The Sea Hunters Part 15

"One of the most famous warships of the Civil War," I answered.

"No kidding? My boys and I thought we dug up an old barge."

Wanting to confirm that the dredge had indeed pulverized the hull of Carondelet, Walt and I set up our search grid with buoys and dragged the gradiometer from one end to the other, finishing up just before duk.

We extended our search lanes far beyond the former head of Manchester Island as added insurance. The only anomaly we found came at precisely the same site as indicated by the dredge boat superintendent where he pulled up debris. We received a number of small magnetic readings at a depth of eighteen feet. A few dives revealed the scattered remains of a large wreck. The excavation buckets had not quite dredged it all.

The shattered lower hull and keel of Carondelet still appeared to be strewn about under the silt.

With nothing more to accomplish, Walt Schob and I drove back to Cincinnati, checked into a hotel, and caught a plane to our hometowns in the morning.

There has been many a night when I lay awake and stared at the ceiling, wishing we had gone straight to the selected search site instead of spending several hours hunting for the missing lady and her car. I'm almost certain we could have arrived in time to save the old gunboat's remains from being chewed to shreds by the ship-eating dredge.

A great pity we failed. It seems incredible that after nearly 110 years our attempt to find and rescue Carondelet's historic remains literally missed the boat by only a few hours. Walt and I were there, no more than a mile away, when she was destroyed.

I'll always regret that I answered Carondelet's whisper too late.

Part 6 The Confederate Submarine Hunley I The Little Sub That Could and Did February 1864 sand crab scurried along the beach and darted into a hole. A man dressed in the officer's uniform of the Confederate States glanced at the crab briefly, then rose and brushed off the damp sand that clung to the knees of his uniform. His hair was the color of fallen autumn leaves, the eyes a light blue, set in a boyish face framed by large ears. He checked the needle of a handheld compa.s.s and jotted the readings on a sc.r.a.p of paper.

"They've anch.o.r.ed for the night," said a sandy-haired man standing next to him. paper and slipped it into Lieutenant George Dixon neatly folded the his pants pocket. "I do believe you are right, Mr. Wicks."

They both stared over the sea at a ship that rose and dropped on the late afternoon swells. From 4-1/2 miles away, the vessel seemed like a small, dark toy rocking against a curtain of Wedgwood blue. The sails on her yards were furled, and a wisp of smoke curled from her stack, indicating that her furnaces were being kept stoked and fired so she could move quickly should her lookouts spot a blockade runner trying to sneak into Charleston Harbor.

"What ship do you make her out to be, sir?" asked Wicks.

"The Housatonic, " answered Dixon. "A spanking brand-new Yankee sloop-of-war, fresh out of a Union shipyard. A fast ship, equal or superior to any commerce runner I know."

"Not for long," Wicks said solemnly.

Dixon smiled and nodded. "G.o.d willing, tonight's the night."

An hour after sunset, the nine-man crew of the Confederate States submarine Horace L Hunley walked onto the wooden dock in the channel behind Sullivan's Island. A pelican atop one of the pilings stared at them through a beady eye before stretching its wings and soaring across the back bay. The iron hump of the submarine with her two hatch towers and a twenty-foot pipe that extended from her bow was all that was visible above the water. She looked like some prehistoric beast asleep in a Mesozoic pond.

Two crewmen attached the torpedo to the end of the iron pipe and then checked the line attached to a reel set to pull the detonating trigger.

A heavy barb, attached to a copper canister containing a hundred pounds of black powder, was inserted over the end of the pipe like a @able on a finger. In theory, after the barb was embedded beneath an enemy hull, Hunley would back off at least 150 yards before the line reached the end of the reel and detonated the charge. But the mechanism had yet to be fully tested.

Canteens of water, a small container of food, and a lantern with a blue lens were pa.s.sed to those already inside the submarine. This was a night mission that would take from sunset to sunrise. The crew members of Hunley were conditioned to enduring damp cold, a claustrophobic existence, and physical exertion that left them with aching muscles and in a stage of near total exhaustion.

The physical toll on the men during the past weeks had been immense.

Five nights a week they went out in futile attempts to sink enemy warships, often barely escaping capture by Union picket boats or being carried out to sea by hostile currents- The opportunities for dying.

far exceeded those for living. After cheating death on so many occasions, the crew began to look upon themselves as immortal. They took pride in being on the cutting edge of technology, of being a Part of the first submarine they knew would some night sink an enemy ship.

Seaman Frederick Collins walked back to the dock from Breech Inlet, the channel that split Isle of Palms from Sullivan's Island. He had thrown a cypress twig into the current and watched as it was carried quickly out to sea. He approached Dixon and saluted.

"The tide has turned and is running strong, sir."

Dixon returned the salute. "Thank you, Mr. Collins. Please take your place on board."

Silently, Collins followed his shipmates into the narrow twin hatches that rose above the iron spine of Hunley. They took their individual seats and placed their callused hands on the metal sheaths surrounding the crank handles. OrJy after Seaman Wicks entered and took his seat next to the rear ballast tank did Dixon snake through the forward hatch. He came to a standing position behind the boat's steering wheel, mercury diving indicator, and compa.s.s.

"Everyone accounted for?" asked Dixon.

"All in place," reported Wicks from the stern.

Dixon made a motion with his hand to the sentries standing on the dock. "Stand by to cast off." Then he motioned to Wicks behind him.

Both men threw off the hemp lines looped around the hatch towers.

The sentries pulled in the lines and pushed the submarine away from the dock with their feet. Hunley swayed in the water until Dixon gave the command to move forward. Then the eight men behind him began turning the crank that was connected to the propeller at the stern, and Hunley moved slowly toward the end of Sullivan's Island, where she joined the tidal current sweeping through Breech Inlet into the sea beyond.

For weeks they had propelled themselves toward the Union fleet, only to be turned back by bad luck. More than once they had approached so close to enemy picket boats that when Dixon raised the hatch for fresh air they could hear the Yankee sailors singing and talking in the darkness. Now, once again, they lit candles to illuminate their coffinlike container and set them in holders bolted to the iron wall.

Months of training had been endured without complaint. Now Dixon's crew was honed tough and tenacious, bound tight by shared hardship and from staring death in the eye night after night. Tonight was to be their night.

The moon was a crescent and the sea calm. Maintaining a slow rhythm as they cranked the propeller, and taking advantage of the outgoing tide, they moved along at nearly four knots for the first mile.

Blessedly, the cold interior soon turned warm from their body heat, and the walls dripped with condensation from their breathing.

Dixon, able to keep the forward hatch open because of the smooth sea, stared over the top as he steered the sub toward the lights of Housatonic.

"A great pity we can't carry a keg of beer with us instead of a paltry canteen of water," muttered Collins.

"Good thinking," replied Private Augustus Miller, a recent volunteer from a South Carolina artillery company, who had joined the crew along with Corporal Charles Carlson. Except for Dixon, they were the only nonsailors manning the submarine.

"The shaft feels stiff," said Seaman Arnold Becker to Wicks.

Without answering, Wicks reached into a metal pail of animal fat and greased the shaft where it entered the stuffing boxes that held leakage to a bare minimum. Becker's complaint was routine. He was the only one who ever whined about a sticking propeller shaft.

Time crawled as the men pushed and pulled on their crank handles.

They began working in twenty-minute shifts, four men on, four men off, to conserve their strength for the final surge against their enemy and then the long haul back to Breech Inlet. Helped by the cur-rent, they propelled the craft through the gla.s.s-smooth sea at an easy 2-1/2 knots.

Dixon kept the front hatch open and navigated mostly by sight.

The dim moonlight enabled him to read the sea for a hundred yards in front of the bow, giving him ample time to close his hatch cover should he perceive an approaching wave high enough to wash over his exposed position. The dark hull of Housatonic grew larger with agonizing slowness. Battery power was in its infancy, and it was at moments like this that Dixon wished he could have engineered a mechanical propulsion system that would work underwater without the need for air.

From his cramped vantage point he began to make out a few men walking the decks of the Union sloop-of-war. Lookouts . he a.s.sumed, watching for a Confederate attack out of the night with one of their infernal underwater machines. He dropped down and closed the hatch.

Then he turned to his crew, moving like phantoms in the flickering flames of the candles.

"We're only three hundred yards away. Rest a minute, then every man work the crank."

"A ship," murmured Seaman Joseph Ridgeway. "Are we really going to attack a Yankee ship?"

They all saw Dixon's teeth as his lips parted in a smile. "We'll not go home empty-handed this night."

"Glory to the Confederacy," said Seaman Collins.

"Glory to all of us," added Wicks. "We put that blasted Yankee on the bottom and we'll all share in the prize money."

"I make it about five thousand apiece," said Ridgeway.

"Don't spend it too soon," cautioned Dixon. "We have yet to earn it." He carefully wiped the three tiny gla.s.s viewing ports in the hatch tower that had become clouded with moisture from the humidity created by the breathing and sweating of the men inside. Through the forward port he studied Housatonic.

The ship was anch.o.r.ed with her bow pointing west by northwest toward Fort Sumter. Dixon observed little movement on the deck.

Hunley was slowly approaching on an angle astern and slightly off the starboard quarter of the Union warship. There was no sign the sub had been observed.

When he spotted the floating buoys that supported the outer net around the ship, Dixon made a crucial decision. He voiced an order over his shoulder. "Mr. Wicks, fill your ballast tank to the quarter mark."

Everyone went silent and stared at each other questioningly. They all expected the lieutenant to ask for two-thirds ballast, enough to slide Hunley under the surface and out of sight of the lookouts on board Housatonic.

"begging' your pardon, sir," said Wicks. "We'll not be attacking underwater?"

"We've come too far to Miss her in water blacker than ink, Mr.

Wicks. Besides, she has a protective net sunk along her hull.

We'll go in over the net with only our hatch towers awash and place the charge just below their waterline. If we miss this opportunity, they won't give us a chance for a second one."

In less than a minute the correct amount of water was pumped into the forward and aft ballast tanks; the sub sank beneath the surface until only a narrow band of upper hull and both hatch towers were exposed.

There was no thought of turning away, no hesitation. The men inside Hunley experienced no fear, nor were they stoic about their fate. They persevered and pushed themselves beyond the depth of endurance.

They probably did not realize that undying glory was in their grasp'

"Now!" Dixon said more loudly than he intended. "Crank hard, crank like h.e.l.l. We're attacking."

The men turned the crank with every ounce of muscle in their arms and shoulders until the propeller beat the water to froth. Standing in the forward hatch tower, squinting through the darkness until the enemy warship completely filled the three-inch-diameter viewing port, Dixon pushed hard on the rudder wheel and swung the submarine in a wide arc toward Housatonic's starboard side. He used her mizzenmast as a guide and steered toward the black hull directly below it.

Walking the deck of his command, U.S.S. Housatonic, for a final inspection before turning in for the night, Captain Charles Pickering stopped and gazed over the black water outside of Charleston at the lights of the steam sloop Canandaigua. Larger and more heavily armed than Pickering's ship, Canandaigua was stationed one Mile further to sea as part of the stranglehold to intercept commercial ships attempting to supply the Confederacy. Pickering turned and gazed with contentment across the length of his own ship. She was prepared for any threat, above water or below.

One of four new screw sloops fresh out of the shipyards of Boston, Housatonic mounted thirteen guns, one of them a big rifled hundred-pounder. She displaced 1,240 tons and measured 205 feet in length. Her beam was 38 feet and her draft, 16 feet, 7 inches. This night only 12 feet separated her keel from the soft silt of the seabed.

Pickering had been alerted to the dangers of a possible attack by the Confederate torpedo boat. The entire Union fleet knew about the threat, courtesy of spies and deserters who had described her. As a precaution, Pickering ordered his crew to drop around the ship nets weighted by shot to act as a shield. He thought, mistakenly as it turned out, that the nets could snag the underwater craft if it crept close to his ship. Additional lookouts were posted and howitzers on the deck were aimed not at land but at the water below. Engineers were ordered to have twenty-five pounds of steam on the boilers at all times.

The engines were also set in reverse to allow the ship to slip her anchor and back away in a hurry without entangling herself in the chain.

Satisfied, Captain Pickering retired to his ornate, cedar-trimmed cabin, lit his fuel lamp, and began studying charts of the South Carolina coastline. His executive officer, Frank Higginson, was the watch commander. A good man, Pickering thought. Nothing would escape his attention.

Lieutenant ffigginson spoke briefly to watch officer John Crosby, who stood on the bridge peering through binoculars for telltale sparks from the stack of a blockade runner.

"I didn't think it got this cold down south," said Higginson, his hands jammed deep in the pocket of his coat.

Crosby lowered the gla.s.ses and shrugged. "Before the war, my brother married a girl from Georgia. She claimed that it often snowed in Atlanta."

After the brief conversation, Higginson dropped belowdecks for an inspection of the engine room. He had no sooner approached a.s.sistant Engineer Cyrus Houlihan than he heard a commotion topside.

At about 8:45 P.m Lieutenant Crosby saw something in the water that he thought at first was a porpoise. He hailed the nearest lookout, who was stationed in the rigging above him. "Do you see anything in the water about a hundred yards off the starboard quarter?"

"No, sir, only a small ripple on the water."

"Look again!" Crdsby shouted. "I see something coming toward us very fast."

"I see it now," replied the lookout. "It has two k.n.o.bs showing on the surface."

Crosby prodded awake a young drummer boy. "Beat to quarters."

Then he gave orders to slip the anchor chain and rang the engine room to back the ship. His orders were carried out in less than twenty seconds. The propeller was already turning when Higginson rushed back on deck. "Is it a blockade runner?" he asked Crosby.

The watch officer shook his head and pointed over the side.

"There it is. It looks like that d.a.m.ned torpedo boat." : "I've got it," acknowledged Higginson. 'It has the appearance of a plank with sharp ends. Look there, a glimmer of light is coming through the top."

Captain Pickering raced from his quarters, carrying a double-barreled shotgun. He inquired about the cause of the alarm. On being shown the closing torpedo boat, he repeated Crosby's orders to slip anchor and back astern. To Pickering, the torpedo boat was shaped like a large upside-down whale boat with two projections a third of the way from each end. Then he leveled his shotgun and began blasting at the strange craft in the water, shouting as he pulled the trigger, "Go astern faster!" Higginson grabbed a rifle from a lookout and also opened fire. He was soon joined by others, including Ensign Charles Craven, who squeezed off two shots from his revolver. The attacking craft was now so close that Craven had to lean over the side to fire a third shot.

Craven saw that small-arms fire was useless, and he ran to the nearest thirty-two-pound gun and attempted to train it on the object in the water, now backing away from Housatonic. He was about to pull the lanyard when the deck suddenly rose beneath his feet.

The instant the barb on the end of the long spar that held the canister containing the hundred pounds of black powder rammed through the copper sheathing of the hull, Dixon cried out, "Reverse the crank, quickly! " The men inside the submarine furiously reversed the direction of their cranking, and the little craft slowly backed away from her adversary. As the gap widened, Dixon could look up through the view port and see men shooting over the railing of Housatonic. He heard the small-arms fire harmlessly striking Hunley and ricocheting off into the water. He was certain the barb containing the charge had penetrated and gripped the hull. Now they had to get clear and detonate the charge.

Then Dixon spied a gun being trained on Hunley, the thirty-twopounder manned by Ensign Craven. The submarine was now fifty yards away, far short of the required distance to safely survive the explosion.

Driven by desperation, Dixon realized they were within seconds of being shot out of the water. He saw no choice but to gamble and hope the odds ran in his favor. He intended to crack the hatch cover, snake out an arm, grip the detonation line with his hand, and trigger the explosion himself.

Before he could act, a shot from Ensign Craven's revolver struck the reel and wedged it against the spindle. The line tightened, stretched, and then activated the detonator.

The barb on the end of Hunley's spar entered Housatonic's hull, where it roun(ed inward near the rudder and propeller. Detonation erupted deep under the ship, with the main force absorbed by the stern section of the hull. There was no explosive thunder, no column of water, smoke, or flame. To those on board the Union vessel the convulsion came more like a collision with another ship. One of them said that the explosion sounded like the distant firing of a howitzer, followed by a ground tremor. Another reported fragments of the ship soaring in the night air.

Water burst into Housatonic through a huge opening, crushing timbers and smashing through bulkheads. The engine raced as the propeller shaft was shattered apart. Most of the starboard part of the ship aft of the mizzenmast was blown off. The ship began to sink immediately by the stern. Like a dying animal, it gave a lurch to port and settled to the bottom as the black water drew a death shroud over the hull. Less than five minutes after the explosion, nothing remained above the surface of Housatonic except her masts and rigging.

During the sudden frenzy, Acting Master Joseph Congdon shouted for the launches to be cleared away. Only two out of the six boats hanging in their davits were lowered free of the sinking ship.

They swiftly began picking up the men who were carried overboard as the officers drove the rest of the crew into the rigging to save themselves, since very few knew how to swim.

Badly bruised, Captain Pickering shouted from the rigging to the men in the boats. "Row for the Canandaigua, " he ordered, "and request a.s.sistance!"

Not until the following day would a muster reveal that five of Housatonic's crew were missing after the disaster and presumed drowned.

The shock wave from the explosion affected the men inside Hunley far worse than it did the crew of Housatonic. The concussion knocked the wind out of them and threw them against the crank and walls of the submarine. Dixon was momentarily stunned and watched numbly as an explosion-driven wave surged over Hunley, twisting her sideways and pitching her up and down like a raft through rapids. Until now, he had no way of knowing the effects that an underwater explosion might have on a submarine from a short distance. No tests, that he was aware of, had ever been performed simulating such an occasion.

Seaman Wicks was pitched into Arnold Becker, the man nearest him on the crank, and bloodied his nose. In the middle of the submarine, Seaman Simpkins's head jerked back against the inside of the hull, then forward against the crank handle, rendering him immediately unconscious. Frederick Collins smashed his chin, while the man next to him, Corporal Charles Carlson, wrenched his back.

Artilleryman Augustus Miller fell against the crank on the rebound as well, snapping a front tooth cleanly in half. "d.a.m.n!" he muttered through bleeding lips. "My tooth is missing. Help me find my tooth."

Everyone suffered from a ringing of the ears, and nearly all suffered bruises. There was no panic or chaos inside the submarine.