Submarines Photos?

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Civil War Submarines???

 

When I wrote Photographer... Under Fire the Story of George S. Cook (1819 –1902), I submitted it to the publisher knowing there were still mysteries to be solved about George Smith Cook. History is never finished; there are always more mysteries to any history.

When you read Photographer ... Under Fire, and especially when you think about the pictures a photographer during the Civil War might take, you may wonder:

  • Were submarines during the Civil War real or merely figments of Yankee imagination? 
  • Were submarines actually used during the Civil War or simply an imaginary device that brought fear to the sailor during the horrible days of warfare that took place on this continent?

One very tangible bit of evidence that such devices as submarines were used is a photograph of members of the Cook family having a picnic before a beached “sub-surface” hull, a photograph that is a part of the Valentine Museum collection in Richmond, which houses thousands of Cook photos, many a part of Huestis Cook’s collected pictures.  Huestis Cook, my uncle, my mother’s brother, was the son of George LaGrange Cook (George L. Cook) and the grandson of George Smith Cook (George S. Cook). LaGrange worked with his father, George L. Cook, in maintaining the Cook Studios and later, after the death of both his grandfather (George S.) and his father (George L. Cook), in collecting together the pictures taken by his grandfather and his father for transfer to the Valentine Museum. The photograph of the picnic in the shadow of the submarine was reproduced by the Museum staff and appears on page sixty-six of Photographer… Under Fire. It was always assumed that my mother, Lilian Cook Ramsay, and others of the family were in the picture, my mother as a young girl. If so, that would mean that this picture was taken at least 30 years after the end of the war. She was born in 1891 and I am not perfect in guessing the age of young girls. In any case, this picture gives concrete evidence that such devices were in use during the great conflict and remained on the beach after the war as evidence. 

Another bit of evidence is a picture of the Hundley that is often produced as complete verification of submersible devices.  Whether or not this was a photo taken by Cook is an interesting question. The Hundley picture may have been a photo by Cook.  The fire that swept through the city of Columbia during Sherman’s occupation of the city could have destroyed a glass plate of the Hundley. I believe this was the case and the actual glass plates could have included the picture of the Hundley and the original could have been lost to the flames that were clearly able to destroy a major part of Cook’s massive collection. The family always believed that Sherman intentionally targeted for destruction the Cook Studio in Columbia. Cook had moved both his family and his studio from Charleston to Columbia to escape the war. Charleston was spared and Columbia burned in what seemed to Southerners an attempt to destroy “everything in his path” even though Sherman always denied that the fire was anything other than “an act of God”. A picture of the Hundley would have been the type of thing that Cook enjoyed picturing.  There is no possibility that Mathew Brady took the picture since he never ventured that far into the South and was indeed too blind to have taken such a picture.

 

Whether or not there were submarines during the Civil War is one of “Histories Mysteries”. The use of such a device would have been subject to cover up during war, which would have been the reason for obscuring the facts needed for proof.  By the time the Cook family picnic occurred on a Charleston beach the fear of prosecution would have ceased to exist.

 

Another important factor needed to prove the existence of submarines would be the question of who operated the submarines and how they did it. Using a submersible war ship took a great deal of courage. Most who dared to engage in such warfare literally took their lives in their hands as lack of adequate breathing equipment killed most of those who dared the process. Those who did survive were loath to admit their complicity.  

 

Thus the mystery of submarines during the Civil War continues to thrive through the years.   

Comments by Jack Ramsay, Jr.

December 29, 2006

 

 


Photographer Cook

 

Geo. S. Cook - Who Is He?

 

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The Cook Mysteries

 

 

 

 

Photographer .. Under Fire

THE STORY OF GEORGE S. COOK

by Jack C. Ramsay, Jr.

 

 

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