Secret Weapon of the Confederacy

I was lucky enough to find this film on a streaming service used by the college where I teach US history. It appears to me to be a high-quality National Geographic production, which puzzles me about the negative reviews and claims of inaccuracy. The Housatonic was targeted because it was the flagship (command and control) and the largest vessel in the flotilla blockading Charleston harbor. No, the Housatonic was not a battleship, but larger ships with bigger guns, of that era were, designated as "Ships of the Line of Battle" which was shortened to "Battleship" in the twentieth century. So, yes battleships did exist at that time. The film's narrative was based more around the science of recovery and excavation as well as the value of the Hunley as an historical artifact, than anything else. Not as bad as others would have you believe. Historically accurate and not melodramatic.

It is dramatises the history events to a point of fiction. Case in point USS Housatonic was a sloop of war not a 'battleship' (which wasn't even a ship class in the 1860s but never mind). As a lover of history I found this very irritating and disappointing.

The confederates were fighting for slavery and are celebrated like heroes that stuck it to the man, like "David versus Goliath".