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Secrets of a Civil War Submarine On the night of February 17, 1864, history was made when, for the first time ever, a submarine sank an enemy ship. The submarine was the C.S.S. H.L. Hunley, a hand-powered Confederate warship! However, when time came for the Hunley to return to port, it failed to return. |



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The CSS Hunley 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. More Young Reader Selections |
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. |