Speaker 1: This is Lee Habbib and this is Our American Stories,
Speaker 1: the show where America is the star. And the American
Speaker 1: people who search for the Our American Stories podcast go
Speaker 1: to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast
Speaker 1: up next to the the story from the South Carolina Military
Speaker 1: Museum in Columbia, the state capital. The first successful submarine
Speaker 1: attack on February seventeenth, eighteen sixty four was only a
Speaker 1: partial success. When it was all said and done, the
Speaker 1: uss Ou Satanic laid on the bottom of Charleston Harbor.
Speaker 1: But so did the sub the c SS Nley. Here's
Speaker 1: John Freeman with the story. The Honey wasn't built here.
Speaker 1: It wasn't even the first submersible type craft used by
Speaker 1: the Confederacy. So they had something else called the David,
Speaker 1: which was called a semi submersible. It was a boat
Speaker 1: that it rowed really low in the water and because
Speaker 1: they thought, well it would be difficult to detect, difficult
Speaker 1: to hit, but they would call it a torpedo boat
Speaker 1: because it was supposed to be do what the Honey
Speaker 1: similar to that they did, which is take a torpedo,
Speaker 1: which torpedoes at that time were more mines and running
Speaker 1: at the side of enemy ships. While the Hunley was
Speaker 1: built elsewhere, it was brought to Charleston and it was
Speaker 1: brought here for testing. Actually it was hopeful that after
Speaker 1: testing it could break the blockade that was going off
Speaker 1: the harbor by the Union fleet. And so when they
Speaker 1: initially built it, there was actually a rope and a
Speaker 1: floating mine behind them, and what they thought they would
Speaker 1: do is they would paddle a rod. Neither those are properties.
Speaker 1: It was. It was person powered. The honey was there
Speaker 1: was like a crankshaft. They were all sitting there, hunched
Speaker 1: over in this little tin can and they're working with
Speaker 1: their arms just getting this thing to go. So it
Speaker 1: was manpower. It's what they're supposed to do was go
Speaker 1: out of the harbor, head out towards the fleet, which
Speaker 1: wasn't in the harbor. It was actually outside the harbor,
Speaker 1: so the fleet was anyone called it off shore, but
Speaker 1: those are decent ways out. You had to get there
Speaker 1: by hand, and then when they got close they would
Speaker 1: actually submerge and then they would drag this mine which
Speaker 1: was floating into the side of the ship to destroy
Speaker 1: the ship. Well, during training they realized that wouldn't work
Speaker 1: because at one point during training due to the tides,
Speaker 1: they came to a stop and they turned around and
Speaker 1: looked behind the boat whether they're still on the surface,
Speaker 1: and the mine was coming up on them pretty fast,
Speaker 1: and they said, well, hang on, this might be a
Speaker 1: bad idea and we need to figure something else out
Speaker 1: so we don't just blow ourselves out of the water.
Speaker 1: So what they did is actually went to a spar
Speaker 1: system off the front of the hunley. And for the
Speaker 1: longest time I remember as a kid I grew up
Speaker 1: in Charleston, there was a reproduction of the Hunley in
Speaker 1: front of the Charleston Museum and it had the spar
Speaker 1: mounted to the top of the hunley. And you can
Speaker 1: still find tons of publications and photos and paintings of
Speaker 1: the spar mounted to the top of the front of
Speaker 1: the Hunley of the bow and just sticking out straight.
Speaker 1: And that's why everyone thought it happened. And so they
Speaker 1: actually went and they recovered the Hunley in the harbor,
Speaker 1: and they realized the bar was mounted to the bottom
Speaker 1: and stuck upwards at more of an angle so it
Speaker 1: could hit into the bottom of the boat better. So
Speaker 1: they went to a bar mountain on the bottom Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: there were some there's some accidents during training. I think
Speaker 1: they lost multiple crews where something would happen, the billows
Speaker 1: would leak, or a hatch would somehow be left open
Speaker 1: if I recall, and they would just flood, and they
Speaker 1: would lose crews, and they'd always go out, and it
Speaker 1: was too vital. They couldn't leave it. They'd always go out,
Speaker 1: they'd always recover it, and they'd always managed to recruit
Speaker 1: a new crew for it. So the night, the night
Speaker 1: of the attack, they got the crew in there, and
Speaker 1: I want to say, one of the members is Dixon.
Speaker 1: Is the name of the commander of the boat. Anyways,
Speaker 1: so Dixon, he's seen combat before, you know, he's been
Speaker 1: on the battlefield. He's actually got a gold coin in
Speaker 1: his pocket because on the battlefield he received he got
Speaker 1: shot and the gold coin actually caught the bullet and
Speaker 1: prevented it from him losing limb, losing an appendage or
Speaker 1: something like that, and it actually may have saved his
Speaker 1: life due to the medicine at the time. So it
Speaker 1: keeps it as a good luck charm. Gold coin that's
Speaker 1: cupped out looking like the top of a mushroom. So
Speaker 1: they go out and they have signals they give to
Speaker 1: the shore of when they're leaving when they're successful, just
Speaker 1: so they have some form of communication between shore and
Speaker 1: the Hunley. So it's nighttime they're rowing out to the fleet,
Speaker 1: and out at the fleet is the Hausatonic, which is
Speaker 1: a fairly large boat with pretty big guns, so the
Speaker 1: Hunley won't actually approach completely underwater, otherwise they'd have no
Speaker 1: idea where they were going. However, they have these little
Speaker 1: conning towers with these little glass viewports on them, so
Speaker 1: they can sort of see where they're going. So they
Speaker 1: start approaching the Hausatonic. One of the lookouts sees it
Speaker 1: and raises the alarm, and they never get any heavy
Speaker 1: fire like cannons onto the Honey, but there are some
Speaker 1: small arms fire, but then the whole boat is just
Speaker 1: shuttered by a blast and actually goes down in a
Speaker 1: decent decently short amount of time. Well, the Honey's never
Speaker 1: seen again after this. However, lookouts on the coast claim
Speaker 1: that they see the lights from the Honey signaling that
Speaker 1: they're going to return, which is what is part of
Speaker 1: the mystery of it never shows up, It never returns.
Speaker 1: How did it sink? Some people believe that maybe small
Speaker 1: arms fire penetrated one of those lookout portholes and actually
Speaker 1: took on water and sunk. Some think that when the
Speaker 1: blasts went off, because what was supposed to happen is
Speaker 1: the mine hits the side of the boat and then
Speaker 1: the honey actually kicks in reverse. I guess they rode
Speaker 1: their arms the other way and they started backing away
Speaker 1: from the Housatonic and there's actually a rope that comes out,
Speaker 1: and as that rope hits a certain point and they're
Speaker 1: a safe distance away, it's supposed to go off on
Speaker 1: the side of the boat. So they're thinking, well, maybe
Speaker 1: went off an impact. Maybe it went off before it
Speaker 1: was supposed to and it actually because the effects of
Speaker 1: an acoustic blast like that underwater, just devastating the human body.
Speaker 1: Maybe that caused it. Maybe it sunk due to small
Speaker 1: arms fire. No one knows. But doesn't explain the suppose
Speaker 1: the lights that the lookout saw on shore, because that
Speaker 1: was after the Whosa Tonic would have sunk. They received
Speaker 1: the lights saying we're coming in. So it's always been
Speaker 1: a bit of a mystery, and where it sunk as well.
Speaker 1: On the finding of it is also an interesting story
Speaker 1: in itself. There's two claims to the find of the Hunley.
Speaker 1: Elie Spent claims to have found a magnetic anomaly and
Speaker 1: the location where the Hunley was found and therefore he
Speaker 1: found the Hunley. Another one is by big money bookseller
Speaker 1: Clive Custler also claims he's the one who's found, who
Speaker 1: found and he's actually the one who funded a lot
Speaker 1: of it through NUMA, pulling the thing up everything like that,
Speaker 1: so he tends to get the line share of it,
Speaker 1: but Spent still claims he's the one who found the
Speaker 1: Hunley to this day. Anyways, get to the end of it.
Speaker 1: I believe the Hunley is now done with conservation. I
Speaker 1: think they're actually looking to get it on permanent display
Speaker 1: sometime in the next couple of years. But in the
Speaker 1: process of going through, you know, they have to be
Speaker 1: delicate because there's remains. It's become a tomb for over
Speaker 1: a hundred years. But when going through the remains and
Speaker 1: going through and cleaning out the inside, they find a
Speaker 1: gold coin and it's the gold coin that actually has
Speaker 1: the bullet and the dimple of it. Because it never
Speaker 1: knew if that was actually truthful in that there was
Speaker 1: always set a myth, as it a legend, as a rumor,
Speaker 1: did even take it with him when he went on
Speaker 1: the boat, finding the coin in the boat in a
Speaker 1: sort of an awesome little story that he took it
Speaker 1: with him to the very end. And it's still some
Speaker 1: debate of how it sunk exactly, but the debate or
Speaker 1: not it does stan as the first submarine in history
Speaker 1: to sink an enemy vessel, and a terrific job on
Speaker 1: the storytelling and the production by our own Monty Montgomery
Speaker 1: the first successful submarine attack. More interesting things you learn
Speaker 1: right here on our American story Folks. If you love
Speaker 1: the stories we tell about this great country, and especially
Speaker 1: the stories of America's rich past, know that all of
Speaker 1: our stories about American history, from war to innovation, culture
Speaker 1: and faith, are brought to us by the great folks
Speaker 1: at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all the
Speaker 1: things that are beautiful in life and all the things
Speaker 1: that are good in life. And if you can't get
Speaker 1: to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you if they're free
Speaker 1: and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu to
Speaker 1: learn more.