When proxying SSL, does it tunnel SSL to proxy?

[David Wall]

I have a Java client (Apache SOAP 2.2) using JSSE 1.0.2 for HTTPS URLs to my web service.  The client is behind a proxy server (netscape?).  The connection to the proxy is always over port 80, even though my code is connecting to an HTTPS port 443 URL.   What I've found is that when I use an HTTP port 80 url to our service, it is able to communicate okay.  But when I try to connect over HTTPS, the communications never takes place.  (Mind you, this works fine for HTTPS when there's no proxy server in the middle -- that is, the client is able to communicate directly with SSL.)   From the Apache source, I'm not sure, but is the communications from the client to the proxy server encrypted with SSL already, or is that done in the clear with the expectation that the proxy server will then initiate the SSL connection to my SOAP server?  What is the SOAP code doing when the URL says use HTTPS, but the proxy configuration says to communicate over port 80 to the proxy server.   It's a question of SSL tunneling versus HTTPS proxying.   Thanks, David