Page:Brief Sketch of Work of Matthew Fontaine Maury 1861-65.pdf/20

 or army, since, as is well known to keep the enemy out of Richmond till the close of the war, and converted them into earnest advocates of its use.

General Raines, chief of the Army Torpedo Bureau, had early adopted as the best form of torpedo, the beer barrel filled with powder and fitted with a percussion primer at each end. They were set adrift in pairs down the river by the hundred to be carried by current and tide against the enemy's ships below. Though many necessarily failed and drifted out to sea, if but a single one in a great number succeeded the Confederacy was well repaid. At times as many as a hundred a day were caught by the enemy's netting set out for that purpose in the James River alone.

Captain Francis D. Lee, of General Beauregard's staff, recommended the spar torpedo, which was very successfully used, especially in the waters around Charleston. It was a case to contain seventy pounds of powder set on the end of a twenty foot spar and rigged on the bow of a boat. It was exploded by contact on the side of the vessel attacked.

In 1862 Dr. St. Julien Ravenal, Mr. Theodore Stoney and other gentlemen of Charleston, after consultation with Captain Maury, designed and had constructed a semi-submarine torpedo boat the first of its type. It called the "David," for it was intended to attack the Goliath of the federal blockading fleet. After its remarkable experience and success, its name was used as the name for its type and the Confederacy had many "Davids" on the stock when the war ended. It was cigar shaped, twenty feet long, five in diameter at the center. The boiler was forward, the miniature engine aft, and between them a cuddy hole for captain and crew. The torpedo was carried on a spar protruding