The Union navy knew the submarine was coming. What it did not know was that she would come on the surface, from outside, to the one ship it had not thought to protect with nets.

What Dahlgren had ordered

Rear-Admiral John Dahlgren’s first warning came from the Navy Department in September 1863, with a letter from a Mr Haynes of Nassau “in relation to a submarine machine constructed by the rebels at Charleston.” In the first week of January 1864 two deserters from Charleston gave him the rest. One of them had worked in the same shop as the boat at Mobile and had seen her come to Charleston “on two platform cars”; he put her at about 35 feet, hand-cranked, with two manholes “about 12 to 14 feet apart,” able to make five knots “without exertion to the men working her,” and said she “has drowned three crews, one at Mobile and two here, 17 men in all.” He thought “she can be worked perfectly safe by persons who understand her.” The other had watched her last dive from thirty yards and had seen the drowned men taken out of her at Mount Pleasant.

On 7 January Dahlgren issued the order that governed the squadron for the next six weeks. There were two torpedo boats ready, the David and one like her, “and also one of another kind, which is nearly submerged and can be entirely so. It is intended to go under the bottoms of vessels and there operate.” The ironclads were to rig their fenders out and keep their own boats moving round them; “a netting must also be dropped overboard from the ends of the fenders, kept down with shot and extending along the whole length of the sides; howitzers loaded with canister on the decks and a calcium for each monitor.” The tugs and picket boats were to be “incessantly upon the lookout, when the water is not rough.” And the ironclads were not to anchor in deep water, “for by not leaving much space between the bottom of the vessel and the bottom of the channel it will be impossible for the diving torpedo to operate except on the sides, and there will be less difficulty in raising a vessel if sunk.”

All of that was for the ironclads inside the bar. The wooden ships outside were covered by a letter of 15 January to the senior officer there, which the Official Records do not print. Dahlgren told Washington on 13 January that “it is only in smooth water, and when the tide is slack, that any danger is imminent,” and that he was sleeping aboard a steamer near the monitors and visiting the advanced one after dark. He left for Florida on 5 February to support an army landing, and was at Port Royal when the Housatonic was sunk.

What Pickering had rigged

Captain Charles Pickering’s own precautions, as he described them to the court, were thorough. His standing orders were “to keep a vigilant lookout, glasses in constant use,” with three glasses on deck and six lookouts, and for the officer of the deck, “the moment he saw anything suspicious to slip the chain, sound the gong, without waiting for orders, and send for me.” The engines were kept “reversed ready for going astern,” because on an earlier night he had fouled his slip rope in the propeller by going ahead. The battery was cast loose and loaded, with a round of cartridges in the arm chest “so that two Broadsides could be fired before the reception of powder from the magazine.” The chain was prepared for slipping by reversing the shackle and replacing the iron pin with a wooden one, “so that all that was necessary to slip the chain was to strike the bolt with the sledge once.” Twenty-five pounds of steam were kept up all night. Nothing in the list is about nets.

What the witnesses saw

The court met on the frigate Wabash on 26 February 1864 under Captain Joseph Green of the Canandaigua, with Captain John De Camp and Commander J. C. Williamson, and a lieutenant of marines as judge-advocate. It sat for a day on the Canandaigua on 5 March to take Pickering’s evidence, because he could not leave her.

Acting Master John Crosby, the officer of the deck, had taken the watch at eight. “About 8:45 p.m. I saw something on the water, which at first looked to me like a porpoise, coming up to the surface to blow. It was about 75 to 100 yards from us on our starboard beam.” The quartermaster, through his glass, “said he saw nothing but a tide ripple on the water. Looking again within an instant I saw it was coming towards the ship very fast. I gave orders to beat to Quarters, slip the chain and back the engine.” Going forward to check the chain, “I looked over the side: I saw what appeared to me a plank sharp at both ends, about 20 feet from the ships side.” Asked to describe it again, he said: “It looked to me about 25 or 30 feet long, and between 3 and 4 feet wide, like a whale boat upset, and there was a raised appearance, about the centre of it, which made a ripple in the water.” It approached “at right angles to the keel.” He thought “it was not over 2 or 3 minutes from the time I first saw the object on the water until it struck, just abaft the mizzen mast, on the starboard side and the explosion took place.” No gun could be trained in that time. He backed the engine to keep the slip rope out of the screw.

Robert F. Flemming, a landsman, “colored” in the clerk’s hand, was the lookout on the starboard side of the forecastle. “It was about 8:25 p.m. I saw something approaching the ship broad off the starboard bow, about two ships lengths off, and reported it to the Officer of the forecastle. He told me it was a log. I then told him this was not floating with the tide as a log would, but moving across the tide. He still thought it was a log, so I called the lookout from the Port side to see what it was. When the Officer of the fore-castle saw this other lookout coming over he looked at the object through his glasses and then ran aft. I then cut away the slip buoy. By this time the object had got within about 30 feet of the starboard quarter.” He put six minutes between his first sight of it and the explosion, and described it as “about 22 feet long, only each end visible, the water washing over amidships, each end about 22 inches out of water.” After the explosion, from the forecastle, “I saw the object about six or eight feet from the starboard quarter, apparently stationary, and I fired my musket at it.” He went into the fore-top with his musket and stayed there until the Canandaigua’s boats took him off, and it was from there that he saw the blue light.

Pickering had been at the cabin table over a book of charts. “I heard a confused sound and stir of excitement on deck.” He snatched the wrong cap, got his own, and on reaching the deck “gave the order to slip and heard for the first time it was a Torpedo.” He took his double-barrelled gun, loaded with buckshot, from his clerk Muzzey, and jumped on the horse block on the starboard quarter, where the first lieutenant had just fired a musket. “I hastily examined the Torpedo; it was shaped like a large whale boat, about two feet, more or less, under water; its position was at right angles to the ship, bows on, and the bows within two or three feet of the ships side, about abreast of the mizzen mast, and I supposed it was then firing the Torpedo on. I saw two projections or knobs about one third of the way from the bows. I fired at these.” He ran up the port side calling for more speed astern, kept the men forward because the guns could not bear and the bow was safer, thought of going forward himself, “but, reflecting that my proper station was aft, I remained there, and was blown into the air the next instant.” He came down among broken timbers, got into the mizzen rigging, “very much bruised,” and was taken off by a boat. Muzzey, who had handed him the gun, was one of the five who died. The water, he said, was “26 or 27 feet at low water; it was a pleasant, moonlight night, with a fresh breeze and very cold; about half ebb tide.”

The engineer testified that the engine had been going astern for about six seconds, at about thirty revolutions, when he heard the explosion “accompanied by a sound of rushing water and crashing of timbers and metal,” and that the engine then raced “as if the propeller had been broken off.” The assistant surgeon counted the dead: two officers and three men.

What the court found

On 7 March the court found eight facts: that the ship had been blown up and sunk at about nine o’clock while at anchor in 27 feet of water five and a half miles from Sumter, on a clear, bright, moonlit night with a smooth sea and half-ebb tide; that an object “having the appearance of a log” had been seen almost at once by the officer of the deck and the starboard lookout at 75 or 100 yards, moving “with a speed of 3 or 4 knots” and “exhibiting two protuberances above”; that it closed too fast for a gun; that the crew were at quarters, the cable slipped and the engine backed within a minute and a half; that the explosion came about three minutes after the first sighting and “blew up the after part of the ship”; that small arms were fired at it; that the watch, the battery and the lookouts were “in all respects prepared”; and that order was kept to the end. “In view of the above facts the court have to express the opinion that no further military proceedings are necessary.” Pickering’s own summary was shorter: “If I had had two minutes to work in, I could probably have saved the ship and sunk the Torpedo craft.”

Afterwards

Dahlgren’s reaction went two ways. To the department: torpedo boats of his own, “length about 40 feet, diameter amidships 5 to 6 feet,” to be built in the North with dispatch, and a reward of $20,000 or $30,000 for every “David” destroyed. To the squadron: outriggers, hawsers and rope netting for every ship at anchor, and the wooden ships outside to get under way at night. He also wrote, wrongly, that the torpedo boat had “passed by the ironclads within the bar,” which told him the nets worked. It told him nothing of the kind; she had come from Breach Inlet and never approached them.

In November the squadron diver examined the wreck. The after part of the spar deck was blown entirely off, the cabin and every bulkhead abaft the mainmast demolished, the rudder and its post partly carried away, the shaft apparently broken. He dragged the bottom for 500 yards round her and found “nothing of the torpedo boat.” She lay about a thousand feet further out to sea.

Sources

• Proceedings of the naval court of inquiry on the sinking of the Housatonic, 26 February to 7 March 1864, National Archives, Records of the Judge Advocate General (Navy), microfilm M273, roll 160, case 4345, transcribed by Rachel Lance and published on Michael Crisafulli’s Vernian Era site. The testimony of Crosby, Flemming, Pickering, the engineer and the surgeon. vernianera.com
• Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, series I, volume 15: the deserters’ statements and Dahlgren’s order of 7 January and report of 13 January 1864 (pp. 226–239); the reports and orders of 18 and 19 February, the court’s findings, and Churchill’s diving report of 27 November 1864 (pp. 327–334); and volume 14 for the Haynes letter of September 1863 (pp. 496–497). vol. 15, vol. 14