September 10, 2025 • 7 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1864, Charleston Harbor became the site of a world first. The Confederate submarine CSS Hunley approached the Union warship USS Housatonic under the cover of night. A spar torpedo struck, sending the Housatonic to the bottom of the harbor and proving that submarines could change the course of war. The Hunley never returned, but the attack marked the beginning of submarine warfare and remains one of the most dramatic moments in Civil War naval history.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people who search for the Our American Stories podcast go
to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast
up next to the story from the South Carolina Military
Museum in Columbia, the state Capitol. The first successful submarine
(00:33):
attack on February seventeenth, eighteen sixty four was only a
partial success. When it was all said and done, the
USS Hoosatonic laid on the bottom of Charleston Harbor, but
so did the sub the CSS. Honley, here's John Freeman
with the story.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Wasn't built here. It wasn't even the first submersible type
craft used by the Confederacy. So they had something else
called the David, which was called a semi submersible. It
was a boat that it rowed really low in the water,
and because of it thought well, it'd be difficult detect,
difficult to hit. But it would call it a torpedo
boat because it was supposed to be doing what the
Honey similar to they did, which is take a torpedo
(01:21):
which torpedoes at that time were more mines and run
at the side of enemy ships. Well, the Honley was
built elsewhere, it was brought to Charleston and it was
brought here for testing. Actually, it was hopeful that after
testing it could break the blockade that was going off
the harbor by the Union Fleet. And so when they
initially built it, there was actually a rope and a
floating mine behind them, and what they thought they would
(01:42):
do is they would paddle or row. Neither of those
are properties. It was person powered. The honey was there
was like a crank shaft. They were all sitting there,
hunched over in this little tin can and they're working
with their arms just getting this thing to go. Those
man powers. What they're supposed to do was go out
of the harbor head out towards the fleet, which wasn't
in the harbor. It was actually outside the harbor, so
the fleet wasn't called it offshore, but it was a
(02:03):
decent ways out. You had to get there by hand,
and then when they got close they would actually submerge
and then they would drag this mine which was floating
into the side of the ship to destroy the ship. Well,
during training they realized that wouldn't work because at one
point during training, due to the tides. They came to
a stop and they turned around and looked behind the
(02:24):
boat whether it's on the surface, and the mine was
coming up on them pretty fast, and they said, well,
hang on, this might be a bad idea. We need
we need to figure something else out so we don't
just blow ourselves out of the water. So what they
did is actually went to a spar system off the
front of the hunley. And for the longest time I
remember as a kid I grew up in Charleston, there
was a reproduction of the Huneley in front of the
Charleston Museum and it had the spar mounted to the
(02:44):
top of the hunley, and you can still find tons
of publications and photos and paintings of the spar mounted
to the top of the front of the hundlay of
the bow and just sticking out straight. And that's why
everyone thought it happened. And so they actually went and
they recovered the Hundley in the harbor, and they realized
the bar was mounted to the bar bottom and stuck
upwards at more of an angle so it could hit
in the bottom of the boat better. So they went
(03:05):
to a bar mountain on the bottom. Unfortunately, there were
some There are some accidents during training. I think they
lost multiple crews where something would happen. The billows would leak,
or a hatch would somehow be left open if I recall,
and they would just flood and they would lose cruise,
and they'd always go out and it was too vital.
They couldn't leave it. They'd always go out. They'd always
recover it. They'd always managed to recruit it a crew
for it. So the night, the night of the attack,
(03:31):
they got the crew in there. And I want to say,
one of the members is Dixon. Is the name of
the commander of the boat. Anyways, So Dixon, he's seen
combat before, you know, he's been on the battlefield. He's
actually got a gold coin in his pocket because on
the battlefield he got shot and the gold coin actually
caught the bullet and prevented it from him losing him
(03:53):
losing an appendage or something like that, and it actually
may have saved his life due to the medicine at
the time. So it keeps it as a good luck charm,
gold coin that's cupped out looking like the top of
a mushroom. So they go out and they have signals
they give to the shore of when they're leaving them
when they're successful, just so they have some form of
communication between shore and the Honley. So it's nighttime they're
(04:14):
rowing out to the fleet, and out at the fleet
is the Housatonic, which is a fairly large boat with
pretty big guns, so the Hunley won't actually approach completely underwater,
otherwise they'd have no idea where they were going. However,
they have these little conning towers with these little glass
viewports on them, so they can sort of see where
they're going. So they start approaching the Housatonic. One of
(04:36):
the lookouts sees it and raises the alarm, and they
never get any heavy fire like cannons onto the Honey,
but there are some small arms fire. But then the
whole boat is just shuddered by a blast and it
actually goes down in a decent decently short amount of time. Well,
the Huntley is never seen again after this. However, lookouts
(04:59):
on the coast claim that they see the lights from
the Honey signaling that they're going to return, which is
what is part of the mystery of it never shows up.
They never returns. How did it sink? Some people believe
that maybe small arms fire penetrated one of those lookout
portholes and actually took on water and sunk. Some think
that when the blast went off, because what was supposed
to happen is the mine hits the side of the
(05:21):
boat and then the honey actually kicks it reverse. I
guess they row their arms the other way and they
start backing away from the Hoosatonic and there's actually a
rope that comes out, and as that rope hits a
certain point, there's a safe distance away. It's supposed to
go off on the side of the boat. So they're thinking, well,
maybe went off an impact, Maybe it went off before
it was supposed to and it actually because the effects
(05:43):
of an acoustic blast like that under water are just
devastating the human body. Maybe that caused it. Maybe it's
sunk due to small arms fire, and no one knows,
but doesn't explain this supposed the lights that the lookout
saw on shore, because that was after the Whostonic would
have sunk. They received the lights saying we're coming in.
So it's always been a bit of a mystery, and
where it's sunk as well. In the finding of it
is also an interesting story in itself. There's two claims
(06:05):
to the find of the Huntley. Eli Spent claims to
have found a magnetic anomaly in the location where the
Hunley was found and therefore he found the Hunley. Another
one is by big money bookseller Clive Custler also claims
he's the one who'd who found it. He's actually the
one who funded a lot of it through NUMA, pulling
the thing up everything like that, so he tends to
get the line share of it, but Spent still claims
(06:27):
he's the one who found the Hunley. To the stay anyways,
get to the end of it. I believe the Hunley
is now done with conservation. I think they're actually looking
to get it on permanent display sometime in the next
couple of years. But in the process of going through,
you know, they have to be delicate because there's remains.
It's become a tomb for over one hundred years. But
when going through the remains and going through and cleaning
(06:47):
out the inside, they find a gold coin, and it's
the gold coin that actually has the bullet and the
dimple of it. Because it never knew if that was
actually truthful in that there was always a is that
a myth. Is it a legend as a rumor to
even take it with him when he went on the
boat up finding the coin in the boat, And it's
sort of an awesome little story that he took it
with him to the very end. And it's still some
debate of how it sunk exactly, but the debate or
(07:08):
not it does stand as the first submarine in history
to sink an enemy.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Vessel, and a terrific job on the storytelling and the
production by our own Montay Montgomery the first successful submarine attack.
More interesting things you learn right here on our American story.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Folks.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
If you love the stories we tell about this great country,
and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that
all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation,
culture and faith are brought to us by the great
folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all
the things that are beautiful in life and all the
things that are good in life. And if you can't
get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their
(07:52):
free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu
to learn more.
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people who search for the Our American Stories podcast go
to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast
up next to the story from the South Carolina Military
Museum in Columbia, the state Capitol. The first successful submarine
(00:33):
attack on February seventeenth, eighteen sixty four was only a
partial success. When it was all said and done, the
USS Hoosatonic laid on the bottom of Charleston Harbor, but
so did the sub the CSS. Honley, here's John Freeman
with the story.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Wasn't built here. It wasn't even the first submersible type
craft used by the Confederacy. So they had something else
called the David, which was called a semi submersible. It
was a boat that it rowed really low in the water,
and because of it thought well, it'd be difficult detect,
difficult to hit. But it would call it a torpedo
boat because it was supposed to be doing what the
Honey similar to they did, which is take a torpedo
(01:21):
which torpedoes at that time were more mines and run
at the side of enemy ships. Well, the Honley was
built elsewhere, it was brought to Charleston and it was
brought here for testing. Actually, it was hopeful that after
testing it could break the blockade that was going off
the harbor by the Union Fleet. And so when they
initially built it, there was actually a rope and a
floating mine behind them, and what they thought they would
(01:42):
do is they would paddle or row. Neither of those
are properties. It was person powered. The honey was there
was like a crank shaft. They were all sitting there,
hunched over in this little tin can and they're working
with their arms just getting this thing to go. Those
man powers. What they're supposed to do was go out
of the harbor head out towards the fleet, which wasn't
in the harbor. It was actually outside the harbor, so
the fleet wasn't called it offshore, but it was a
(02:03):
decent ways out. You had to get there by hand,
and then when they got close they would actually submerge
and then they would drag this mine which was floating
into the side of the ship to destroy the ship. Well,
during training they realized that wouldn't work because at one
point during training, due to the tides. They came to
a stop and they turned around and looked behind the
(02:24):
boat whether it's on the surface, and the mine was
coming up on them pretty fast, and they said, well,
hang on, this might be a bad idea. We need
we need to figure something else out so we don't
just blow ourselves out of the water. So what they
did is actually went to a spar system off the
front of the hunley. And for the longest time I
remember as a kid I grew up in Charleston, there
was a reproduction of the Huneley in front of the
Charleston Museum and it had the spar mounted to the
(02:44):
top of the hunley, and you can still find tons
of publications and photos and paintings of the spar mounted
to the top of the front of the hundlay of
the bow and just sticking out straight. And that's why
everyone thought it happened. And so they actually went and
they recovered the Hundley in the harbor, and they realized
the bar was mounted to the bar bottom and stuck
upwards at more of an angle so it could hit
in the bottom of the boat better. So they went
(03:05):
to a bar mountain on the bottom. Unfortunately, there were
some There are some accidents during training. I think they
lost multiple crews where something would happen. The billows would leak,
or a hatch would somehow be left open if I recall,
and they would just flood and they would lose cruise,
and they'd always go out and it was too vital.
They couldn't leave it. They'd always go out. They'd always
recover it. They'd always managed to recruit it a crew
for it. So the night, the night of the attack,
(03:31):
they got the crew in there. And I want to say,
one of the members is Dixon. Is the name of
the commander of the boat. Anyways, So Dixon, he's seen
combat before, you know, he's been on the battlefield. He's
actually got a gold coin in his pocket because on
the battlefield he got shot and the gold coin actually
caught the bullet and prevented it from him losing him
(03:53):
losing an appendage or something like that, and it actually
may have saved his life due to the medicine at
the time. So it keeps it as a good luck charm,
gold coin that's cupped out looking like the top of
a mushroom. So they go out and they have signals
they give to the shore of when they're leaving them
when they're successful, just so they have some form of
communication between shore and the Honley. So it's nighttime they're
(04:14):
rowing out to the fleet, and out at the fleet
is the Housatonic, which is a fairly large boat with
pretty big guns, so the Hunley won't actually approach completely underwater,
otherwise they'd have no idea where they were going. However,
they have these little conning towers with these little glass
viewports on them, so they can sort of see where
they're going. So they start approaching the Housatonic. One of
(04:36):
the lookouts sees it and raises the alarm, and they
never get any heavy fire like cannons onto the Honey,
but there are some small arms fire. But then the
whole boat is just shuddered by a blast and it
actually goes down in a decent decently short amount of time. Well,
the Huntley is never seen again after this. However, lookouts
(04:59):
on the coast claim that they see the lights from
the Honey signaling that they're going to return, which is
what is part of the mystery of it never shows up.
They never returns. How did it sink? Some people believe
that maybe small arms fire penetrated one of those lookout
portholes and actually took on water and sunk. Some think
that when the blast went off, because what was supposed
to happen is the mine hits the side of the
(05:21):
boat and then the honey actually kicks it reverse. I
guess they row their arms the other way and they
start backing away from the Hoosatonic and there's actually a
rope that comes out, and as that rope hits a
certain point, there's a safe distance away. It's supposed to
go off on the side of the boat. So they're thinking, well,
maybe went off an impact, Maybe it went off before
it was supposed to and it actually because the effects
(05:43):
of an acoustic blast like that under water are just
devastating the human body. Maybe that caused it. Maybe it's
sunk due to small arms fire, and no one knows,
but doesn't explain this supposed the lights that the lookout
saw on shore, because that was after the Whostonic would
have sunk. They received the lights saying we're coming in.
So it's always been a bit of a mystery, and
where it's sunk as well. In the finding of it
is also an interesting story in itself. There's two claims
(06:05):
to the find of the Huntley. Eli Spent claims to
have found a magnetic anomaly in the location where the
Hunley was found and therefore he found the Hunley. Another
one is by big money bookseller Clive Custler also claims
he's the one who'd who found it. He's actually the
one who funded a lot of it through NUMA, pulling
the thing up everything like that, so he tends to
get the line share of it, but Spent still claims
(06:27):
he's the one who found the Hunley. To the stay anyways,
get to the end of it. I believe the Hunley
is now done with conservation. I think they're actually looking
to get it on permanent display sometime in the next
couple of years. But in the process of going through,
you know, they have to be delicate because there's remains.
It's become a tomb for over one hundred years. But
when going through the remains and going through and cleaning
(06:47):
out the inside, they find a gold coin, and it's
the gold coin that actually has the bullet and the
dimple of it. Because it never knew if that was
actually truthful in that there was always a is that
a myth. Is it a legend as a rumor to
even take it with him when he went on the
boat up finding the coin in the boat, And it's
sort of an awesome little story that he took it
with him to the very end. And it's still some
debate of how it sunk exactly, but the debate or
(07:08):
not it does stand as the first submarine in history
to sink an enemy.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Vessel, and a terrific job on the storytelling and the
production by our own Montay Montgomery the first successful submarine attack.
More interesting things you learn right here on our American story.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Folks.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
If you love the stories we tell about this great country,
and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that
all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation,
culture and faith are brought to us by the great
folks at Hillsdale College, a place where students study all
the things that are beautiful in life and all the
things that are good in life. And if you can't
get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their
(07:52):
free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu
to learn more.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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