On Sunday, June 19, 1864, in the English Channel off Cherbourg, one turbulent hour brought to a climax the world-wide struggle for sea power between North and South. The skippers were not strangers come to grips. As seemed almost inevitable in this strange war, Raphael Semmes of the Rebel Alabama and John A. Winslow of the Yankee Kearsarge were friends of many years, messmates, roommates, shipmates in old Navy --- and both Southerners.
The Kearsarge was far ahead, some six or seven miles out, but she turned and bore down on the Alabama as if to ram her. Semmes turned aside; the Alabama, as usual, moved with agility, and a collision was avoided. Semmes went into a circle, and the ships moved thus, clockwise, with the original diameter of the circle about half a mile. As the ships reduced the circle to 400 yards, coming to point blank range, their field of battle drifted outward. Semmes fired first and missed, with a 100 hundred pound shell from his chief weapon, a Blakely gun. The Yankee gunners were superior from the start, and a hail of iron tore the Confederate decks, hull and rigging. The Alabama went down by the stern, the guns careening down the deck helped her sink. The last sight of her was the sharp tip of her black bow, pointed upward.
Semmes, pulled from the water by a Deerhound boat, hid under a tarpaulin to avoid the enemy. Some men thought that Captain Winslow saw Semmes escape, but made no effort to catch his old friend, since he knew he would face almost certain execution if captured. The Alabama's casualties: nine killed, twenty wounded, twelve drowned.
In the chill dusk of February 17, 1864, as the moon rose over Charleston harbor, history's first successful submarine attack got under way. She sailed under the orders of General P.G.T. Beauregard, commander of Charleston's defenses. Her skipper was Lieutenant George E. Dixon, late of Company E, 21st Alabama Volunteers. In his crew were C.F. Carlson of the Wagner Artillery, Arnold Becker, James A. Wicks, C. Simkins, F. Collins, one Ridgeway of the Confederate Navy, and a man named Miller. The ungainly craft came at last -- near 8:45 p.m. -- alongside an enemy warship. This was the steam sloop Housatonic, of 1,240 tons, not quite two years old, armed with thirteen guns. Dixon bore in on her, unaware that he had been seen from above. The historic attack was at hand.
The Housatonic, no longer at anchor, began to drift by the stern; her engines began turning. The sub was now nearing the ship's hull, and the engines drove the two together. There was a tremendous explosion. Timbers and splinters were flung high into the air, and Crosby, the officer on deck that night, thought that the stern had been blown off. There was a "fearful rushing of water" and heavy black smoke rolled from the stack. The Housatonic began to settle.
The Housatonic went down in about twenty-eight feet of water, her fatal wound on the starboard side near the mizzen-mast.Within four minutes after the explosion, the Housatonic had sunk. After the war Federal divers found the wounded Housatonic and moved her to clear North Channel and later blown up. When the sloop was moved the first time, divers reported seeing the Hunley lying nearby, and one of them said he touched her propeller. She was not moved, however, and though her location is known, she has evaded modern divers and still rests on the bottom of Charleston Harbor -- by fifty years the first successful submarine, and until World War II the only American sub to sink an enemy vessel.
