Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 22.djvu/91

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was cigar-shaped, was noiseless and smokeless, and bore a torpedo in her bow.

Her crew were Glassell, a pilot, and an engineer. She approached her great adversary, which loomed grandly up against the sky, without discovery till close aboard.

Glassell stood in the hatchway with his gun ready, and answered the sharp hail of the officer of the deck by a shot.

At the next instant the torpedo struck the Ironsides abaft the wheel, and wrecked her from stem to stern.

The volume of water thrown up by the explosion overwhelmed the torpedo boat, filled her and extinquished her fires.

Her crew swam away from her. Glassell was picked up, taken aboard ship, and put in irons. .

The other two men escaped discovery, and after swimming a while, found themselves near to the David, which was still floating, water- logged.

They got on her, bailed her out, got up steam, and reached Char- leston before daylight.

The most remarkable career in all torpedo history is that of a lit- tle torpedo boat built in Mobile Bay.

She was made of boiler iron, was cigar-shaped, about thirty- five feet long, five feet deep, two and one- half feet wide.

She was propelled by the manual power of eight men, who, sitting on either side of a long shaft, revolved it, and so worked the propel- ler secured to it.

The captain stood in a circular hatchway, well forward. He steered the boat to right or left, and also regulated the depth at which she would move.

When I saw her trial trip she towed a floated torpedo, dived under a ship, dragging the torpedo, which fairly exploded under the ship's bottom, and blew the fragments one hundred feet into the air.

Not being able to use her against Farragut, I sent her by rail with her trained crew to Beauregard, to be used against the Ironsides, which Glassell had not yet demoralized.

Beauregard called for volunteers to take her into action. Lieuten- ant Payne, of the Confederate navy, a native of Alabama, and eight sailors of the Confederate navy, volunteered to take her.

She lay close by a tug, from which, one by one, the crew de- scended into her, through the little round hatch, and moved on each to his seat.

Payne entered last. He was standing in the hatchway, ready to