Newsletter 58

THE HUNLEY .com
The Most Up to Date Free Information Site on the WEB
For Non-Profit Educational and Research Purposes.

PRESENTS

A special welcome to all the new subscribers. This newsletter IS published
once a month with a link to the online addition available to subscribers only.

ALL issues are dedicated not only to the brave and honorable Men of the Hunley,
but to the Subscribers and Contributors to each issue, particularly to
the CSS H L HUNLEY CLUB. This is my tenth year of running the Hunley.com website as a free service to all those that played a part in making this happen.

    realname: Henry Albers
    username: hjalbers@uno.edu
    city: Mandeville state: LA.
    Date: Tuesday May 31, 2005

comments

I was surprised that you left out the Singer Submarine Company in Shreveport, LA. in your list of places where Confederate Submarines were built. They built five of the Hunley type subs before the war's end. Four of them were scuttled in the Red River to prevent their capture by the Union.

4) FIVE CONFEDERATE SUBMARINES AT BUILT AT SHREVEPORT

By Eric J. Brock

Originally published in The Forum,
January 26, 2005.
Copyright by Eric J. Brock
and Venture Publishing 2005
Reproduced by permission.

Until the discovery of the wreckage of the CSS Hunley and the recent ceremonies in Charleston, S.C., surrounding the reburial of its captain, George Dixon, and crew, it was not well known that experiments with submarines as weapons of war were made by both the Union and Confederate Navies during the Civil War.

Until I first wrote about the subject several years ago in my column for the now-defunct Shreveport Journal it was even less well-known that five submarines were built at Shreveport's Confederate Naval Yard by the Singer Submarine Company under contract with the Confederate Navy. That story was one of my most popular columns ever. Even now I am being asked about the subs in Red River. So here, again, is the tale of the Shreveport Confederate submarines, brought up to date.

MORE...

Dr. Gary D. Joiner holds a model of one of the Shreveport-built Confederate submarines. The model was constructed by naval historian William Atteridge of Arcadia, Louisiana.

First some background: the Singer Submarine Company was the creation of one Edgar C. Singer of San Antonio, Texas. Singer was a mechanical engineer and together with a group of artillerists and engineers, established a concern to build contact mines. Singer's mines came to be the most widely used in the Confederacy and the torpedoes Singer's firm built were widely used as well.

Three noted New Orleans inventors, Horace Hunley (for whom the ill-fated Charleston sub was named), James McClintock, and Baxter Watson joined with Singer in 1863. The three Louisianans had successfully built three submarines for the Confederacy already, namely the Pioneer, the Pioneer II, and the aforementioned Hunley. On February 17, 1864 the U.S.S. Housatonic, a Union sloop of war, became the first ship in American history to be sunk by a submarine when the Hunley attacked and destroyed her in the waters off Charleston. Unfortunately, for reasons still undetermined, the Hunley vanished after her successful attack (the first by a sub on an enemy craft in the history of the world) and was lost until the 1990s.

After that Confederate submarine operations took place in other locales, such as Mobile Bay, Alabama, and Norfolk, Virginia. Although their numbers were few, fewer even than Union experimental submarines then being created, they nevertheless struck a chord of fear in the North where the widely circulated newspaper Harper's Weekly dubbed them "Rebel infernal machines."

In any case, the Singer Submarine Company proved successful and was engaged by the Confederate Navy to build several of its underwater vessels at the Naval Yard in Shreveport. Several members of Singer's submarine corps came to Shreveport in September, 1863 to begin their work.

The site of the Confederate Naval Yard on Cross Bayou in 1902. Thirty-seven years earlier five experimental submarines were built here for the Confederate Navy. In 1902 many of the original Naval Yard buildings were still standing and can be seen in this photograph.

The Confederate shipyard stood at the fork of Spring and North Market Streets on Cross Bayou. The shipyard built five submarines to protect the Red River. These were similar to the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley, which had been by engineers of the Singer Submarine Corporation and was the first submarine to sink a ship during wartime. One of the submarines was dismantled and sent to Houston, Texas, but the other four remained in Shreveport. These submarines were never used, but wartime naval orders show that they were not unknown to the Union navy.
http://www.caddohistory.org/

*************************

NEWS RELEASE

Author Pens Book About Red River Campaign,
Second Book Responds to Demand

Military historian Gary Joiner of Shreveport has announced the publication of two books, each related to the Red River Campaign of the U.S. Civil War. One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End is a new analysis of the campaign. This books represents more than five years of intensive research and adds to body of knowledge about the last decisive Confederate victory of the Civil War. The second, The Red River Campaign: Union and Confederate Leadership and the War in Louisiana includes essays related to the campaign and is edited by Joiner along with Theodore P. Savas and David A. Woodbury. Each has received scholarly acclaim by Civil War historians.

Joiner, a member of the faculty of the Department of History and Social Sciences at LSU in Shreveport, became interested in the Battle of Mansfield and the Red River Campaign when he did research jointly with the late Dr. Eddie Vetter at Centenary College. Ad article they authored together is included in the book of essays. He also visited the Mansfield Battlefield shortly after moving to Shreveport and marrying his wife, Marilyn, who grew up in that town.

One Damn Blunder takes its name from a quote by General William Tecumseh Sherman who described the campaign in that manner. Although the Battle of Mansfield was a decisive victory for Confederate forces, it has been largely ignored by historians. “The victors write the history,” Joiner said, explaining the reason for the neglect of this part of American history. “The campaign included northern and southern troops, even troops of the black Corps de Afrique,” he said. “This is part of the American experience.”

The Red River Campaign was originally published as an edition of a journal, Civil War Regiments. Due to demand for the journal, it has been republished with additions by Parabellum Press, a publishing company organized by Joiner to publish work of locally historical significance. The original journal has been updated to include a foreword by preeminent civil war historian Ed Bearss, historian emeritus of the National Park Service, and a driving tour essay penned by Joiner. It includes essays on two colonels of local note, James Beard and Henry Gray.

http://parabellumpress.com/
publications.asp

One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End: the Red River Campaign of 1864

Gary Dillard Joiner, Scholarly Resources, Wilmington, DE, 2002, 198 pages,

Military Review, July-August, 2004 by Steven E. Clay

Dillard Joiner's One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End, put a fresh face on this little-known campaign. Joiner writes without the much-overused hype of modern Civil War writers--claiming that every battle was decisive. Joiner provides Civil War historians and military professionals a straightforward, valuable account of the Red River Campaign. Joiner's maps, although lacking in detail, are a great improvement over previous maps.

Joiner's new revelations about the Red River Campaign put a different perspective on the causes of key events. For example, he posits that the Confederates made a successful attempt to divert water from the Red River through Tone's Bayou into Bayou Pierre. And, although Admiral David D. Porter's problems have been thought to be the result of low rainfall, Joiner convincingly argues that the fleet's problems were due as much to deliberate efforts on the part of Southern engineers to hamper the U.S. Navy's operations as on the lack of rain.

Four Hunley-like submarines were being constructed in Shreveport and perhaps four or five small Arkansas-like ironclads were there as well. After discussing Porter's naval experience and efforts to monitor the depth of the river, Joiner explains that the admiral's fear of the Confederate ships prompted him to lead the fleet upriver toward Shreveport with the U.S.S. Eastport, the largest ironclad in the fleet, as the flagship. Porter eventually lost the ironclad, not to enemy warships, but to the difficulties of navigating the Red River. Porter's decision hampered the Navy's efforts and almost led to a substantial loss to the fleet.

One Damn Blunder from Beginning to End is useful to military professionals as a modern overview of the Red River Campaign and is especially useful for its analysis of personalities in joint operations; its studies of military objectives clouded by political and other nonmilitary concerns; the dynamics of integrating units used to various operating procedures; and the study of military engineering in terms of ad-hoc solutions to military problems. I strongly recommend the book to serious students of the Civil War.

LTC Steven E. Clay, USA, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

Gary D. Joiner
Gary Joiner is a member of the faculty of the Department of History and Social Sciences at Louisiana State University in Shreveport. He also serves as director of the Red River Regional Studies Center at the university. In addition to his academic duties, he is owner of a professional cartography firm that provides governmental mapping and historical consultation to governmental agencies. His community service activities have included the local board of directors of the U.S. Civil War Center at LSU in Baton Rouge and the presidency of the Civil War Roundtable of North Louisiana. He has edited the journal of the North Louisiana Historical Association and has served as president of the DeSoto Parish Historical Society. Joiner has provided maps for numerous scholarly publications and has developed geographic information systems (GIS) for civil war projects, including the mapping of Vicksburg National Military Park and mapping projects for the Civil War Preservation Trust. He is a regional expert on historical and archaeological matters and has served as a consultant for regional television projects covering the history of the Red River and the Red River campaign. He has also appeared as a panelist/expert on MSNBC. Joiner is a popular speaker on military history issues for Civil War forums and study groups. He and his wife are founders of the Friends of the Mansfield Battlefield, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preservation of battle sites of the Red River Campaign.

The Naval Yard was located on the southern bank of Cross Bayou where it meets the Red River. The Clyde Fant Parkway now crosses part of the site, which lies immediately north of the Harrah's Casino and hotel complex and stretches back along Cross Bayou to near Spring Street. In 1863 this was a bustling industrial area with foundries, machine shops and smithies. Nearby, a fairly short distance to the west, was the arsenal and magazine of the Trans-Mississippi Department of the Confederate Army. It was at the Shreveport Naval Yard that two of the Confederacy's famous ironclad warships were created: the Webb and the Missouri.

Five submarines are known to have been built at Shreveport. Four never left town but the other was sent to Houston, Texas, though its fate afterward is unknown. As the rest of the Confederacy fell piece by piece, the Trans-Mississippi Department, headquartered at Shreveport (also then the state capital), determined to fight on to the bitter end and, it was hoped, to full independence from the Union. The Shreveport-built submarines were designed by James Jones, a Singer engineer who also was part of the inaugural crew of the Hunley. They were intended to play crucial roles in the destruction of Federal ships on the Red River and elsewhere but the war ended before they had the chance.

A Union intelligence report of March 13, 1865 describing one of the Shreveport-built submarines survives. It reads:

The boat is 40 feet long, 48 inches deep, and 40 inches wide, built entirely of iron, and shaped similar to a steam boiler. The ends are sharp pointed. On the sides are two iron flanges (called fins), for the purpose of raising or lowering the boat in the water. The boat is propelled at the rate of four miles per hour by means of a crank, worked by two men. The Wheel is on the propeller principle.

The boat is usually worked seven feet under water and has four dead lights for the purpose of steering or taking observations. Each boat carries two torpedoes, one at the bow, attached to a pole 20 feet long; one on the stern, fastened to a plank 10 or 12 feet long. The explosion of the missile on the bow is caused by coming in contact with the object intended to be destroyed. The one on the stern, on the plank, is intended to explode when the plank strikes the vessel.

The air arrangements are so constructed as to retain sufficient air for four men at work and four idle, two or three hours. The torpedoes are made of sheet iron 3/16 of an inch thick, and contain 40 pounds of powder. The shape is something after the pattern of a wooden churn, and about 28 inches long.

In June, 1865, the Trans-Mississippi Confederacy surrendered. Shortly thereafter a Federal naval force was sent up the Red River to demand the surrender of the Missouri (the Webb had been captured previously while trying to run the blockade at New Orleans, disguised as a federal gunboat). To prevent them falling into enemy hands along with the Missouri, the builders of the four submarines sank them in the muddy waters about where Cross Bayou and the Red River meet. There they remain, buried in the river's mud and silt, to this very day.

Thus far, attempts to find and unearth the subs have been unsuccessful. Initially some of the casinos were approached about funding an archaeological dig for the craft on their sites but expressed little interest. However, in 2000 and 2001 two thoroughgoing efforts were made to locate the subs. One was a side-scan sonar survey of the river’s banks near Cross Bayou and opposite its mouth. Author Clive Cussler funded the effort which was conducted by marine sonar expert Ralph Wilbanks and local history professor and cartographer Gary Joiner.

The second effort was part of a larger environmental and historical impact survey required by law prior to the start of work on the Louisiana Boardwalk Mall in Bossier City. Pan American Consulting of Memphis, together with Dr. Joiner of Shreveport, conducted this survey.

Based upon known facts regarding the disposal of the subs (which the Confederate Navy intended to raise again one day but obviously never did) and the patterns of the Red River’s shifting in the decades since, it is probable that the submarines now rest on the east bank of the river, well inland from the river itself. In other words, they are likely buried in the earth; high and dry (dry anyway) today.

Lots of magnetic debris was picked up by the sonar surveys including a 19th century locomotive engine, steamboat boilers, steamboat funnels, parts of steamboat sternwheels, and other river wreckage-related items, most of which remain buried.

The most intriguing find was a large metal object, or rather group of objects, found to be about 30 feet deep and several hundred feet inland from the river on the Bossier side, just north of the Bass Pro Shop site on the publicly owned tract erroneously called “Cane’s Landing.” The signals given off by this material during sonar surveys indicate that it is the right size, shape, and density to be the four subs lashed together. Unfortunately, costs and red tape have thus far prevented further exploration of the site but it is highly likely that the submarines are there.

Wherever the subs are they are there for the long-haul as it is highly unlikely they will be unearthed in the near-future. Entombed as they have been for almost 140 years, however, it is doubtful that a few more years’ time will make a great deal of difference to their condition when ultimately they are unearthed as hopefully they will one day be. There seems little doubt that when that day comes it will rank as one of the most important finds in Civil War maritime archaeology, nearly equal to the discovery and resurrection of the Hunley in significance.

http://www.shreveyacht.com/

top

Plaintiff estimates credit in millions

By Bruce Smith
The Associated Press

CHARLESTON - Underwater archaeologist E. Lee Spence says he suffered
$309 million in damages because the discovery of the Confederate
submarine Hunley was credited to author Clive Cussler.

The figure was discussed during a deposition Spence gave as part of
the federal lawsuits arising from the discovery of the Hunley a
decade ago.

"I want the jury to award me everything they believe it has cost
me," Spence said Wednesday. "I'm trying to be conservative in my
figures as to what it cost me.

"I didn't spend that much money and not that I would have received
that much money, but I would have had that benefit."

The figure is "absurd and I think it is ludicrous," said John Lay
Jr., the attorney representing Cussler.

Cussler recently was granted a delay in the trial until at least
August because he recently underwent open heart surgery and would be
unable to travel for three months.

A group headed by Cussler sued Spence in 2001.

That suit says Spence's claim that he found the submarine injured
the reputation of Cussler's National Underwater & Marine Agency and
divers Cussler hired who have been credited by the S.C. Hunley
Commission with finding the sub in 1995 off Charleston.

Spence later countersued, seeking damages and asking the court to
declare him the discoverer of the Hunley, the first sub in history
to sink an enemy warship.

Spence says he discovered the sub in 1970.

His suit said he filed documents in admiralty court in 1980 claiming
ownership and published a chart in 1995 showing where it was.

The 40-foot, hand-cranked Hunley rammed a spar with a black powder
charge into the Union blockade ship Housatonic, sinking the vessel
Feb. 17, 1864.

The Hunley sank as well and was located in 1995.

It was raised five years later and brought to a conservation lab at
the old Charleston Naval Base, where it sits in a tank of chilled
water.

Spence, who has been representing himself in court, said the damage
figure includes $150 million in the ad value equivalent to the
publicity Cussler has garnered by being credited with finding the
sub.

"If you figure the TV time and all the newspaper and radio
[coverage] that has said Clive Cussler recovered it, even though he
didn't receive money for it, he received value for it," Spence said.

"I don't think as a matter of law it's legally sustainable" to seek
damages for such value, said Lay, adding that Cussler never profited
from the Hunley. "Clive Cussler had a substantial name before this
ever occurred.

"He has never given a speech specifically on the Hunley."

Spence says the damages include, among other things, lost speaking
engagements, lost profits on his books and losing a contract to dive
for a treasure wreck he researched and that subsequently was found.

He said it does not necessarily mean he would have made $309 million.

"There is a tremendous benefit to being the president of the United
States although they don't pay you for that," Spence said.

In regards to your e-mail of May 13, I've attached 4 pics of my
model of the Hunley made from W.A. Alexander's sketches of 1863.
The quality of the pics are not that great as all I have is a low resolution
digital pocket camera.

I made the model from scratch using kraft paper, cardboard, wood,
plastic wood and wire for the steering rods. I included all the hardware:
seacocks, pumps, compass, manometer, etc. The crew figures are just cutouts.
I hope to replace them with 3D figures. I scaled the model assuming the height
inside to be 5 foot. This makes my model 1.2 cm = 1 foot. My model is about 40 cm
long(15.75in) excluding the torpedo spar.

As we know now the "real" Hunley is quite different from this original concept.
Thanks for the references you gave me. I plan to make a model of the
"real" Hunley, again from paper and cardboard. I would like to make
plans and or kits of these 2 versions of the Hunley and maybe sell them
a lot less than the resin models now on the market.

Hello Bill - Here is one of the responses we got to your email.
Thanks, George W. Penington Webmaster and Editor of
The Hunley.com website and newsletters.

These photos were taken at the Battle
of Secessionville held on the grounds of Boone Hall Last Year .