What do Fort Sumter, the H.L. Hunley, and a die-hard Confederate all have in common? I saw them all during my whirlwind weekend trip to Charleston, South Carolina – where the Civil War began. It was a quick trip but a hugely impactful one. Charleston has a lot to offer, both today and in history.
Fort Sumter – as I hope everyone already knows – was the site of the shots that began the American Civil War. Union Major Robert Anderson had been garrisoned with this 85-man forces at Fort Moultrie (where I also visited) as the construction of Fort Sumter in the middle of Charleston Harbor had yet to be completed. Fearing the easy access of Moultrie to the belligerence of newly formed Confederate armies, Anderson moved his men over to Sumter under the cover of night. In the early morning hours of April 12, 1861, Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard began a 34-hour bombardment of the fort. And the war came.
I was honored to be part of a group of volunteers who helped raise the flag over Fort Sumter on Easter Sunday.
Charleston also hosts the H.L. Hunley, the Confederate submarine that sunk the USS Housatonic outside Charleston Harbor in 1864. The Hunley has the distinction of being both the first successful submarine attack in warfare and the only submarine that killed more of its own men than that of its enemy. On its first training cruise, five of the eight crew were drowned due to malfunctioning equipment. On its second, all eight crew members drowned, including its inventor, H.L. Hunley. According to Dave, the volunteer tour guide at the Hunley Center, the aforementioned General Beauregard thought that the underwater ship was a danger more to its crew than to the enemy. He did, however, approve the third mission, crewed by volunteers (a tradition that remains in today’s Naval Submarine corps) and led by Lieutenant George Dixon.
But here’s where it gets stranger still. Dixon and his crew successfully snuck up close to the Housatonic, struck it with a torpedo (mine) attacked to a forward spar, and sunk the ship to the bottom of Charleston Harbor. The Hunley then mysteriously disappeared, finally located more than a century later by famed writer and explorer Clive Cussler. All eight of the final crewmen on the Hunley died (scientists still today argue about why), but because the Harbor was so shallow, only five of the Housatonic‘s crew died. After viewing the submarine I stopped at Magnolia Cemetery to see the graves of the 21 men who died on the Hunley.
The Civil War theme didn’t stop there. I also visited an old Slave Mart, where the buying and selling of enslaved people was moved indoors after locals started complaining how the outdoor sales were giving the city a bad name. [It should be noted that Charleston became the fourth largest city in the new United States precisely because of its major role in both the international and domestic slave trades.] I also stumbled upon a man named Braxton (not named after the Confederate General and sugar plantation owner Braxton Bragg, he assured me). Braxton was standing next to the large monument in Battery Park, “Confederate Defenders of Charleston, Fort Sumter, 1861-1865.” He and his two buddies (he was alone this day) have been coming out to guard the statue every weekend for the last four years, that is, when he isn’t playing a Confederate private (or Robert E. Lee) in local reenactments. He had a fascinating story, which I’ll tell in a future post.
To round out the weekend in Charleston I visited Magnolia plantation and gardens, the remnants of a large antebellum rice plantation owned by the Drayton family.
In the middle of all this Civil War theme, I also found time to visit the South Carolina Aquarium on the Charleston waterfront. Along with the Ft. Fisher Aquarium in North Carolina I stopped at on the way back north, this makes something like 57 public aquariums I’ve visited in my life, so far.
I’ll have more on all of these once I sort through photos and notes.
David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
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A very productive trip!
It certainly was! Now to start planning the next one. 🙂
Quite interesting. Ironically, I’m presently reading the copy I found of Jackson Knight’s, “Confederate Invention.” It includes an accounting of the patents associated with the “spar torpedoes” used by such as the Hunley, as well as Beauregard’s not uncontroversial decision to employ them. Steam propulsion played a part in original plans, but it was still an unreliable technology. Some of what I’ve read suggests that the Confederacy might have been a formidable naval and artillery opponent had they access to the necessary resources, steel in particular. There’s quite a story leading up to the Hunley’s sinking of the Housatonic, going from spar-torpedo equipped rowboats to the steam-powered “Torch” to the semi-submergible “David” (which actually detonated a torpedo against the New Ironside in a chaotic attack).
I’ve been meaning to get that book. Sounds very interesting. I learned a lot about the different “submarines” that preceded the Hunley, including the “David” and “Pioneer.” I’m thinking of starting a new research project, although I know I am way too overloaded already.
Seems there is still quite a controversy about what killed the final crew of the Hunley. I saw a presentation at the National Archives last year from a researcher at Duke who claimed she had (fairly) definitively found the cause, but then apparently the Navy and the researchers at the Hunley center totally disagree with her and are ticked off that she never talked to any of them about it before publishing. They don’t include her theory in their “four theories” presentation in the museum.
Between the information in the book, what I’ve read on the Internet, and my own knowledge of blast-injuries, my suspicion is that they were killed instantly. I think desperation combined with design-changes led to something they probably knew was going to be difficult to survive.
The book is interesting and seems like a good reference, though not every patent is so dramatic. Much simply dealt with the economy of the Confederacy… agriculture, sewing… Interestingly, some patents were apparently moved into the US system after the war. Artificial leg designs, for example.
The book does sound like a good resource.