| Civil War MiscellanyThe legendary Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley was the first successful underwater warship that is, the first to sink an enemy ship. As chronicled in Raising the Hunley: The Remarkable History and Recovery of the Lost Confederate Submarine, the sub disappeared without a trace in 1864, crippled by a Union ship, and finding it became something of an obsession for many Americans until the vessel was finally brought to shore in 2000. Based on interviews with scientists and historians who studied the Hunley's remains, Charleston, S.C., Post and Courier journalists Brian Hicks and Schuyler Kropf reconstruct the sub's final voyage in this dramatic slice of Civil War history. | Book Title |
VHS Movie |
Produced for Turner Network Television and originally broadcast in the summer of 1999, The Hunley is a straightforward, engrossing historical drama focusing on a little-known chapter of the Civil War: the introduction of the submarine into American naval warfare off the shore of war-torn Charleston, South Carolina, in 1864. Writer-director John Gray had previously helmed the 1998 TV movie The Day Lincoln Was Shot , and he has a knack for capturing the Civil War era with a heightened sense of authenticity, allowing for the dramatic license of mainstream television. Armand Assante plays Lieutenant Dixon, a traumatized soldier and grieving widower with just the right mixture of bravado and nihilism to skipper the C.S.S. Hunley --essentially an iron boiler cobbled into a hand-powered submersible weapon- |
| Book Title |
Nine men in a rigged-out steam boiler cranked out of Breach Inlet near Mt.Pleasant, S.C. and changed naval history forever. It was not until 50 years later in 1914 that the next ship would be brought down by a submarine. This crisply written account is an excellent introduction to one of the most facinating subplots of the entire War for Southern Independence. Forced by necessity to outwit their industrial foe the South resorted to and developed many innovations to counter the vulnerability their rivers and coastline presented. | Reading Level Grade 3-4 Readers will be immediately engaged with the first lines of this account of the raising of the Hunley on August 8, 2000, and are told that a mystery is about to be solved. Then, step-by-step they are taken back in time to a short discussion of the Civil War, the role of naval blockades, and the dream of James McClintock and Baxter Watson to create an underwater battleship to keep the Southern ports free of Northern ships. The idea did not come quickly to fruition and all of the many difficulties and disappointments are included. The chapters are short but packed with information and, while this is part of an early reading series, there is no sense that the information is simplified. |
Easy Reader Book |
| Reign of Iron : The Story of the First Battling Ironclads, the Monitor and the Merrimack The Monitor-Merrimack showdown may be one of the Civil War's most overhyped chestnuts: the two ships were by no means the first ironclads, and their long awaited confrontation proved an anticlimactic draw, their cannon fire clanging harmlessly off each other's hulls. Still, the author of this lively history manages to bring out the story's dramatic elements. Nelson, author of the Revolution at Sea series of age-of-sail adventure novels, knows how to narrate a naval crisis. He gives a harrowing account of the Merrimack's initial onslaught, in which it destroyed two wooden Union warships in a bloody and chaotic battle the day before the Monitor arrived, and of the Monitor's nightmarish final hours as it foundered in a storm at sea. |
Glory in the Name : A Novel of the Confederate Navy |
| Confederate Ironclad 1861-65 The creation of a Confederate ironclad fleet was a miracle of ingenuity, improvisation and logistics. Surrounded by a superior enemy fleet, Confederate designers adapted existing vessels or created new ones from the keel up with the sole purpose of breaking the naval stranglehold on the nascent country. Her ironclads were build in remote cornfields, on small inland rivers or in naval yards within sight of the enemy. The result was an unorthodox but remarkable collection of vessels, which were able to contest the rivers and coastal waters of the South for five years. This title explains how these vessels worked, how they were constructed, how they were manned and how they fought. |
Mississippi River Gunboats of the American Civil War At the start of the American Civil War, neither side had warships on the Mississippi River and in the first few months both sides scrambled to gather a flotilla, converting existing riverboats for naval use. These ships were transformed into powerful naval weapons despite a lack of resources, trained manpower and suitable vessels. The creation of a river fleet was a miracle of ingenuity, improvisation and logistics, particularly for the South. |
| The Naval History of the Civil War An authoritative 19th-century history, based on official records and other documents, chronicles the navy's role in the war from the opening shots to the desperate final months. Highlights include the fight between the Monitor and the Merrimac, the capture of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, the Red River Expedition, and much more. Numerous illustrations. |
Confederate Raider: Raphael Semmes of the Alabama The story of the Civil War as fought on the high seas by Semmes: enemy pirate to the North, courageous naval hero to the Confederacy and generally fascinating and contradictory figure. During a two-year cruise, Semmes's Alabama took nearly 100 federal merchant vessels out of the war and became a household word on both sides of the Mason- Dixon line. His biography offers a glimpse into the largely ignored maritime dimensions of the Civil War. |
Civil War Ships and Battles
Battle of the Monitor
United States Navy DVDs
Civil War Submarines
Young Reader Selections
Recipes and Cookbooks
Civil War Summary
Women Subject Reading Titles