News of the CSS “Squib” torpedo boat’s semi-success in its attack on the Union Navy’s Squadron anchored at Hampton Roads, Virginia met with enthusiastic response from the Confederate Secretary of the Navy, Stephen Mallory.
The years 1863 and 1864 were a busy time for Southern inventors interested in creating a weapon that would give the Confederacy parity of a sort with the much larger and more numerous naval vessels of the United States Navy.
Undoubtedly, when inventors such as Charleston’s Dr. St. Julien Ravenel and Theodore Stoney created their CSS “David” torpedo boat, it was thoughts in equal part of both profit and patriotism that guided their minds and hands.
While shipbuilding concerns and machine works like the Park & Lyons Machine Shop in Mobile, Alabama were busy creating an underwater terror known colloquially as a “fishboat,” there were others whose trip to fame and riches lay along a different path.
One such person was Dr. St. Julien Ravenel of Charleston, SC. Ravenel was a scion of Charleston’s well-known Ravenel family. A physician by avocation, Ravenel also taught at the local medical school, being Demonstrator of Anatomy. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Ravenel enlisted as an Army private, participating as such in the siege of Fort Sumter. Within a year’s time, his skill as a physician found him quickly promoted as an officer. Ravenel was then tapped for the position as Director of the Confederate Hospital, in the South Carolina state capital of Columbia.
At the start of the American Civil War, the Confederacy was faced with an almost insurmountable problem.
Using its navy, the United States was able to blockade trade, not only through coastal ports, but also the necessary interstate riverine trade on the South’s crisscrossing network of rivers, canals and lakes. For a predominately-agricultural nation like the Confederate States of America whose existence depended on unobstructed internal and overseas trade, a naval blockade was a threat to the nation’s existence.
Attempting to construct a national navy matching on a ship-for-ship basis the already-existing one of the northern states, would quickly bankrupt the fledgling Southern government.
In my ongoing research for “Infernal Machine: Dawn of Submarine Warfare,” I have made the acquaintance of a number of very interesting people, not only in my current era, but also from the American Civil War period.
The mid-19th Century is one of the most interesting periods of human endeavor.
The Industrial Revolution, filled with promise and with might, was still underway.
During this period, you would occasionally get one spark of intellect and genius that would shine brighter than its neighbors.
Of course like the proverb says, “The spark that burns twice as bright burns half as long.”
Such a spark was a man with the name of William G. Cheeney.
In July, 1862, Union General George McClellan’s Peninsular Campaign came to its ignominious end on the banks of the James River, as his Army of the Potomac huddled under the protection of the US Navy’s guns at Harrison’s Landing.
Little Mac’s version of the West Point “Turning Movement,” conceived (but not performed) in grand Napoleonic style was beaten by Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, using the resurgent Army of Northern Virginia in a turning movement of their own and saving the Confederacy’s capital of Richmond in the process.
Almost un-noticed in the campaign’s finish was the end of the abortive Appomattox River Raid. Commodore John Rodgers discovered that warships armored and laden with heavy guns are no good if the river they are fighting in is low on water.
During his preparations for the Appomattox River Raid, the commander of the US Navy raiding force, Commodore John Rodgers had become concerned about the river route his task force would take. The primary target was the Richmond & Petersburg Railroad’s High Bridge over the Appomattox River at Petersburg, Virginia. Also targeted was the R & P’s bridge over Swift Creek. Destruction of one or both bridges would sever the Confederate capital of Richmond’s connection with the rest of the Confederacy.
Success of the River Raid, combined with a successful assault on the Confederate capital by Union General George McClellan’s Army of the Potomac meant that the Civil War could be over within the year.
Ever since the Union navy had retaken Norfolk, Virginia, Union gunboats had been prowling the James River to within seven miles of the Confederacy’s capital city of Richmond.
As the longest river system in the Virginia Commonwealth, the James River has its origins out west in the Appalachian Mountains. It meanders 443 miles through the northern Virginia countryside before emptying into Chesapeake Bay.
I propose to you a new arm of war, as formidable as it is economical.
Submarine navigation, which has been sometimes attempted, but as all know without results, owing to want of suitable opportunities, is now a problematical thing no more.”
(French nautical designer Brutus de Villeroi, in a letter to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.)
Though the “H.L. Hunley” is widely known as the first submarine to sink an enemy warship in combat, it was by no means the only submarine to come out of the American Civil War. The construction team headed by James McClintock and Baxter Watson who built the “Hunley” had already completed and tested two other designs for underwater vessels. Though there were other designs created and built south of the Mason-Line, they were by no means the only submersibles being built in North America in the 1860’s.