Episode 2.2: First Blood

<p>Any arguments against the procurement of submersibles ended on February 17, 1864, when lieutenant Dixon and his eight men in the submersible H.L. Hunley crashed their spar torpedo into the USS Housatonic outside Charleston, South-Carolina.&nbsp;</p> <p>Interestingly, though, the H.L. Hunley was by far not the only submersible that made waves at that time. In Europe, and in fact in the rebel lands of the Confederacy, inventors had engaged in a flurry of activity and innovation, profoundly speeding up the development stages of the modern submersible.&nbsp;</p> <p>But it was the sound of the explosion and sinking of the USS Housatonic that reverberated in the halls of admiralties everywhere. The future would no longer be how most men wearing navy blue had imagined it.</p> <p>So much happened in such a short time that this episode covers the period between roughly 1850 and 1870.</p> <p>Sources, among many: Farnham Bishop, Simon Lake, Herbert C. Fyfe, Delpeche.</p>