The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege by Smith Mark M.;

Author:Smith, Mark M.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2014-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

The Hunley’s Impact

Eyes strained hard, the chilly winter air and cold Atlantic breeze inducing a watery squint. These eyes were accustomed to looking out. A sailor on a cathead was staring at the water, and so was Acting Master J. K. Crosby. Both were on the deck of the USS Housatonic—a state-of-the-art steam-powered sloop boasting twelve guns and three hundred crewmen, the pride of the US Navy. The ship was part of a fleet whose purpose was to blockade Charleston Harbor, to keep Confederates from leaving and help from arriving. This nautical siege—part of Anaconda—was far from perfect, but it had done its main job: to constrict the Confederacy. Any effort to break the blockade had to be thwarted, and for that reason, Crosby’s and the sailor’s eyes scanned the water that cold night of February 17, 1864, with focused determination.

8:45 P.M. Something odd appeared in the dark, glassy waters. It wasn’t a wave—the water was too smooth. Nor was it a ripple, though those were there, lapping the ship. A plank? A log? Neither. It was moving too quickly and was far too straight and linear for an aquatic animal. There was, unmistakably, “something in the water.”1

For both Crosby and the sailor, that “something” was nerve-wracking. Rumors abounded about a Confederate submarine, an underwater machine, hard to see or detect, but neither man could be sure that that was what they were seeing.2 Crosby was an experienced naval man whose eyes were trained to scan vast horizons and search the skies. But he couldn’t make sense of it.

And yet the weather was clear, “the night bright,” moonlight generous, revealing any movement in the water. That water was calm. The moderate wind and the half-ebbed tide did little to excite the waters, leaving them “smooth.” Moreover, the Housatonic, anchored about five and a half miles from Fort Sumter, had been afloat on the margins of Charleston’s harbor for some time, blockading the city, and its crew knew how to survey the often choppy Atlantic waters for Confederate privateers and blockade runners. The object had the benefit of being cloaked by both the darkness and twenty-seven feet of murky ocean. Only a bit of the object pierced the surface; the rest of it—whatever it was—remained submerged. Crosby was certain of one thing, however: this “something” was headed directly toward his ship. He judged it to be 100 yards out and heading not just for the ship but for its most exposed and dangerous part: “forward of the mizzenmast, on the starboard side, in a line with the magazine.” And whatever it was, it was coming straight and, from Crosby’s eye-straining perspective, fast.3

What Crosby was struggling to identify was a piece of Confederate technology that was about to make history: the H. L. Hunley submarine. Eight men were crammed into what amounted to a repurposed boiler (strengthened with a skeletal frame) made of iron three-eighths of an inch thick, in a space forty-eight inches high, forty-two inches wide, and forty feet long.

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