Patrick, and the unnamed vessel or vessels constructed at the Tredegar Iron Works, were either built at government facilities or with the assistance of military personnel.Submersible construction efforts in the Southern Confederacy were basically centered in four areas: at the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, Virginia, at the Leeds Foundry in New Orleans, Louisiana, at the Park & Lyons Machine Shops in Mobile, Alabama, and at the Confederate naval facilities at Selma, Alabama. Whereas the US Navy's submersible development efforts were laboriously slow and generally less successful than those of their Southern counterparts, within the Confederate States there rapidly emerged a somewhat more widespread and independant interest in submersible construction which localized in a number of coastal and riverine cities.Īt least four Confederate boats, American Diver, H.L. Confederate successes with torpedo boats were few.Įfforts to develop fully submersible boats began on both sides as early as 1861. Generally powered by steam, a few Davids were powered by oars or a screw turned by the crew. Most were about five feet in diameter and about 48 feet long with a 14-foot-long spar for the torpedo, but one captured at the end of the war was 160 feet long and 11.5 feet in diameter. The more sophisticated Davids were semi-submersible, with a cylindrical hull that was ballasted by iron or by water (via pumps), enabling them to ride low in the water. These were designed to ride low in the water, to make them hard to detect. Initially the the torpedo boat were rowboats, but these were soon followed by models powered by steam, either with an open deck (CSS Squib class) or partially covered with wood or iron (CSS Torch class). Lee, a Confederate Army engineer, concluded that the best way to use the torpedo offensively would be to mount it on a spar forward of the bow of a boat and deliver it by ramming - a torpedo ram or torpedo boat. A fading but still remembered tradition of government-sanctioned privateering was revitalized through congressional legislation providing for the issuance of letters of marque by the Confederate government.Ĭonfederate torpedo boats emerged as the South attempted to find ways to use torpedoes as offensive weapons. The private Confederate initiatives were primarily spurred by motives of both nationalism and profit. While Federal development efforts were burdened with conventional naval bureaucratic processes of contracting and evaluation, the Confederate efforts were able to benefit from a quick application of private initiative, which was in turn met with swift support from a government unburdened with the traditional bureaucracy of the type extant in the North.
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