hipman Mason,
and the boat crews associated on duty with me.

I am, sir respectfully your obedient servant,

R. D. MINOR,

Lieutenant C. S. Navy.

Commander M. F. Maury, C. S. Navy,

Fredericksburg, Va.

The torpedoes used by Captain Maury in his attack upon the "Minnesota,"
at Fortress Monroe, and by Lieutenant Minor upon the "Congress," off
Newport News, were as follows: They were in pairs connected by a span
500 feet long. The span was floated on the surface by corks, and the
torpedo, containing 200 pounds of powder, also floated at a depth of
twenty feet. Empty barregas, painted lead color, so as not readily to be
seen, serving for the purpose.

The span was connected with a trigger in the head of each barrel, so set
and arranged that when the torpedo being let go in a tideway under the
bows and athwart the hawser had fouled, they would be drifted alongside,
and so drifted would tauten the span and set off the fuse, which was
driven precisely as a ten second shot fuse, only it was calculated to
burn fifty-four seconds, because it could not be known exactly in which
part of the sweep alongside the strain would be sufficient to set off
the trigger. That they did not explode was attributed to the fact that
the fuse would not burn under a pressure of twenty feet of water, which
conjecture was confirmed by after experiments, when it was found that
the fuse would very surely at a depth of fifteen feet but never at
twenty. Sometime after these torpedoes were found down the bay by the
enemy. Spans, barrels, barregas and carried to Washington--thus the
enemy forewarned, forestalled further attempts of this character by
dropping the end of his lower studding sail boom in the water every
night, and anchoring boats, or beams ahead.

To obtain insulated wire, of which the South had none, an agent was sent
secretly to New York, but without success, and as there was neither
factory nor material for its manufacture in the Confederacy, the
difficulties of preparing electrical torpedoes, to which Captain Maury
attached the most importance and greatly preferred, seemed insuperable,
until by a remarkable piece of good fortune, in the following spring, it
happened that the enemy, attempting to lay across Chesapeake Bay were
forced to abandon the attempt and left their wire to the mercy of the
waves, which cast it upon the beach near Norfolk, where, by the kindness
of a friend, it was secured for Captain Maury's use. With part