The _David_ was a cigar-shaped steam launch, fifty-four feet long and six feet broad at the thickest point. Projecting from her bow was a fifteen-foot spar, with a torpedo charged with sixty pounds of gunpowder at the end of it. This was exploded by the heat given off by certain chemicals, after they were shaken up together by the impact of the torpedo against the enemy’s ship. The _David_, steaming at her full speed of seven knots an hour, struck squarely against the _New Ironsides_ at the water-line and rebounded to a distance of seven or eight feet before this clumsy detonator could do its work. When the explosion came, the intervening body of water prevented it from doing any great damage. The _David_ was not a true submarine but a surface torpedo boat, that could be submerged till only the funnel and a small pilot-house were exposed. A number of other _Davids_ were built and operated by the Confederate States navy, but the first of them was the only one to accomplish anything. [Illustration: C. S. S. _Hundley_. The Only Submarine to sink a Hostile Warship before the Outbreak of the Present War.] The one real submarine possessed by the Confederacy was not a _David_, though she is usually so called. This was the C.S.S. _Hundley_, a hand-power “diving-boat” not unlike Fulton’s _Nautilus_, but very much clumsier and harder to manage. She had ballast tanks and a pair of diving-planes for steering her up and down, and she was designed to attack an enemy’s ship by swimming under it, towing a torpedo that would explode on striking her opponent’s keel. The _Hundley_ was built at Mobile, Alabama, by the firm of Hundley and McKlintock, named for the senior partner, and brought to Charleston on a flatcar. There she was manned by a crew of nine volunteers, eight of whom sat in a row and turned the cranks on the propellor-shaft, while the ninth man steered. There was no conning-tower and the forward hatchway had to be left open for the helmsman to look out of while running on the surface. On the _Hundley’s_ first practice cruise, the wash from the paddle-wheels of a passing steamer poured suddenly down the open hatchway. Only the steersman and commanding officer, Lieutenant Payne, had time to save himself before the submarine sank, drowning the rest of her crew. The boat was raised and Payne took her out with a new crew. This time a sudden squall sank her before they could close the hatches, and Payne escaped, with two of his men. He tried a third time, only to be capsized off Fort Sumter, with the loss of four of his crew. On the fourth trip, the hatches were closed, the tanks filled, and an attempt was made to navigate beneath the surface. But the _Hundley_ dived too suddenly, stuck her nose deep into the muddy bottom, and stayed there till her entire crew were suffocated. On the fifth trial she became entangled in the cable of an anchored vessel, with the same result.