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Despite having watched the claustrophobic-as-fuck movie Das Boot about a World War II German submarine crew, I got into a tourist sub in Maui that took us down to 100 feet. It was much nicer than a WWII sub. But imagine how much it must have sucked on an American Civil War sub.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: February 17, 1864--
Just so we have our dates right, and as long as you don’t give a fuck about China, WWII was 1939 to 1945. But the Civil War ended eight fucking decades before WWII did, and people were getting in subs back then and just no fucking thanks. Mind you, the typical Civil War battlefield also sucked, so maybe just go to Canada or something. Anyway, in 1864, for the first time ever a submarine sank a warship.
If you saw Das Boot and thought that was claustrophobic, this thing was wee. And considering her history, no fucking way you’d get me on it. Well, part of the no fucking way was that she was a traitorous slavery loving Confederate boat. Named the CSS Hunley, the damn ship kept killing her own crew.
Built in Mobile, Alabama, the sub was not even 40 feet long and under four feet in diameter. You couldn’t stand up in the thing, and yet they crammed eight people into it. How did they power it? Fuckin’ hand cranks. You sat inside the thing and cranked away like a metal encased Ben-Hur. Get a load of the history of this fucking death ship:
· August 29, 1863: Sank during test run. Five crew killed. Raised and returned to service.
· October 15, 1863: Sank again, killing all eight crew, including Horace Hunley, the guy who invented the fucking thing and whom it was named after. Raised again and returned to service again.
· Final mission: Let’s ditch the bullet points for that, shall we?
It was February 17, 1864. Somehow, they convinced eight more dudes to squirm inside this metallic nightmare drowning machine to attack the USS Housatonic in Charleston harbor. Attack it with what? A torpedo. They had torpedoes in 1864? Well, kinda. It was called a “spar torpedo,” which is a torpedo on a pole attached to the front of the sub so it was some narwhal lookin’ motherfucker. You don’t shoot the torpedo at the enemy. You ram your torpedo into the enemy and hope you don’t get blowed up in the process.
They got blowed up in the process. Well, maybe. We’re not sure. In terms of kill ratio, it kinda sucked, because while Housatonic, a heavily armed 205-foot-long warship with 160 crew, went to the bottom in only five minutes, only five of her sailors died. It’s possible that the explosion that sank Housatonic damaged the Hunley so that once again, it sank. Total death toll for this sub: 21 Confederate crew / 5 Union sailors.
The sub was found in 2000 and now resides in a museum in Charleston, South Carolina.
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