During the American Civil War a desperate South turned to an untried and largely experimental naval weapon in an attempt to break the Federal blockade which surrounded the Atlantic seacoast. The experimental weapon was the submerging warship--the submarine. In 1862, in New Orleans, an innovative Southerner named James McClintock built the first of three submarine boats he would construct for the South. This first Confederate submarine he named Pioneer, and we have her description in McClintock's own written words:
"At New Orleans, in 1862, we built the first boat. She was made of iron 1/4" thick. The boat was of a cigar shape, 30 feet long and four feet in diameter."
Additional information is contained in the official C.S.A. Letters of Marque written at the time Pioneer was officially commissioned.
"(She is) a propeller, 4 feet in breadth (and) 4 feet in depth. She is 34 feet long and has round, conical ends."
Oddly enough, the above two descriptions are about all we know for sure about Pioneer's appearance (and the discrepancy in length is duly noted), for no verified drawing, plan, painting, or photograph of the vessel is known to have survived the war. We do know that the submarine's propeller was powered by hand crank, using manpower exclusively. Stealth and silence, not speed, was the objective.
For a first effort, Pioneer was surprisingly successful. She towed a floating mine behind her and dived under the target vessel. The floating mine, following along on the surface, exploded against the side of the target ship. Using this attack method, Pioneer is believed to have sunk two rafts, at least one target barge, and a small target schooner during trial runs in Lake Ponchartrain.
Elated by Pioneer's success, McClintock and associates planned to launch their submarine against the ships of the Federal blockade. However, Flag Officer David Farragut and his invading fleet was approaching New Orleans and the city's fall was clearly imminent. To prevent Pioneer's capture, McClintock and crew scuttled their submarine in a canal near Lake Ponchartrain and escaped to Mobile, Alabama.
Farragut's people found the vessel anyway, dredged it up, placed it on a levee, and cursorily examined it. Unaware of its potential, and with a war going on, they pursued the matter no further. They left Pioneer setting on its levee, and there it remained for the balance of the war.
James McClintock and his associates went on to build a second Confederate submarine, American Diver. This vessel, believed to be the first submarine ever to be powered by an electromagnetic engine, fell victim to the primitive technology of the period and sank in rough seas in Mobile Bay in 1863. There on the bottom it remains to this day.
After American Diver, McClintock and company built their most celebrated submarine, the highly publicized C.S.S. Hunley, whose dramatic success on the night of Feb. 14, 1864 has provided on of the most memorable exploits of the war to students of naval history. On that night, the Hunley, using a spar torpedo (a mine attached to a long pole extending from the bow) attacked and sank the large Federal warship U.S.S. Housatonic about 2 ½ miles out to sea from Charleston Harbor, S.C. The Hunley made history as the first submarine to sink an enemy warship in time of war. The Hunley appears to have been damaged by its own explosion, however, and it sank with all nine of its crew while trying to return to Charleston.
The Hunley was raised intact on August 8, 2000 and is currently undergoing archaeological excavation (it's filled with solid enctrusted silt) and stabilization at the Charleston, S.C. Navy base.
The current whereabouts of McClintock's second and third submarines--American Diver and Hunley--are well documented. Far less is known of Pioneer's fate, however. A brief announcement in the New Orleans Daily Picayune for Feb. 15, 1868 informed its readership that the "torpedo boat" built in that city during the war and at that time resting on the banks of the New Canal, was that day sold at public auction for 43 dollars. It adds that the vessel cost $2,600. This announcement would support a conclusion that Pioneer was cut up for scrap and this indeed may have been the case. Yet in 1970 a retired mailman in New Orleans, scouting the city's levees with a metal detector, announced that he had discovered "a hunk of iron as long as three fire engines" anchoring a corner of one of the city's main levees. Permission to dig was refused for fear of weakening the levee. Thus the fate of Pioneer is still inconclusive. Perhaps the South's first submarine still lies buried beneath the earth of the city which witnessed its birth.
Mention ought to be made here of a historic mix-up which occurred about 1898 or thereabouts in New Orleans. A strange little iron submarine, origin unknown but currently on display at the Presbytere in New Orleans, was discovered lying near Fort Jackson. It is shaped like a flattened beanpod, not a round cigar, it is 20 feet long, not 30 or 34, it is 6 feet deep at its deepest dimension, not 4 feet, and, above all, most knowledgeable observers agree that it could never displace its own weight in water (float), much less dive, surface, or destroy a surface vessel with a floating mine. Nonetheless, for many years this vessel was mis-identified as Pioneer. How this mistake came about is quite understandable if one knows the circumstances and the story is well-explained in the book Danger Beneath the Waves by James E. Kloeppel, 1987 and 1992, pp.9-19. This erroneous mis-identification is still occasionally encountered today.
At any rate, so far as is known,
there is currently only one known working model of the real
Pioneer, the Confederacy's first submarine. It was built by a
Tennessean named Lee Reynolds in 1995-1996. The model is scaled on
the dimensions given by McClintock, the original C.S.A. Letters of
Marque, and what is believed and confirmed as far as possible about
McClintock's third and last submarine, the Hunley. Reynolds'
Pioneer thus has two conning towers with rifle shields and a
midship airbox, features the Hunley reportedly has. The scale
is one inch equals one foot. Model Pioneer is 4 inches in
diameter, is of a cigar shape, and is 37 inches long without rudder
or prop shield. The total length of model Pioneer is 42
inches. The nose and tail are made of solid pine wood, turned on a
lathe. The center section is made of 1/4" PVC pipe. The vessel is
partially clad in brass; it contains over 2,000 brass rivets and over
200 pieces of brass sheet. It weighs 22 pounds.
Model Pioneer has constant positive buoyancy--it does not employ ballast tanks to submerge. Instead, power is turned to high speed and the bow diving planes are depressed. The prop itself drives the submarine beneath the water. Once submerged, the vessel levels out and cruises easily underwater until the operator on shore elevates the bow planes. At that point, model Pioneer re-emerges on the surface. Model Pioneer is driven by a large electric motor powered by a rechargeable 6-volt gel cell battery. The vessel's speed, rudder, and diving planes are controlled by a 3-channel surface radio. Both conning towers are lit and the sub has made a number of night runs, submerged, with its lights glowing beneath the water.
Model Pioneer was begun in August, 1995, and completed in March, 1996. As of September, 1997, the submarine has run more than 250 hours in the water without incident, much of that time fully submerged. The model has been the subject of an extensive newspaper article and a short television special originating in Chattanooga. It was featured on the cover and in a 9-page article printed in the Jan/Feb 1997 issue of the California-based magazine Scale Ship Modeler. This article presents 21 photographs, 3 in color, and gives specific details of the submarine's construction and performance on and under the water. In September of 1997, Reynolds decided to retire the Pioneer to drydock. It is currently in his possession in Chattanooga.
Photos of
model Pioneer.
Article on
model Pioneer from the Monthly Spotlight, a publication
of the Chattanooga Model Boat Club.
Article by Lee Reynolds on the original
Pioneer and its two war-time successors.
Article by
Lee Reynolds containing more detailed information on both the
original and the model Pioneer.
