Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[800] and buildings of all sorts, in kind with an explosion of a cannon, in degree according to the mass exploded, and to the instantaneousness of the ignition of the explosive.

I had never supposed, and I do not now suppose, that the explosion of any mass of a size that could be conveyed there to be exploded within two or three hundred yards of Fort Fisher, would blow down its bastions, many feet thick of earth, or blow down its bomb-proofs, some of them ten or twelve feet of earth, or be likely to dismantle any of its cannon en barbette. Nor did I believe that the proper explosion could be got from that powder from a vessel anchored in thirty-six feet of water, because the explosion of the first ton would stave the vessel all to pieces, or at least blow all the rest of the powder out of it into the sea to be lost. My proposition to the Navy Department contemplated using but one hundred tons of powder. But they immediately suggested more to the amount of three hundred tons, to make it certain, although I believe, properly exploded, one hundred tons would have done all that was required. My plan was that this one hundred tons of powder should be put into a light-draught steamer, and arranged and packed in such a way that either by electrical or other apparatus fire could be communicated all through the vessel into every part of the mass of powder at one and nearly the same instant; that that vessel should be run ashore; that time fuses or other means of calculating the time necessary for the explosion should be put in operation, and that with the vessel hard and fast on shore so that none of the powder substantially could go down into the water until it had time to take fire, the whole mass should explode. The effect that I expected from that was that the gases from the burning powder would so disturb the air as to render it impossible for men to breathe within two hundred yards; that the magazines of the fort would be burst in and possibly the magazines themselves be exploded; that by the enormous missiles that would be set in motion, and by the concussion, many men would be killed, and if the explosion were to be followed immediately by an attack of even a small number of effective men, the fort could be captured.

If this experiment had been carried out with anything of the intelligence with which the plans of it were devised,--for it was turned over to the experts and ordnance officers of the navy — there