crew jumped overboard at the moment of firing the torpedo, and Glassell, as he swam about, hailed a Northern coal schooner, on board which he was taken, whilst a second man escaped to the _Ironsides_. The engineer of the _David_, however, after the explosion swam back to the boat, to which he found the pilot clinging for dear life, as he was unable to swim. Helping him on board he discovered that the _David_ could yet float, though the explosion had put out the fires, and together the two took her back to Charleston.”

In a paper on “Offensive Torpedo Warfare,” read before the Royal United Service Institution in 1871, Commander W. Dawson, R.N., writes of the attack as follows:—

“Observe the elements of failure. A charge destructive enough if exploded in actual contact, but innocuous to a strongly built ship by the accidental interposition of seven or eight feet of water, yet held near enough to the operating vessel to place her in immediate danger, either from the direct action of the explosion upon her thin sides, or from her being swamped by the falling columns of water, self-acting fuses, so arranged as to necessitate the most exposed direction of attack, viz., the enemy’s broadside; an acid composition sluggish enough in its action to allow time for the boat to rebound after collision, the few feet required to render the explosion harmless, and last, not least, a commander and crew, who, having never fired their weapon before, were in greater terror of their own torpedo than the enemy would have been. Can we wonder that the conductor of this enterprise jumped overboard before the explosion, that his little vessel had her fires extinguished and was nearly swamped, and that the _New Ironsides_, though severely injured, was not compelled to return into port? The crew, deserted by their commander, relighted the fires, and brought the boat safely into harbour.”

The first attempts of the Confederates with their submarine boat having proved a failure, the Federal officers on the outside blockade grew somewhat careless, and the final result of the Confederates’ efforts was that one of the fine new vessels of the Federal fleet, the _Housatonic_, 1,264 tons, and carrying 13 guns, was destroyed in Charleston harbour on the night of February 17, 1864.

The _David_ that accomplished this feat, unique in the annals of submarine warfare, had been built at Mobile by Messrs. McClintock and Howgate, and brought overland to Charleston. She had lateral fins by which she could be raised and submerged, and ballast tanks to lighten her and enable her to rise to the surface, though these, we read, uniformly refused to act. She carried no reserve of air, and hence she well deserved the name “peripatetic coffin.” She was about 60 feet long, and elliptical in transverse section. Her crew consisted of nine men, eight of whom propelled the vessel by operating cranks on the screw shaft, while the ninth acted as pilot.

It was originally designed to make the attack by passing under the keel of a ship towing a contact torpedo, having a small reserve buoyancy. Under favourable conditions the torpedo would be drawn under water when the vessel descended, strike the bottom of the ship, and explode on contact.

During her first cruise under the orders of Lieut. Payne (or Paine?) an enemy’s vessel passed close to her without noticing her; the swill raised by her paddles sunk the _David_, and Payne alone of all the crew saved himself. When the boat was recovered from the bottom, Lieut. Payne persuaded eight sailors to embark with him; a squall of wind caused the boat to fill with water, Lieut. Payne and two bluejackets alone escaping by leaping out of her as she went down. No sooner was the boat recovered from the bottom than her gallant commander offered to try again. A new crew volunteered, and all went well for a time. But one night, off Fort Sumter, she capsized, and only four (of whom Lieut. Payne was one) escaped.

A third time she was raised, and the next essay was made in the Cooper River, under the lead of Mr. Aunley, one of the men who had constructed the boat. Alas! She sank for the fourth time, having caught her nose in the bottom, and all hands were drowned. Once more she was recovered only to foul the cable of a schooner at anchor in the harbour, and to sink for a fifth time.

Up to this time five crews of eight each had volunteered for service in the ill-starred _David_, and of these forty men, no less than thirty-five had perished. The brave Southern sailors, instead of fighting shy of the submarine, were as ready as ever to face death again. The _David_ was recovered, and Lieut. Dixon, with Captain Carlson, both officers in the Confederate army, volunteered with five others to take her out against the Northern fleet. The Federal corvette _Housatonic_ lay outside the bar in Charleston harbour, and it was on this vessel that on the evening of February 17, 1864, the attack was made, an attack which is thus vividly described by Admiral David Porter, U.S. Navy, in his book, “The Naval History of the Civil War”:—

“At about 8.45 p.m. the officer of the deck on board the unfortunate vessel discovered something about 100 yards away, moving along the water. It came directly towards the ship, and within two minutes of the time it was first sighted was alongside. The cable was slipped, the engines backed, and all hands called to quarters. But it was too late—the torpedo struck the _Housatonic_ just forward of the mainmast, on the starboard side, in a line with the magazine. The man who steered her knew where the vulnerable spots of the steamer were, and he did his work well. When the explosion took place the ship trembled all over as if by the shock of an earthquake, and seemed to be lifted out of the water, and then sunk stern foremost, heeling to port as she went down. Her captain, Pickering, was stunned and somewhat bruised by the concussion, and the order of the day was ‘_Sauve qui peut_.’ A boat was despatched to the _Canandaigua_, not far off, and that vessel at once responded to the request for help, and succeeded in rescuing the greater part of the crew. Strange to say, the _David_ was not seen after the explosion, and was supposed to have slipped away in the confusion; but when the _Housatonic_ was inspected by divers, the torpedo boat was found sticking in the hole she had made, and all her crew were dead in her. It was a reckless adventure these men had engaged in, and one in which they could scarcely have hoped to succeed. They had tried it once before inside the harbour, and some of the crew had been blown overboard. How could they hope to succeed on the outside, where the sea might be rough, when the speed of the _David_ was not over five knots, and when they might be driven out to sea! Reckless as it might be, it was the most sublime patriotism, and showed the length to which men could be urged on behalf of a cause for which they were willing to give up their lives and all they held most dear.”

It was by deeds such as these that North and South are to-day united, as they never were before.

When Lieutenant Hobson, during the Spanish-American war, offered to sink the _Merrimac_ at the entrance of Santiago harbour, half the American sailors were wild to join in the hazardous task, and if volunteers for submarines had been requested it is certain that men would have come forward in 1898 as they did so nobly in 1864.

The _David_, that finally succeeded in sinking the _Housatonic_, proved so costly an experiment in human lives, because she was not worked as a submarine, but as a low freeboard surface torpedo boat, a purpose for which she was never designed, and for which, as we have seen, she proved dangerous and inefficient. As some one has observed, she was intended for submerging at pleasure—her own pleasure, however, not that of her crew. During the attack on the _Housatonic_, on February 17th, the vessel did not run under water. The crew submerged it to the hatch coaming and left the cover open against the protest of Mr. Howgate, who despatched it on its mission. The attack was made by a spar torpedo, and the wave thrown up by its explosion, when it struck the _Housatonic_, entered the open hatchway and swamped the vessel. Most accounts of the feat of the _David_ state that _all_ the crew were drowned. From the following extract it would seem that the gallant captain survived the attack.

“I remember on one occasion during the war,” wrote Hobart Pacha in an article, “The Torpedo Scare,” appearing in _Blackwood’s Magazine_ for June, 1885, “when I was at Charleston, meeting in a coffee-room at that place a young naval officer (a Southerner) with whom I got into conversation. He told me that that night he was going to sink a Northern man-of-war which was blockading the port, and invited me to see him off. I accompanied him down to his cigar-boat, as he called it, and found that she was a vessel about forty feet long, shaped like a cigar, on the bow of which was placed a torpedo. On his stepping on board with his crew of four men, his boat was immersed till nothing but a small piece of funnel was visible. He moved off into the darkness at no great speed—say at about five miles an hour. The next evening, on visiting the coffee-house, I found my friend sitting quietly smoking his pipe. He told me that he had succeeded in making a hole in the frigate which he had attacked, which vessel could, in fact, be seen lying in shallow water, some seven miles off, careened over to repair damages. But he said that, on the concussion made by firing the torpedo, the water had rushed in through the hatches of his boat, and she had sunk to the bottom. All his men were drowned. He said he didn’t know how he escaped himself, but he fancied that he came up through the hatches, as he found himself floating about, and swam on shore. This affair was officially reported by the American blockading squadron, corroborating the fact of the injury done to the frigate, and stating that the torpedo-boat was got up, with four dead bodies in her hold. Here is one system which might be utilised in naval warfare if perfected, and I am given to understand that a submarine torpedo-boat is already invented by Mr. Nordenfelt.”

After the sinking of the _Housatonic_ the Federals again turned their attention to submarine warfare, and in October, 1864, some trials were made on the Hudson with a boat named the _Stromboli_, constructed at Fairhaven from the designs of an engineer, one Wood. It was not, properly speaking, either a submarine or a diving boat, but by letting in a certain quantity of water into the reservoirs it could be brought flush with the surface, leaving only the conning tower, the chimney and the ventilator above the waves. A steam engine propelled the _Stromboli_ at a speed of ten miles an hour, while a spar torpedo formed the armament. On the 16th of November, 1864, the _Stromboli_ was under the command of John Lay, and was ordered to proceed to Hampton Roads to attack the Confederate cruisers. It appears to have arrived on the 6th of December, but its subsequent doings are not to be discovered.

Another semi-submarine which figured in the American Civil War was the _Sputyen Duyvil_, built by Messrs. Mallory & Co., from the plans of Messrs. William Wood and John Lay. She was made of wood, and her dimensions were, length 74 feet, beam 20 feet, draught 7½ feet. On going into action she could be immersed to a depth of 9 feet in order to put her armoured side below water, she was to fight with her deck, which was placed with 3–in. armour, flush with the water. Amidships, and standing about 3 feet above the deck, was a pilot house from which the boat could be steered. The _Sputyen Duyvil_ was attached to James River’s squadron during the year 1865, but there is no evidence that she was ever brought into use; her torpedoes were fired on contact, and were worked through a hollow iron boom projecting from the bow, and having inside it a rod to which the torpedo was to be attached.