Angers Away

Over half a century before the Imperial German Navy launched its new and deadly method of undersea warfare against the Allied navies and merchant shipping in World War One, the Confederate Army was making history’s first successful submarine attack on an enemy warship.  On the night of February 17, 1864, First Lieutenant George E. Dixon, a former steamboat engineer before enlisting in the Confederate Army, and a crew of seven volunteers propelled their submersible vessel, the “H. L. Hunley,” toward its target.   Their prey was the Union’s powerful new sloop-of-war, the “USS Housatonic,” the primary warship then blockading Charleston Harbor. 

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