Hunley Submarine

The Hunley Submarine in North Charleston offers a rare confrontation with the experimental edge of Civil War technology rather than with conventional battlefield relics. Built in Mobile and shipped to Charleston in 1863, the 40-foot vessel represents an audacious Confederate attempt to break the Union blockade with a hand-cranked, submersible “torpedo boat.” Its catastrophic record—three sinkings, twenty-one dead, including inventor Horace Lawson Hunley—underscores the lethal learning curve of early undersea warfare. On the night of 17 February 1864, Hunley became the first combat submarine to sink a warship, the screw sloop USS Housatonic, and then vanished with its crew in the same harbor it had just altered forever. Located at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center on the Cooper River, the raised hull anchors ongoing conservation work, forensic study, and debate over blast effects, crew position, and operating doctrine. For military history enthusiasts, the site functions as a laboratory in metal, silt, and human risk, where blockade strategy, naval engineering, and the origins of submarine combat can be examined at full scale rather than in abstraction.