were carried on in shallow water at Charleston, mark one of the
bright pages in our seafaring annals, as crew after crew went into the
boat facing practically certain death to the end that the craft might be
made effective. Each time the vessel sank she was raised, the dead crew
taken out, and a new experiment with a new crew made. In all
thirty-three men were sacrificed before it was finally decided that the
boat could make her way out to the blockading line. It was on the night
of February 17, 1864, that the _Hunley_ set out on her last journey. The
vessel submerged, reached the side of the United States steamship
_Housatonic_, and successfully exploded a mine against the hull of the
Federal war-ship, sending her to the bottom.

But in the explosion the submersible herself was sunk and all on board
were lost. The commander of the expedition was Lieutenant George E.
Dixon, of Alabama, who with his crew well appreciated their danger. It
is supposed that the _Hunley_ was drawn down in the suction of the
sinking war-ship; she could not arise from the vortex, and that was the
last of her and of her brave crew. The North was tremendously excited
over the incident and the South elated, but no other ship was attacked
from beneath the water in the course of the war.

Holland's boat, built in 1877, was the first to use a gas-engine as a
propulsive medium, but it was not until the final adoption of the
gas-engine for surface work, followed later by the internal-combustion
gasoline-engine and the use of electric storage-battery for subsurface
work, as well as the invention of the periscope and various other
devices, that the submarine was developed to a present state of
effectiveness, which sees it crossing the Atlantic from Germany,
operating off our shores and returning to Germany without being obliged
to put into port; which, also, sees it capable of navigating under water
at a speed of from seven to nine knots, with torpedoes ready for use in
the tubes and guns of effective caliber mounted on deck. It has, indeed,
been asserted that the airplane and the submarine have relegated the
battleship to the limbo of desuetude: but as to that the continued
control of the seas by Great Britain with her immense battle-fleet,
supplemented by our tremendous engines of war, certainly argues for no
such theory. What the future may bring forth in the way of submarines,
armored and of great size, no man may say. But at present the submarine,