is system of defense and
personally planted many torpedoes in the Potomac, Rappahannock and the
James. He and Lieut. J. Pembroke Jones succeeded Lieutenant Davidson in
charge of the torpedo defense of the James. A defense in itself
equivalent to a well appointed fleet or army, since, as is well known,
it served 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 was
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 fifteen feet from the
bow, and could be raised or lowered by a line passing back into the
cuddy hole. It was of copper containing 100 pounds of rifle powder and
provided with four sensitive tubes of lead, containing explosive
mixture. A two bladed propellor drove the craft at a six or seven knot
rate. When ready for action the boat was so well submerged that nothing
was visible save the stunt smoke-stack, the hatch combings and