On February 17 of that year, the 40-foot-long Confederate vessel H.L. Hunley rammed a contact mine into the USS Housatonic, laying at anchor near Charleston Harbor. The resulting explosion ripped ...

On Feb. 17, 1864, outside Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, a Confederate submarine known as the H.L. Hunley sank a 1,200-ton Union warship, the USS Housatonic. It was the first combat submarine ...

The first sub to sink an enemy ship was the Confederate H. L. Hunley, a hand-cranked contraption that struck the USS Housatonic off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina, in 1864. But the Hunley ...

The Hunley became the first sub to sink an enemy ship in battle: the USS Housatonic. But sometime after, it went down, too. It sank the enemy ship with a 135-pound torpedo, which was filled with ...

The sinking of the Union gunboat the USS Housatonic by the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley on Feb. 17, 1864, made military history, but Confederate forces did not celebrate the momentous event.

To complete its mission the Hunley would need to approach its target closely, then use this spar to press the charge directly against the side of the enemy’s hull. On the deck of the USS ...