CIVIL WAR
"Union and Confederate
SUBMARINE WARFARE in the Civil War"
by Mark K. Ragan with Introduction by Clive Cussler
"Union and Confederate Submarine Warfare in the Civil War," is an extraordinarily amusing book detailing submarine development in the 1860's. I knew, of course, about the "Hunley" sinking the sloop "Housatonic" and the more important attack of the semi-submersible "David," which crippled the ironclad frigate "New Ironsides," but there were apparently about two dozen submarines running around, mostly wiping out their own crews. Lincoln was a easy mark for new inventions, and foisted many of these on the navy, who were searching for ways to clear underwater obstacles and minefields. One of the first union subs, the "Alligator," was initially propelled by paddles along the side, driven by turning a crank inside (it was later fitted with a propeller). After unsuccessful operations around Hampton Roads it sank while being towed around Cape Hattaras. The next submarine, the "Intelligent Whale" wasn't finished until after the war.
Every inventor was designing a submarine; the situation resembles the airplane rage before 1910. Other projected or privately funded northern submarines included such improvements as oxygen tanks (~225 psi), carbon dioxide scrubbers (calcium hydroxide in water used to wet a cloth band running into the air on pulleys, to increase the surface area), periscopes, and air locks for hard-hat divers.
Most of the submarines were built by the confederates for harbor and river defense, many being converted boilers. One was eventually used for resupply of an isolated fort (shades of Japanese subs in late WW2). The book details the operations of the "Hunley," the third of the submarines built by the Singer Submarine Corps, and shows why it was such a nightmare to control - the fore and aft ballast chambers were apparently connected to the crew compartment so that failure to close one of the stopcocks would flood the interior of the submarine as it sank, and the stopcocks required wrenches that could be lost in the dark interior, particularly when it was partially flooded. The pilot needed to use a candle, and so had one hand occupied all the time. The ergonomics were even worse than the wiper controls on my '74 Fiat.
And then there was the rocket propelled torpedo. To quote:
As strange
as it seems today, Navy Secretary Gideon Wells witnessed a test
of Plant's "self-propelled torpedo" while visiting the
Washington Navy Yard in December of 1862. Two of Plant's torpedoes were sighted on a target anchored in the river and fired from
a test platform. The first struck a distant mud bank, while the
second veered off course and sank the small schooner Diana, anchored
some distance from the proposed target. Although the botched test
resulted in history's first recorded sinking of a vessel by a
self-propelled torpedo, Union naval personnel were unimpressed
and wished nothing more than to wash their hands of the whole
affair.
Available from:
Savas Publishing Company
202 First Street S.E., Suite 103A
Mason City, Iowa 50401
email cwbooks@mach3ww.com
www.savaspublishing.com
Reviewed by Jim Gilbert on 21 July 1999
