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This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people.

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Up next a story from the South Carolina Military Museum in Columbia, the state capital.

The first successful submarine attack on February 17, 1864, was only a partial success.

When it was all said and done, the USS Usatonic laid on the bottom of Charleston Harbor,

but so did the sub the CSS Hunley.

Here's John Freeman with the story.

The Hunley wasn't built here.

It wasn't even the first submersible type craft used by the Confederacy,

so they had something else called the David,

which was called a semi-sumersible. It was a boat that it rode really low in the water, and because

they thought, well, it would be difficult to detect, difficult to hit, but it would call it a torpedo

because it was supposed to be doing what the Hunley similar to they did, which is take a torpedo,

which torpedoes at that time were more mines and run it the side of enemy ships.

Well, the Hunley was built elsewhere and was brought to Charleston and it was brought here for testing, actually.

It was hopeful that after testing it could break the blockade that was going off the harbor by the Union fleet.

And so when they initially built it, there was actually a rope and a floating mine behind them and what

they thought they would do is they would paddle a row neither there was a property so it was it was

person powered the honey was there was like a crank shaft they were all sitting there hunched over in this

little tin can and they're working with their arms just getting this thing to go so it's manpower

so what they're supposed to do is go out of the harbor,

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