Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 31.djvu/340

332 compelled to adopt our system, although at first denouncing it as barbarous and heathenish.

Captain Maury's experience and studies had now made him the chief authority upon the new weapon, so that when after the war he retuned to Europe, he was requested by the Emperor Napoleon to explain to him its merits. He did so, and for the Emperor's benefit had an explosion in the Seine at St. Cloud, the Emperor himself firing the charge. Subsequently, by request of the several governments, he instructed and imparted his knowledge of torpedoes and their use to representatives of France, England, Russia, Holland and Germany, all of whom adopted his plan, and made the torpedo one of the chief branches of their armament. But, as yet with every advantage, with earnest desire and constant effort to excel, none have done as well with these Virginia weapons as did the Confederate States navy forty years ago.

[An editorial in the Times-Dispatch, February 20, 1904, elicited the following communication which definitely settles the question in issue.—E]

S—Your answer this morning to a recent article in the New York Tribune (which I have not seen), concerning torpedoes, stating that they were "only successfully employed two or three times by the Confederates," suggests additional facts in further refutation of a statement utterly erroneous. Two or three citations to the veritable records of the time abundantly show, save to those so blind that they will not see, that the writer of the article in the Tribune is altogether mistaken.

No matter when or by whom the idea of using torpedoes as weapons of war first occurred, and undoubtedly it has occurred to many, in one form or another—all practical for actual use—ever since the "engineer was hoist with his own petard," it cannot be successfully denied now that their use was introduced with the Confederate navy here in Richmond by Captain Matthew F. Maury, of Virginia, and that through his efforts and with the hearty and skillful assistance of many of his younger brother officers, who had been the very flower and life of the old navy, and were the best of sailors and patriots in the Confederate service, torpedoes were first successfully utilized in actual war by the Confederate navy, whose example in this and other respects has been imitated by every maritime nation.

The writer of the Tribune article in stating torpedoes were "