Date: 02/12/2025
Time: 6:30pm to 8:00pm
Presenter: Navy (SW) Captain Paul “Bob” Kennedy
Presenter Bio: Bob Kennedy hails from the Tarheel State but has lived all over the world. He moved with his wife Paula from Greensboro NC to the Suffolk area during early summer 2023.
Bob’s professional career started when he enlisted in the U.S. Navy after finishing high school. This commenced a wonderful 37-year journey of adventures around the globe. After 7 years of enlisted service, he was selected for an officer commissioning program where he attended USC (the real one in South Carolina) to finish his undergraduate degree in Business Administration. After attending Officer Candidate School, he was commissioned a U.S. Navy Ensign line officer. Shortly thereafter, Bob proudly earned the designation as a Surface Warfare Officer which led to multiple Navy job assignments during the next three decades as he moved up the ranks. These included sea duty in numerous combatant ships, attending the Naval War College, 4 college level teaching positions ashore, major staff duties, plus commanding officer assignments in Bahrain and Guam. The Kennedy family spent the final 13 years of this great experience in various overseas locations that culminated with Bob’s retirement as a Navy Captain at Singapore in 2012. After Navy retirement, he worked for Bank of America until fully retiring in May 2023.
Bob and Paula have 4 adult children (2 sons and 2 daughters) and 5 grandchildren scattered across the Southeast. He loves serving as a volunteer docent and tour guide onboard USS WISCONSIN at Norfolk’s Nauticus which helps fill the battleship tour he never got on active duty. He also serves as a tour guide for the Naval Station Norfolk bus tours. He loves to travel especially when the destination has interesting history, good wineries, great seafood or hopefully all three!
Lecture Topic:
H. L. Hunley, also known as the Hunley, CSS H. L. Hunley, or CSS Hunley, was a submarine of the Confederate States of America that played a small part in the American Civil War. Hunley demonstrated the advantages and dangers of undersea warfare. She was the first combat submarine to sink a warship (USS Housatonic), although Hunley was not completely submerged and, following her attack, was lost along with her crew before she could return to base. Twenty-one crewmen died in the three sinkings of Hunley during her short career. She was named for her inventor, Horace Lawson Hunley, shortly after she was taken into government service under the control of the Confederate States Army at Charleston, South Carolina.
Hunley, nearly 40 ft (12 m) long, was built at Mobile, Alabama, and launched in July 1863. She was then shipped by rail on 12 August 1863 to Charleston. Hunley (then referred to as the "fish boat", the "fish torpedo boat", or the "porpoise") sank on 29 August 1863 during a test run, killing five members of her crew. She sank again on 15 October 1863, killing all eight of her second crew, including Horace Lawson Hunley himself, who was aboard at the time, even though he was not a member of the Confederate military. Both times Hunley was raised and returned to service.
On 17 February 1864, Hunley attacked and sank the 1,240-ton United States Navy[2] screw sloop-of-war Housatonic, which had been on Union blockade-duty in Charleston's outer harbor. Hunley did not survive the attack and sank, taking all eight members of her third crew with her, and was lost.
Finally located in 1995, Hunley was raised in 2000 and is on display in North Charleston, South Carolina, at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center on the Cooper River. Examination in 2012 of recovered Hunley artifacts suggested that the submarine was as close as 20 ft (6.1 m) to her target, Housatonic, when her deployed torpedo exploded, which caused the submarine's sinking.[3]