The Steampunk Confederacy

This chapter focuses on the Hunley submarine, which had sunk nose-first into the floor of Charleston Harbor on October 15, 1863, taking its captain and crew with it. The Hunley became one of the most important vehicles through which Confederate memory addressed the process of technological change. The insistence of millennial Confederate memory that the Hunley was “literally fifty years ahead of her time” closely resembled the simultaneous steampunk fad, which used the mid-nineteenth century as a standpoint from which to imagine futuristic contraptions historically realized in later periods and different forms. Adapted from a steam boiler, the hand-cranked vessel aptly fit the pseudo-Victorian aesthetic. The promotion of the fish-boat addressed a culture enthralled by new devices for communication and entertainment. Once more aligning commemoration with technological change, South Carolina relaunched the H. L. Hunley as the flagship of the steampunk Confederacy.