Page:Brief Sketch of Work of Matthew Fontaine Maury 1861-65.pdf/8

 or manning one; the North had all the old navy fully armed and equipped, with unlimited means for making more.

Penetrated as the country is by innumerable navigable waters, and save at the entrance of a few of her largest rivers, altogether unfortified, he urged that the only available defense was to mine the channel ways with torpedoes, floating and fixed, which should be exploded by contact or by electricity, when the enemy attempted to pass. At that time there was nothing save a few shore batteries to prevent any ship whose captain was bold enough to run past their fires from ascending James River to Richmond, or from reaching any other maritime town in the South. Fortunately there were but few bold enough for the attempt.

In the beginning there was much prejudice against this mode of warfare, which, notwithstanding, has since, under Captain Maury's instruction, become the chief reliance of most maratine [sic] nations. It was considered uncivilized warfare thus to attack and destroy an unsuspecting enemy and the United States, and many of her naval officers were specially loud in their denunciations of those who resorted to it. There was official apathy too, and opposition of friends, but regardless of such, he proceeded to experiment and demonstrate, and with such success that in time the nations of Europe became his pupils, and there were hosts of followers and fellow-workers at home, and the Confederate Congress appropriated six millions of dollars for torpedoes.

His initial experiment to explode minute charges of powder under water, were made with an ordinary tub in his chamber at the house of his cousin, Robert H. [HENRY] Maury, a few doors from the Museum in Richmond, Va. The tanks for actual use were made at the Tredegar