attack and destroy an unsuspecting enemy, and
the United States, and many of her naval officers were specially loud in
their denunciations of those who resorted to it. There was official
apathy too, and opposition of friends, but regardless of such, he
proceeded to experiment and demonstrate, and with such success that in
time the nations of Europe became his pupils, and there were hosts of
followers and fellow-workers at home, and the Confederate Congress
appropriated six millions of dollars for torpedoes.

His initial experiments to explode minute charges of powder under water,
were made with an ordinary tub in his chamber at the house of his
cousin, Robert H. Maury, a few doors from the Museum in Richmond, Va.
The tanks for actual use were made at the Tredegar Works, and at the
works of Talbott and Son on Cary Street; the batteries were loaned by
the Richmond Medical College, which also freely tendered the use of its
laboratory. In the early summer of 1861 the Secretary of the Navy, the
Governor of Virginia, the chairman of the Committee of Naval Affairs,
and other prominent officials were asked by him to witness a trial and
an explosion of torpedoes in James River at Rocketts.

The torpedoes were composed of two small kegs of rifle powder, weighted to
sink a few feet below the surface. They were fitted with hair triggers
and friction primers, and thirty feet of lanyard attached to the
triggers connected the keys. When in use they were to be set afloat in
the channel way as near as possible to a vessel and to drift down with
the current until the connecting lanyard fouled the anchor chain, or the
bow of the vessel and the kegs swung around against her side when the
tightened lanyard would fire the trigger and cause the torpedo to
explode. So the Patrick Henry's gig was borrowed, with a couple of
sailors to pull, and the torpedo having been embarked, with the trigger
at half-cock, Captain Maury and the writer got on board and were rowed
out to the buoy just opposite where the James River Steamboat Company's
wharf now is, where the invited spectators stood to witness the
explosion. The triggers were then set, the kegs carefully lowered into
the water, taking great care not to strain the lanyard, all was cast
off, the boat pulled clear, and we waited to see the torpedo float down
until the buoy was reached, the lanyard foul strain and explode the
torpedo. But there was delay, the lanyard fouled the buoy all right, the