The Trident Submarine houses twenty-four nuclear warheads with each having a range of 4,600 miles over land. If a nuclear war were to break out between the Soviet Union and the United States, virtually every major city could be destroyed in a matter of hours. The origin of these major players in modern day warfare lies in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.

A Dutchman named Cornelus Van Drebbel, made the very first submarine in 1652, to fight the mighty Spanish ship called the Rotterdam Boat. It carried about twelve oarsmen and even had an air circulator. It never saw any action.

In the American Revolutionary War, a manned underwater craft named the American Turtle (or the “water-machine”) was used against the British Navy. David Brushnell designed this ingenious machine in 1771. The submarine was a one manned, egg-shaped vessel which was propelled by hand-operated screw-like devices. It was bottom-heavy in order for it to remain upright. The operator would plant a submersible mine that could be triggered by a simple clockwork mechanism. He could paddle away after he attached the magazine of gunpowder onto the enemy ship. The operator could stay under for about thirty minutes

The American Turtle was ready for her initial mission on September 6, 1776, just after midnight in the New York Harbor. The operator, Ezra Lee, failed in his attempt to sink the HMS Eagle because he failed to secure the screw of the gunpowder magazine to the ship. The Turtle made two more attempts to sink enemy ships but they both failed. The end of the American Turtle is unknown. Some think she was accidentally sunk, dismantled, or destroyed. The Turtle was the very first submarine to be used in the art of war.

In October of 1805 the two-manned submarine invented by Robert Fulton, the Nautilus, sunk a ship in a demonstration for the British government. The detonation device was a mine, which was tugged by long cables that hit the boat after the submarine had passed under it. The timing was wrong for the event because England had just finished another war. The ship was ignored. The importance of the Nautilus was the use of compressed air for oxygen and the use of rudders for vertical and horizontal alignment while underwater.

The significance of these first two fully working submarines in the world was that they played a major role in future developments of submarines, especially for the submarine use during the Civil War.

In New Orleans, the Confederates wanted to construct a vessel that would be totally submerged beneath the surface. This area was a strategic point because it was the base of the entire Mississippi. Two wealthy designers, James McClintock and Baxter Watson, designed and built a three manned, hand cranked submarine name the Pioneer. This sub had a “breather” which was similar to a snorkel that would put fresh air into the submarine. The Pioneer used the same type of detonation device as the Nautilus: dragging behind a torpedo (at this time any mine used in the water was known as a “torpedo”).

The problems with the Pioneer were the breather would only work close to the surface; there was no light inside the sub causing the crew to use candles; and the sub was incredibly cramped. Another problem was that at this time a compass was the only way to tell where a submarine was going. But do to all the metal, it was extremely hard to get one to work properly inside the submarine. Therefore, the captain would have to make frequent visual sightings. The first trial runs-went beautifully with only a few minor leaks. The submarine successfully sunk a ship in a test-run in front of a large crowd. It was definitively a seaworthy ship.

The people of New Orleans knew that an attack by the Union was eminent. On April 16, 1862, the attack came. The Confederate forces were heavily outnumbered and were defeated. Unfortunately for the Pioneer, it was not used during the Battle of New Orleans. Since the submarine was a prototype, it was deemed not ready for battle and was sunk by its owners before it could fall into enemies’ hands .

Later in the war, the Confederate navy was not very successful in attacking enemy ships. They just could not get through the Union blockade that was surrounding them. In Mobile, Alabama, a group of men wanted to build another Pioneer. Two gentlemen who owned a machine shop agreed to build another boat with William Alexander presiding over the manufacture.

The Pioneer II was a little larger than its predecessor. The new submarine had a little more room for the crew; was more streamlined; had a primitive mercury barometer to judge their depth; and contained some windows so the captain could better ascertain where he was going. The main problems with Pioneer II were that it still could not stay submerged for long due to the dwindling air supply. It also was still extremely slow and only worked well in calm waters. Several weeks were used in an attempt to build an electric engine, but due to the lack of supplies they had to resort back to manpower. Unfortunately, on a test run, the water became too choppy and gushed into the hatchways that were open for ventilation. The ship sank.

Alexander, McClintock, and Watson had still not given up. Within weeks they had enough money to build another ship called Pioneer III. The new sub was basically the same as the Pioneer II. However, a problem arose with the torpedo because this submarine, along with all previous ones, hauled a torpedo about two hundred feet behind itself. The torpedo would detonate as soon as it hit the enemy ship while the submarine was a safe distance away. But, the Pioneer III was tested in the windy Mobile Bay. This caused the torpedo to move faster than the submarine which made the torpedo float directly above the submarine. This was a great risk because the submarine could easily collide with the torpedo as it was surfacing. To rectify the problem, the engineers attached a twenty-two foot battling ram to the front of the ship along with the torpedo on the end. When the torpedo hit the enemy ship and detonated the Pioneer III and the men would theoretically be unharmed and would only have to suffer a slight jolt from the explosion.

The Confederate navy was still desperate to break the Union blockade. They wanted to use the Pioneer III, now called the “Whitney Submarine Boat,” to go after one of the ironsides. It was felt that the submarine could be deadly to an ironside because the only place the ironsides were vulnerable was on the underbelly. After the first couple of test runs, the builders were disappointed about the submarine. Due to a lack of patience, the ship was taken out anyway along with Captain John Payne to attack USS New Ironsides. But, when the submarine started moving with the aid of a tugboat, the submarine sunk killing five crew-members because the tugboat started while the hatch was still open on the submarine.

Within two weeks, the “Whitney Submarine Boat,” now called “H.L. Hunley Torpedo Boat” or the H.L. Hunley, was raised, repaired, and was ready for action along with the new captains, Horace Lawson Hunley and George Dixon. In a mock attack against the CSS Indian Chief, the submarine sank killing all passengers including the captain on board, Horace Hunley. When the submarine was pulled out, it was found out that Hunley had allowed the ship to submerge incredibly fast and the tanks that held the water over-flowed into the cabin and thus drowning everyone and sinking the ship.

After the two accidents, the leaders of the Confederate navy questioned the safety of submarines. After a lot of convincing by Captain George Dixon and William Alexander did the Confederate leadership allow the H.L. Hunley to be operational once again.

When the H.L. Hunley was pulled out after the second sinking, it was taken off to the Battery Marshall, on Sullivan’s Island. The crew on the boat was much more heavily trained. They had to withstand endurance tests to see how far they could go and for how long they could stay submerged while not receiving any fresh air. They became capable of “rowing” seven miles in one day and could stay under for two and a half-hours. They were ready for battle and the target was a brand new, 1,240-ton Union ship called the USS Housatonic.

On the night of February 17, 1864, just outside the Charleston Harbor, Captain Dixon boarded the H.L Hunley and headed for the target. Around 9:00 o’clock the night watchman on the Housatonic noticed something slightly under water about one hundred yards off lurking towards the ship. At first he thought it was a porpoise or a school of fish. When the submarine got closer he realized what it was and sounded the alarms. At that time, Captain Dixon surfaced to make sure he was headed directly for the ship, not knowing he had been spotted. In response, the crew of the Housatonic fired their weapons, but to of no avail. The H.L. Hunley submerged and a few moments later, the entire stern of the Housatonic was destroyed – the ship was sunk. Unfortunately, the curse of the H.L. Hunley remained, and the submarine was sunk as well killing all eleven crewmembers. This was the only successful attack by a submarine on another ship in the Civil War.

During these experiments on submarines, the public was not well informed of what was going on. The building of the submarines was kept secret because the Confederates did not want their weapon to be known. When the Pioneer III sank its first two times, the newspaper article listing the dead said nothing to the type of ship it was.

The South had a need to develop a fully submersible ship because it needed to protect its precious waterways and also wanted to get around the Union blockade. The North, on the other hand, had less need for a submarine. Therefore, they did not spend as much time and effort developing one, but they still tried. The first attempt was by a Frenchman named Brutues de Villeroi. He had invented a device that would re-circulate the air inside a submarine and thus causing the men to be able of staying under water for a longer periods of time. The ship he built in 1862 was called the Alligator because it was longer and thinner than the South’s ships. The submarine never saw battle because it was lost at sea off of North Carolina. The second attempt to build a submarine was by Pascal Plant. He had an idea of a new type of propulsion – rocket power. The government was hesitant to use such a controversial method and buried the project. (Pascal’s idea did lead to the invention of the modern torpedo).

The American Turtle, the first submarine to be used in war, played absolutely no role in the outcome of the Revolutionary War. The submarines in the Civil War were very unimportant as well. Only one ship, the Housatonic, was sunk by the hands of a submarine in the entire war. The Southern navy did not even put much stock into submarine warfare because they only built a couple during the entire war. So overall, submarines were of no significance during either the Revolutionary War or the Civil War. But, these early developments of the submarine were extremely important because they lead to the later more advanced submarines that were used in future wars in which they did play a major role in. For example, in World War II, German U-boats terrorized the sea and played an important role in World War II. These, and others like the modern day Tridents, would not of exist if it were not for the early developments of submarines during the Civil and Revolutionary Wars.