page_title: Confederate States Navy
section_title: Torpedo service
hierarchical_section_title: Confederate States Navy / History / Torpedo service
caption_attribution_description: English: Inscribed above image: Infernal machines discovered in the Potomac [near Aquia] Creek by the flotilla for whose destruction they were intended. Sketched by A. Waud from a photograph by James F. Gibson. Inscribed right with arrow leading to a frigate: Pawnee. Inscribed vertically left margin: gunboat Freeborn / Capt Ward. Published with descriptive text in: New York Illustrated News, July 22, 1861, p. 177 (Cover).
context_page_description: The Navy of the Confederate States was the Navy of the Confederate States of America. After the Confederacy established itself in 1861, the elected president, Jefferson Davis appointed Stephen Mallory as his Secretary of the Confederate Navy. At the time the South had no ships capable of challenging the United States Navy's frigates. It did not have the shipbuilding capability or the raw materials necessary to build a navy. While they had limited resources, and did not have the firepower of the Union Navy, they developed a number of technologies. The Confederates developed naval mines, ironclad techniques and managed to sink a Union warship with a working submarine.
context_section_description: A modern torpedo is a cigar-shaped, self-propelled, underwater explosive device designed to destroy another ship or submarine. During the Civil War, what was then called a torpedo would be best described as a naval mine.Confederate president Davis was opposed to their use. He thought they were cowardly weapons and it was unethical to use them against anyone. Despite Davis' objections, the Congress of the Confederate States passed a law authorizing rewards for anyone inventing new ways to blow up enemy vessels using submersibles and mines.
  In St. Louis, Missouri Confederates were hiding explosives in the firewood used to fuel the boilers of Union steamships on the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. In 1861, Matthew Fontaine Maury first used mines as a weapon against enemy ships. In Virginia, his "infernal machines" made the James River almost completely impassible. 
  Another invention was the coal torpedo. Disguised to look like a lump of coal it exploded when shoveled into a boiler. Another invention was called the "horological torpedo". It had a timer that allowed a delay in the explosion. They also developed better fuses and more powerful explosives. 
  Underwater mines were used by both sides. The Confederacy had more success. In 1862 Confederate mines sank the Union ironclad, the USS Cairo. The destroyed or damaged dozens more Union ships while Union torpedo mines sank only about six Confederate naval ships.
caption: Sketch of one of Muray's "infernal machines" found in the Potomac River
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