This day in Charleston
3 entries · 1864–1865
On a calm, cold night the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley drove a spar torpedo into the starboard quarter of the sloop-of-war USS Housatonic off Breach Inlet. The Housatonic went down in about five minutes with five men lost. The Hunley signaled shore and was never seen again; her eight-man crew died with her. She was the first submarine in history to sink a warship in action.
Official Records of the Navies, Series I, Vol. 15
A Federal working party was remodeling the embrasures at Battery Gregg and lowering their soles, disturbed by the blast of the heavy guns. And, from the fort's morning report: “Two ladies were seen on the parapet of Wagner yesterday.” Visitors came down from the North to look at the siege.
Fort Sumter post returns, OR I, 35, Pt. 1
Hardee’s troops marched out of Charleston during the night of 17–18 February, firing cotton, warehouses, shipping and the ironclads in the harbor as they went. Four years and five weeks after the first shot was fired at a ship in this harbor, the city that started the war was abandoned without a fight. The same day, Columbia fell. The Fall of Charleston →
Official Records, Series I, Vol. 47
Entries are dated from the War of the Rebellion official records, the naval official records and contemporary Charleston sources. Browse the whole year.