em, say $20,000 or $30,000 for each, adding, "they are worth
more than that to us."

About the same time Admiral Farragut, who had little faith in torpedoes
at first, and who like other naval officers had denounced their use by
the Confederates, and ordered that no quarter should be shown those
captured operating them, also applied to be furnished them, saying,
"Torpedoes are not so very agreeable when used on both sides, therefore,
I have reluctantly brought myself to it. I have always deemed it
unworthy of a chivalrous nation, but it does not do to give your enemy
such a decided superiority over." And the Government of the United
States, who had savagely denounced the Confederates for using them, now
invited plans from inventors and mechanics for their construction, and
operation, and soon supplied them abundantly to Army and Navy--adopting
generally the Confederates as the best.

In August, 1864, the Federal fleet advanced upon Fort Morgan at the
entrance of Mobile Bay, the line being led by "Tecumseh," the newest and
most powerful of the enemy's ironclads, which was completely destroyed
by a torpedo planted under the direction of General Raines, Chief of the
Confederate Army Torpedo Bureau. She sunk in a moment, carrying down
with her her entire crew of one hundred and forty souls, save about
fifteen or twenty who escaped by swimming to Fort Morgan.

This was the greatest achievement of a single torpedo during our war and
served to stimulate the Confederate authorities to renewed vigour.
Thenceforward, the Bay of Mobile and adjacent waters became the chief
scenes of torpedo operation. Genl. Maury stated that he had caused to be
placed 180 in her channel and waterways, that they held the powerful
fleet of Admiral Farragut for ten months at bay, and destroyed fully a
dozen United States vessels, of which six were gunboats and four were
monitors. Regular torpedo stations were established in Richmond,
Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah and Mobile, at which sixty naval
officers and men were on duty, preparing these new engines of war. The
channel-ways, rivers and harbours were protected by them from Virginia
to Texas. Sometimes a hundred were taken out of James River in a single
day, and when the Southern seaports fell hundreds of torpedoes were
found floating in their waters ready to explode upon the first contact.
At first the older Confederate officers who regarded them with
disfavour, as Captain Wm. H. Parker says he