The submarine would be christened H.L. Hunley after its most active supporter. Within days the bulk of the Singer group had made arrangements to join in the venture.

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In late August the hand-cranked submarine, with its buoyant trailing contact mine, made at least three nocturnal attempts against Federal monitors in the harbor. For an unknown reason, however, the group wouldn’t allow a Confederate naval officer to accompany it on patrols. That decision, combined with the fact their various evening expeditions seemed to accomplish nothing, quickly prompted military authorities to seize the submarine and turn it over to the Confederate Navy.

Singer soon received both good and bad news about his inventions and operations. The bad news was that Gus Whitney, one of the original Hunley investors, had died from pneumonia after serving on the vessel. The good news was that, while attending meetings in Richmond, Singer received a Confederate patent for his mine design. After the military seized Hunley, however, an untested crew of Confederate sailors that had volunteered to man the submarine accidentally sank it next to the Fort Johnson docks, with five of the nine men aboard drowning.

Horace Hunley then brought in another crew, headed by Lieutenant George Dixon, from Mobile. At one point, when Dixon was absent, Hunley tried to captain the submarine, but sank it, killing himself and the crew. Once again Hunley had to be raised from the bottom of Charleston Harbor. Its new crew included Lieutenant Dixon, eight volunteers and engineering officer William Alexander. “It was Winter,” Alexander would write later, “therefore necessary that we go out with the ebb and come in with the flood tide, a fair wind and a dark moon.…On several occasions we came to the surface for air, opened the cover and heard the men in the Federal picket boats talking and singing. During this time we went out on an average of four nights a week.”

As Dixon and his crew continued their patrols, Singer returned with some of his men to Charleston and created several new torpedoes to be used on the sub. Back in Richmond, Singer, Dunn and Braman reached an agreement with the Confederate War Department on the construction of a new ironclad torpedo boat.

About this time, Singer received word that Hunley had sunk the Federal steam sloop of war Housatonic on the night of February 17, 1864—the first time a submarine had sunk an enemy ship. From Richmond to the backwater garrisons scattered along the Texas coast, news that an enemy blockader had been sunk by a Confederate sub provided a much-needed shot in the arm for Southern morale.

That euphoria was tempered by the loss of Hunley, which never returned from the successful mission. Its final resting place remained a mystery until the summer of 1995, when adventure novelist and underwater explorer Clive Cussler discovered the sub’s buried remains several miles outside of Charleston Harbor.

In early March Dunn was instructed to take plans for new ironclads and other vital documents to General Magruder’s Houston headquarters. He traveled from Richmond to Mobile. Then, accompanied by a Colonel Ward and a Colonel Clark, two officers attached to a band of Missouri guerrillas, he attempted to cross the Mississippi under cover of darkness. Dunn later admitted, “In crossing the Mississippi River on the night of the 16th instant…I had the misfortune to loose [sic] my papers, having been closely pursued by launches from a gunboat, and fired at three times from a small swivel gun on their bows, before nearing the shore and twice afterwards.”

More than likely, Dunn threw the papers overboard when he was harassed by the Union launches. That proved fortuitous for the Federals, for among the many documents they found floating in the water was Dunn’s list of Southern operatives, including the names of Singer corps members and the names and locations of nearly 50 Rebel agents and saboteurs operating along the Mississippi. Within days Admiral David Porter, the Mississippi Squadron’s flag officer, issued General Orders No. 184, which in addition to listing those names contained a proviso that captured and identified Singer members would be “shot on the spot.”

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