Torpedo History

Brief History of the Torpedo to 1861

     Since there have been ships, someone has tried to destroy them.  Early efforts in Greek and Roman times depended on the use of flammables.  As naval warfare improved, fireships became a staple in the arsenals of nations.  Fireships were loaded with combustibles, set on fire and floated into the fleet of the enemy.  Ships powered by wind and sail used great quantities of tar, rope, and canvas, all very flammable.

     There came a time when the use of explosives to destroy ships arrived.  Efforts in the late 16th Century involved filling ships with gigantic amounts of blackpowder (7,000 to 22,000 pounds) and sending them against obstacles (bridges, forts, ect.) as well as ships.  Most all of these efforts failed as a result of faulty ignition devices and inability to control and steer these bombs.

     The first suitable attempt at submarine destruction of warships was conducted by David Bushnell, an American patriot, during the Revolutionary War.  Bushnell invented and developed a crude submarine,  With the submarine, he expected to navigate underwater to an enemy ship, fix a horological explosive device to the hull of the ship, slip away and watch it explode.  His several attempts, most notably the attempt against the HMS Eagle, a British man-of-war anchored off Governor's Island, New York, were more steps forwardin development than real achivements.

     Bushnell was not deterred in his efforts.  He also developed floating keg mines, which, in December 1777, he floated down the Delaware River toward the British fleet anchored near Philadelphia.  These keg mines were fitted with flintlock firing devices,  One boat was blown up with minimal loss of life.

     Bushnell's other attempt also in 1777, was towing a torpedo to the HMS Cerebus anchored near New York.  Bushnell used a whale boat to get the mine started toward the boat.  He missed.  Interestingly, the mine was fished up by a British Schooner.  While the British sailors were examining the torpedo, they turned some gears which released the flintlock and exploded the torpedo.  Several were killed and the ship was severely injured.

     Bushnell was followed in the early 19th Century by renown American inventor, Robert Fulton.  Among Fulton's interests was torpedoes and submarines.  However, Fulton could not interest the American military in his devices.  Fulton went to Europe and attempted to peddle his devices there.  After several notable failures, he returned to the United States.  Europe was not quite ready for this type of warfare and it was generally regarded as unchivalrous.

     Once again home, Fulton managed to interest US Congress in his plans and received some monies to conduct his experiments.  His plans included defensive torpedoes for harbor defense, a harpon torpedo to attack ships and a bulletproof torpedo boat.  Fulton contemplated the use of electricity to fire torpedoes, but abandoned the effort as unfeasible.  Fulton's experiments failed and interest waned.  Fulton finally gave up on torpedoes and returned to his successful invention, the steamboat.

     Several mine attacks were made during the War of 1812, using some of Fulton's designs, but these failed.  Many were ready to write off torpedoes as a completely useless endeavor.

     After a couple of decades, Samuel Colt, firearms inventor, tried his hand at the torpedo business.  He admittedly springboarded off of Fulton's efforts.  By 1841, he had developed some rudimentary torpedoes fired by electricity, developed significantly since Fulton's time.

    Colt managed a couple of demonstrations during the 1840's, blowing up ships with electrically detonated mines.  Congress was impressed and voted him a considerable sum of money to continue his efforts.

     After several years, a government board issued a scathing report adverse to Colt regarding his work.  He additionally could not account for considerable funds given to him by Congress.  His fight with the government grew and Colt refused to provide them details fo his work.  Finally, the government simply refused to deal with him and torpedoes again fell into disuse.

     Between Colt's time in the early 1850's and the beginning of the American Civil War in 1861, the notable torpedo operations occured in Europe.  During the Schleswig-Holstein War, 1848-1850, a professor Himly developed and used electrically detonated mines in an attempt to destroy the Danish fleet.  Himly's mines were kegs, which had been waterproofed with tar and pitch. Filled with 300 pounds of powder, the were anchored underwater by large weights.  His firing device was a standard direct current system using two wires, one negative and one positive.  Inside the main charge, the wires were connected using a fine platinum wire enclosed in a smaller charge of fine grained poweder.  When current was forced across the platinum wire, it heated and fired the torpedo.  Himly used galvanic cells to provide the electricity.  His cells were of 24 elements.  One kind used beer mugs filled with dilute sulphuric acid and plates of zinc wrapped in copper.  Another used gutta percha boxes filled with dilute sulphuric acid and plates of platinized lead and zinc.

     Himly's mines were marked with small floats.  A man in a boat signaled the approach of the Danes and by pistol shots indicated which mine was to be exploded.  There is no record that anyting happened to the Danish ships as a result of these mines.  At the war's end, the mines were forgotten and a few were recovered.

     The Crimean War, 1854-1856, provided the next big impetus in mine warfare.  The Russians, partly through the inventiveness of Professor Hermann von Jacobi, planted both sea mines and land mines as part of thier defenses in the Crimea.

     The Russian sea mines were wooden containers of blackpowder fired by galvanic cells.  The fuzing system involved small carbon points at the ends of each wire.  The gap between the two carbon points resulted in a spark.  To enhance the spark flame, the Russians covered the gap with antimony sulphide.  Russian torpedo wire was copper wire covered in gutta percha.

     A second fusing system used on both land and sea mines was the Jacobi acid fuze developed by the Russian scientist.  Sulphuric acid was contained in a glass vial or ampule.  When the vial waswas broken by some mechanical action, the acid would mix with potassium chlorate and sugar, creating fire.  The fire, in turn, exploded the blackpowder main charge.  So the Russians hand both contact and command detonated devices.

     The British and the French had intelligence reports concerning Russian hell machines, but dismissed them.  After several of the devices exploded under British warships, with some minor damage, the devices were taken seriously and sweeping operations begun to locate and destroy them.

A Brief History of Confederate Torpedo Warfare, 1861-1865

     At the war's beginning, the Confederate States was an aggregate of several different states eachi with it own military units and organizations.  Once the Confederate government was formed and a navy formally established, an attempt was made to raise officers, men, and ships, for service.  The same was true of the army.

     Matthew F. Maury with the approval of the Confederate government, began immediately experimenting with torpedoes.  His initial attempts were fruitful and his work tended to be primarily with electricity.  He drew several Confederate naval officers (mostly former US Navy officers who had served with him) to the torpedo ranks ona full-time or part-time basis.  These men included Isaac Newton Brown, Hunter Davidson, and Beverly Kennon.  In late 1862, however, Maury was urged to go to England for the purpose of carrying out trials on torpedoes and aiding in purchasing supplies for the Confederacy.  He left Virgina and turned his operation over to Hunter Davidson, who commanded it through the rest of the war.  Davidson was a hands-on commander, supervising the laying of torpedoes in the James River and captaining the CSS Torpedo, a specially designed torpedo craft.  At the war's end, some torpedo personnel assisted Union forces in locating and destroying Confederate torpedoes in commercial waterways.

     General Gabriel J. Raines tinkered incessantly with explosive devices.  Finally, at Yorktown in 1862, he demonstrated thier usefulness as a means of impeding enemy forces and destroying enemy morale.  As soon as General James Lonstreet discovered Raines' activities, he immediately ordered them halted as unmanly warfare.  Raines not to be dissuaded, took the argument to the then Secretary of War, George W. Pandolph.  Randolph, in a moment of political dancing, declared that it was not permissible in warfare to indiscriminately take a life.  However, if taking that life served a true military purpose (like killing a general), then it was acceptable.  Randolph then offered Raines the opportunity to move away from the tactical infantry matters and go to the riverine areas, where torpedoe operations were clearly admissible. Raines left immediately for the rivers.

     In October 1862, partially as a result of General Raines' run-in with General Longstreet over the use of sub-terra shells in the war, Confederate Congress passed a law creating a secret service organization, the Navy's Submarine Battery Service and the Army's Torpedo Bureau.  The General seperation between the navy and the army units was water and land.  However, when it came to riverine warfare, the lines were not so distinct.  As it worked in practice, there some inter-service rivlary, but, for the most part, military units worked together to the common end.

     At Charleston, SC, and Mobile, AL, both types of units worked in the defenses.

     As the fortune of the Confederacy waned, the expertise of the torpedo organizations improved.  By late 1863, both torpedo organizations were rapidly mining land and sea locations much to the detriment of Union forces.  At the end of the war, a witch hunt by Union forces during the investigation of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln decided that the rebel secret service was responsible for the act.  So, arrest warrants were issued and troops sent to round up former torpedo operators and commanders.  Few, if any, were found and arrested.

     Torpedo unit organization ws loose.  Usually one or two officers superivised any number of enlisted personnel.  In those organizations organized under authorization of the secretary of war, it was left to the organizer how to structure his group.  Torpedo Bureau personnel were regarded as member of the Engineer Bureau assigned to special duty with torpedoes.

     And, finally, the contribution of the torpedoes should not be underestimated.  They were used in the hundreds of thousands.  They prevented the taking of a number of Confederate Ports until the absolute end of the war.  They stalled the Union advances on fortified Confederate positions. They had an undoubted morale effect on the Union troops.

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