Rick — checked my books last night and found info that pretty closely resembled what rangeroger posted above. I also found some sketches, but there is little that can't be described almost as vividly as a picture would show it. The Hunley (according to all my souces) was 25 feet long, not 40 as mentioned in several earlier posts. It was made from a boiler that was cut lengthwise, fitted with tapered ends and welded back together. There were two small hatch/conning towers (about eight inches high), one at each end, from which the captain could see upward and forward through glass plates.

A ballast bar was fitted on the bottom that could be released by unscrewing bolts from inside and there were ballast tanks fitted on the sides. These could be flooded by simply opening seacocks and purged by hand pumps inside the sub.

Flooding the ballast tanks would take the Hunley just a few inches below the surface, then the diving planes were used to take it deeper or bring it back up — which, of course, required forward motion to make them operate.

There was a snorkle tube to bring in air while they were running shallow enough.

At the rear, mounted in front of the rudder and enclosed by an iron ring, was the propeller attached to a metal rod that was bent to resemble a skinny version of a car's crankshaft. With the full complement of crew working it could make just under four knots.

There was one other little point where my most trusted source differed with Rangeroger's. Burke Davis, in his book The Civil War: Strange & Fascinating Facts, says the Hunley was never a commissioned Confederate Navy ship. Hunley and the others involved were privateers who had license to sink union warships as prizes with the adjunct benefit of helping P.G.T. Beauregard break the blockade of Charleston Harbor. Some of her crews were volunteers from the CSA army and navy, but I believe some were civilians. Her commander when she went down was Lieutenant John Payne, an infantry officer.

david