Photolysis of Cl-2 initiates the title reaction at a sharply defined collision energy of 0.24+/-0.03 eV. Nascent product rotational state distributions for HCl (v=0) are determined using resonance enhanced multiphoton ionization (REMPI), center-of-mass scattering distributions are measured by the core-extraction technique, and the average internal energy of the C2H5 product is deduced from the dependence of the core-extracted signal on the photolysis polarization. The HCl product has little rotational excitation, but the scattering distribution is nearly isotropic. Although seemingly contradictory, both of these features can be accounted for by using the simple line-of-centers model presented to explain earlier results for the Cl+CH4 reaction. in contrast to the Cl+CH4 reaction, the data suggest that the Cl+C2H6 reaction proceeds through a loosely constrained transition-state geometry. The reactions of atomic chlorine with ethane, C2H6, and perdeuteroethane, C2D6, yield virtually identical results. These findings, along with the low energy deposited by the reaction into the ethyl product (200+/-120 cm(-1)), demonstrate that the alkyl fragment acts largely as a spectator in this hydrogen abstraction reaction.