Confederate Veteran

First Submarine Boat in Actual Warfare

Volume 16, February 1908, pages 71–72

A short account of the boat that sank the Housatonic — and one that gets almost every particular of it wrong, which is why it drew the correction printed later in the same volume.

Printed “By Charles Doran.” Note that Arthur P. Ford, correcting the piece in the same volume (page 563), calls him Charles Moran; the page itself reads Doran, and has been checked against the scan.

Cite as

Charles Doran, “First Submarine Boat in Actual Warfare,” Confederate Veteran 16, no. 2 (February 1908)*: 71–72.

The page in the scanned volume The whole volume at the Internet Archive

Published: February 1908issue inferred
Volume: 16, no. 2
Pages: 71–72
Author: Charles Doran

FIRST SUBMARINE BOAT IN ACTUAL WARFARE. BY CHARLES DORAN.

The first submarine boat to engage in actual warfare was the invention of a Confederate naval constructor of Charleston, S. C., in 1864. She was a cigar-shaped vessel about twenty feet long, having a beam of eight feet, and was propelled by hand. She was called the David, by which name all such type of craft afterwards became known, and was built of boiler iron. Her crew numbered nine men—one steersman and eight men to work her propeller.

The boat was not, however, entirely submerged. A foot of her hull projected above the water, through which air and light were admitted to her interior. She was a frail craft, and built for service in the inland waters of the Carolinas.

The David made her first appearance in Charleston Harbor, and was one of a number of submarine boats to be built by the Confederates. In the dead of a dark and calm night she made her first and only attack upon a vessel of the Federal navy. She was towed to within a hundred yards of the U1.'on

ship of war Housatonic, stationed near the entrance to the harbor, and engaged at the time on blockade duty, when a boom eighteen feet long was fastened to her bows with a torpedo on the end of it, and she was run up against the enemy's sides. She succeeded in sinking the Housatonic, but was also sunk by the explosion of her own torpedo, her entire crew losing their lives by being suffocated or drowned.

Other attempts to sink the Yankee ships of war were made by like daring little crafts, one of them being even venturesome enough to attack a ship of the blockading fleet stationed two miles out at sea off the coast of Georgia. Her captain actually got alongside of the enemy, but unfortunately was unable to discharge his torpedo before his presence was discovered.

The lifetime of the Confederate submarines was very short and usually disastrous to sinking of the Housatonic being the only case in which one of them inflicted any serious damage to the ships of the enemy; but it is safe to say that the dread of an unexpected encounter with one of these strange little fellows in the black of the night made many a Yankee tar very watchful when his ship was in the quiet and calm waters of the Carolinas, or even a Gulf State, whither some of them had been sent by the Confederate Navy Department at Richmond.

themselves, the

The scan

What the scanner made of this page, and what it is in the printed original.

“U1.'on ship of war” is “Union ship of war.”

Editorial notes

Statements in this article that are wrong, doubtful, or worth setting beside another account. The article’s own text is left as printed.

“She was called the David … She succeeded in sinking the Housatonic”
The central error, and the reason Arthur P. Ford answered it. The Housatonic was sunk on 17 February 1864 by the H. L. Hunley, a hand-cranked submarine. The Davids were a different thing entirely: steam-driven, semi-submerged torpedo boats, of which the first attacked the New Ironsides in October 1863. Doran has run the two classes together and given the Hunley's feat to a David.
“about twenty feet long, having a beam of eight feet … crew numbered nine men”
Neither boat measured that. The Hunley was about forty feet long and four feet in beam and went down with a crew of eight; the first David was about fifty feet by six, with a crew of four.
“the invention of a Confederate naval constructor of Charleston, S. C., in 1864”
The Hunley was built at Mobile in 1863 to designs by James McClintock and Baxter Watson, financed by Horace L. Hunley of New Orleans, and shipped to Charleston by rail in August 1863.
“She was towed to within a hundred yards of the … Housatonic”
She was not towed. The Hunley left Breach Inlet under her own power and made the four miles to the Housatonic by hand.