CSS H. L. Hunley

 

The CSS H. L. Hunley, a Confederate submarine, made history on 17 February 1864 when it became the first submarine to sink an enemy ship, the USS Housatonic, in Charleston, SC, harbour. The boat was designed and built in 1863 in Mobile, AL, CSA, and named for the principal investor in the project. In 1864 it was shipped by rail to Charleston and taken over by the confederate army. The Hunley carried a crew of seven or eight, one Skipper and the rest to hand crank the propeller. The sub was 12 Meters in length with a beam of 1.17 Meters and a hull height of 1.2 Meters. It had a top speed of 7.4 Km/hr. Not only was the interior very cramped for the crew, but the two hatches were only 40 cm in diameter, making entry difficult as well. Hunley’s armament was a spar torpedo, a copper canister containing 41 Kg of black powder explosive mounted on the end of a 6.7 Meter spar. The torpedo was equipped with a barbed spike designed to be rammed into the hull of an enemy ship below the water line. The Hunley would then be backed away and the torpedo detonated by withdrawing a cord attached to the fuse. Unfortunately for the crew, the torpedo seems to have exploded within a few meters of the sub and sank both the target and the Hunley.

This model is based, in part, on the reproduction of the Hunley on display at the Charleston Museum, which I saw in 2001 on a visit to South Carolina. I first modelled the Hunley in SketchUp in 2014.

#army #Charleston #Civil_War #Confederate #CSS #hand-powered #Hunley #navy #SC #South_Carolina #submarine

The Whitworth 12 Pounder Gun

The Whitworth 12 Pounder was designed and manufactured in England by Joseph Whitworth in the mid-nineteenth century. The gun’s design was unusual for field artillery of that period: it was breech loaded and had hexagonal rifling, which gave it a high degree of accuracy and a range of up to six miles. The barrel was 7’ 9” (2.36 M) long; the gun weighed 896 lbs. (406.4 Kg) and was manned by a crew of six.

After being rejected by the British army due to cost, it was purchased by the Confederate army in the U.S. civil war. It was also used by the Union Army, particularly at the battle of Gettysburg.

 #Whitworth #12_pounder #artillery #British #US_civil_war #Blender #Cycles