Submarine Hunley Sinks: Inventor Dies in Test Dive

The H.L. Hunley sank for the second time on October 15, 1863, killing its inventor and namesake along with seven crew members during a test dive in Charleston Harbor. The hand-cranked submarine had already drowned five men in its first sinking two months earlier. Yet Confederate commanders ordered it raised again, repaired, and sent on the combat mission that would make it the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship. Horace Lawson Hunley was a wealthy New Orleans lawyer and Confederate patriot who had financed the submarine's construction with his own money. The vessel was built from a converted iron steam boiler, roughly 40 feet long and barely four feet in diameter. Eight men sat on a bench and turned a hand crank connected to the propeller, while the captain steered and controlled the ballast tanks. Conditions inside were claustrophobic, dark, and terrifying — the crew breathed whatever air was trapped inside the sealed hull. The first sinking on August 29, 1863, occurred when the skipper accidentally stepped on the dive lever while the hatches were open. Five of the nine crew members drowned. The submarine was raised and put back into service under Hunley's personal command for further testing. On October 15, during a practice dive, the Hunley failed to surface. When the vessel was recovered, all eight men were found dead at their stations, apparently suffocated when the air supply ran out. Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard initially refused to allow the submarine to operate again, calling it "more dangerous to those who use it than to the enemy." But he relented, and a third volunteer crew prepared the Hunley for combat. On February 17, 1864, the submarine attacked the USS Housatonic outside Charleston Harbor, ramming a spar torpedo into the ship's hull. The Housatonic sank in five minutes — but the Hunley never returned, sinking for the third and final time with all hands lost. The submarine was not recovered until 2000, when archaeologists raised it from the ocean floor and began unraveling the mystery of its final moments.