[155] city of Charleston), the steamer engaged in that duty being swung around by the returning tide, struck and exploded one of the torpedoes just anchored. The steamer sank immediately, but, fortunately, the tide being low and the depth of water not great. no lives were lost. In 1863-4, Jacksonville, Florida, having been evacuated by the Confederates, then too weak to hold it longer, the Federal gunboats frequently ran up the St. John's river many miles, committing depredations along its banks. To stop these proceedings I sent a party from Charleston under a staff officer, Captain Pliny Bryan, to plant torpedoes in the channels of that stream. The result was the destruction of several large steamers and a cessation of all annoyance on the part of the others. In the bay of Charleston and adjacent streams I had planted about one hundred and twenty-five torpedoes and some fifty more in other parts of my department. The first torpedoes used in the late war were placed in the James river, below Richmond, by General G. R. Raines, who became afterward chief of the Torpedo Bureau. Mr. Barbarin, of New Orleans, placed also successfully a large number of torpedoes in Mobile bay and its vicinity. To show the important results obtained by the use of torpedoes by the Confederates and the importance attached, now, at the North to that mode of warfare, I will quote here the following remarks from an able article in the last September number of the Galaxy, entitled, Has the day of great Navies past? The author says:
The real application of submarine warfare dates from the efforts of the Confederates during the late war. In October, 1862, a “torpedo bureau” was established at Richmond, which made rapid progress in the construction and operations of these weapons until the close of the war in 1865. Seven Union ironclads, eleven wooden war vessels, and six army transports were destroyed by Southern torpedoes, and many more were seriously damaged. This destruction occurred, for the most part, during the last two years of the war, and it is suggestive to think what might have been the influence on the Union cause if the Confederate practice of submarine warfare had been nearly as efficient at the commencement as it was at the close of the war. It is not too much to say, respecting the blockade of the Southern ports, that if not altogether broken up, it would have been rendered so inefficient as to have commanded no respect from European powers, while the
