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The First Submarine Is Older Than You Think

Austin Smith

Published: December 8, 2024 10:50 am

Key Points:

• Although it was mechanically sound, the Turtle, the first military submarine, was employed as a clandestine weapon during the American Revolutionary War.
• The Hunley, built during the American Civil War, became the first successful combat submarine as it sank a Union ship, but unfortunately, it lost more Confederate crew members than enemy sailors.
• Over the next century, submarines changed greatly; World War II was a critical turning point in their military platform performance.

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Transcript:

[00:00:00] Austin Smith: Hello, everyone. My name is Austin Smith. I’m joined with Michael Muir, our defense and military expert at 24 7 Wall Street and Michael, we’ve been talking a lot about current conflicts recently on 24/7 Wall Street, and I wanted to look. Uh, you go back in time a little bit and look at what is one of the most interesting and consequential vehicles and platforms of military conflict.

[00:00:17] Austin Smith: And that is the submarine. So historically, this has been in a totally asymmetrical weapon of war. A lot of people may know about like the wolf packs and World War Two and some of the Nazi submarines and the underwater warfare that occurred there. But can you just talk to us a little bit about that?

[00:00:33] Austin Smith: about submarines and some of their origins. Let’s just start there. We’ll go to the past and we’ll go to the present and the future. So talk about the origins of this vehicle platform.

[00:00:40] Michael Muir: Yes, certainly. Well, um, as you correctly identify, it begins. It’s submarine essentially begins as a asymmetric weapon. So what we mean by that is it’s a way of using innovation to overcome power belligerents.

[00:00:54] Michael Muir: So in the first case where it was used The first submarine used in combat was an experimental device developed by the United States during the American Revolutionary War, which may raise some eyebrows because we don’t realize just how old. Uh, the submarine is the platform, although I will say that that device, which was nicknamed the turtle, doesn’t really bear much resemblance to the modern submarines of today.

[00:01:17] Michael Muir: Um, it was a one man operation, um, spherical device. And the idea, and again, it wasn’t, it operated a little different from the submarines of today. Um, but the idea is it was essentially a clandestine weapon of war where it would be used at night. sneak up on a British ship, plant an explosive and then get away.

[00:01:36] Michael Muir: Um, so the turtle didn’t have like great mechanical abilities. It wasn’t able to stay underwater for very long. Didn’t have great operational range. Um, but mechanically it did work. Um, and the operator, um, was a member of the Continental Army, uh, Sergeant Ezra Lee. Uh, he spent a few days familiarizing himself with the controls, um, and then he attempted unsuccessfully to attach an explosive to the hull of a British ship, uh, that was docked in the harbor, um, because, you know, one of the reasons why this, you know, weapon was developed was because the, you know, obviously the United States as a young colonial nation had no real prospect of building a navy that could compete with the Royal Navy, so they had to try different methods, use innovation to overcome this, So the turtle, it worked, but it didn’t work in the sense that, um, you know, Lee was never able to get the explosive to, uh, stay attached to the whole of the British ship, um, use it at night.

[00:02:29] Michael Muir: And as daylight was drawing in, managed to escape. They tried a couple more times without success. Um, the turtle was lost, not in combat, but when the ship that was transporting it, I was sunk by the British, um, just off of the coast of Fort Lee in New Jersey. Um, so that was the first. Submarine used in combat, a mechanical success, but an operational failure.

[00:02:49] Michael Muir: But then the idea was revived in another American conflict almost a century later. And that was the Hunley and the American Civil War. And then once again, the parallels are pretty striking. The Confederacy had no realistic prospect of building a Navy on the scale of the Union’s Navy. So started once again, looking into submersibles as a way to even the odds.

[00:03:09] Michael Muir: Now, the. device that was built was a little closer to what we might think of a submarine. Um, it was again, but it still still had the same shortcomings, very limited operational range, couldn’t stay submerged for very long and was extremely dangerous to use. Um, the first time it was taken out into seas.

[00:03:30] Michael Muir: This was the third, um, the Hunley, as it was called, was named after its inventor. This was the third, um, submersible developed by the Confederacy during the American Civil War, um, and that was the only one that actually was used in combat. First trial, half the crew was lost, um, the other half managed to escape.

[00:03:47] Michael Muir: The second time it was tried out, Hunley was on board, um, that was the inventor, and he was lost along with the entire crew. That was in October of 1863. They managed to retrieve the device and convince an extremely brave crew to actually Take it out, um, in combat and it was done. So just off of the coast of Charleston, um, and it did actually work, um, in the sense that it managed to sink an enemy vessel.

[00:04:12] Michael Muir: Um, now in the American Civil War, they used torpedoes, but the torpedo in the American Civil War is very different from the one we might imagine today. Um, it was really closer to a mine. Stationary explosive. It wasn’t launched. That was one of the big problems with early submarines is they couldn’t launch from a safe distance.

[00:04:30] Michael Muir: They had to get really close. So the Hunley went out in Charleston and managed to Get its explosive. So it was a spart torpedo, which is basically a bomb on a stick. That’s how close they had to get this thing. Um, I managed to get, it was the onic, um, which was a 1200 ton union ship who managed to breach the hull.

[00:04:51] Michael Muir: Most of the crew escaped, um, on the onic. But the Hunley once again was lost on the way back. We’re not quite sure exactly what happened to it, but we do know the crew didn’t survive. So if we’re keeping score, the Hunley actually killed more Confederate sailors than Union sailors, although it did manage to sink a ship.

[00:05:10] Austin Smith: So we would certainly something that we won’t call a success in that regard, but perhaps a breakthrough technology.

[00:05:17] Austin Smith: it’s incredible to think how old that technology is when, you know, there have been, let’s say aquatic vehicles of war since then, but it’s almost 170 years to world war two before they really get into their own.