Constructed by the firm Park and Lyons in Mobile, Alabama, Hunley was the brainchild of Horace L Hunley, a lawyer, planter and innovator from New Orleans. Other experiments had been disappointing, but the Hunley design was believed workable, even after two trial deployments ended in tragedies that cost the lives 13 men, including Horace Hunley.
Under control of the Confederate Army, Hunley slipped beneath the harbour waters in Charleston, South Carolina, that fateful night on 17 February 1864 and proceeded towards a cluster of US Navy warships blockading the major Confederate seaport. Under the command of Lieutenant George E Dixon, the crew of eight steered toward the 16-gun sloop of war USS Housatonic patrolling 6km off the harbour mouth. The Hunley carried a single torpedo attached to a five-metre spar,…