It was 35 feet long and 6 feet in diameter, and was built up of steel plates. Immersion was obtained by the admission of water, and the mode of propulsion on the surface or below the water was by eight pairs of oars or paddles which opened and shut like the leaves of a book, and were worked by sixteen men placed half on the port and half on the starboard. The maximum speed was 2½ knots on the surface. Fresh air was produced by two machines—one consisted of a bellows passing air over a chamber of lime, the other produced oxygen. The armament was a spar torpedo. According to one account it was towed round by a steamboat to Port Royal and foundered in a storm of wind off Cape Hatteras.
Early in 1863 the Confederates cut down a gunboat at Charleston and converted it into a half-submerged torpedo-boat. It does not appear to have done any mischief, but Mr. H. W. Wilson, in his “Ironclads in Action,” says that it may have been the vessel which on the night of April 19, 1864, approached the Wabash. The Northern vessel was at anchor when something was seen near her in the water and challenged. She slipped her cable and went ahead, opening a heavy fire upon the strange craft, after which it disappeared, whether as the result of a shot or not is uncertain.
On the night of October 5, 1863, an attack was made upon the United States’ ironclad, New Ironsides, of 3,486 old American tons, carrying twenty guns, at anchor in the midst of the blockading squadron off Charleston, by a submarine vessel owned by the Confederates. This boat was built by Theodore Stoney at Charleston, and was called the David, a name given by the Southerns to some subsequent under-water craft in memory of the fight between the lad David and the giant Goliath.
This first David was 54 feet long and at her widest depth 6 feet in diameter. She was cigar-shaped, and was propelled by a screw driven by steam power. When in action she lay almost flush with the water, her funnel and steering chamber alone projecting above the surface. (Another report says that she was so far submerged that only about 10 feet in length of the hull was visible 2 feet above the water.) Her armament consisted of a single spar torpedo with a 60 lb. charge of gunpowder, which was folded alongside when not in use, and only run out on an iron bar to a distance of 10 feet for the actual attack, ignition being effected by an acid fuse rendered active by a collision nearly end on. Her maximum speed was 7 knots an hour.
“With a crew of volunteers Lieut. Glassell took her out, and, a little after nine in the evening, the Ironsides watch saw her approaching. She looked to them like a plank, since all that could be seen was the coaming of her hatchway. Several officers were on deck, and the David was at once hailed. Her only answer was a volley of musketry which mortally wounded one Federal officer. An instant later the ironclad received a violent blow from the explosion of a torpedo containing 60 lbs. of powder, which threw up a column of water, shook the ship severely and broke one man’s leg on board her. After the smoke and spray had cleared away the Ironsides was found to be uninjured and the boat had disappeared. Her crew jumped overboard at the moment of firing the torpedo, and Glassell, as he swam about, hailed a Northern coal schooner, on board which he was taken, whilst a second man escaped to the Ironsides. The engineer of the David, however, after the explosion swam back to the boat, to which he found the pilot clinging for dear life, as he was unable to swim. Helping him on board he discovered that the David could yet float, though the explosion had put out the fires, and together the two took her back to Charleston.”
In a paper on “Offensive Torpedo Warfare,” read before the Royal United Service Institution in 1871, Commander W. Dawson, R.N., writes of the attack as follows:—
“Observe the elements of failure. A charge destructive enough if exploded in actual contact, but innocuous to a strongly built ship by the accidental interposition of seven or eight feet of water, yet held near enough to the operating vessel to place her in immediate danger, either from the direct action of the explosion upon her thin sides, or from her being swamped by the falling columns of water, self-acting fuses, so arranged as to necessitate the most exposed direction of attack, viz., the enemy’s broadside; an acid composition sluggish enough in its action to allow time for the boat to rebound after collision, the few feet required to render the explosion harmless, and last, not least, a commander and crew, who, having never fired their weapon before, were in greater terror of their own torpedo than the enemy would have been. Can we wonder that the conductor of this enterprise jumped overboard before the explosion, that his little vessel had her fires extinguished and was nearly swamped, and that the New Ironsides, though severely injured, was not compelled to return into port? The crew, deserted by their commander, relighted the fires, and brought the boat safely into harbour.”
The first attempts of the Confederates with their submarine boat having proved a failure, the Federal officers on the outside blockade grew somewhat careless, and the final result of the Confederates’ efforts was that one of the fine new vessels of the Federal fleet, the Housatonic, 1,264 tons, and carrying 13 guns, was destroyed in Charleston harbour on the night of February 17, 1864.
The David that accomplished this feat, unique in the annals of submarine warfare, had been built at Mobile by Messrs. McClintock and Howgate, and brought overland to Charleston. She had lateral fins by which she could be raised and submerged, and ballast tanks to lighten her and enable her to rise to the surface, though these, we read, uniformly refused to act. She carried no reserve of air, and hence she well deserved the name “peripatetic coffin.” She was about 60 feet long, and elliptical in transverse section. Her crew consisted of nine men, eight of whom propelled the vessel by operating cranks on the screw shaft, while the ninth acted as pilot.
