At the opening of the American Civil War, Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his people faced an enemy that had a substantially larger and fully ocean-going navy and was wedded to a strategic “Anaconda Plan” of defeating the Confederacy by economic strangulation through a naval blockading of all of its ports.

Like their forefathers, the Confederates used the technology of the 19^th Century’s Industrial Revolution to even the odds by engineering an up-to-date version of a Revolutionary War weapon, the torpedo.

The term “torpedo” here applies to any explosive device triggered either remotely or by its own internal fuse.

With the Civil War entering its second year, the Confederate government set up two separate bureaus in Richmond, VA to expedite development and deployment of the torpedo on land and sea. 

The first was the Confederate Army’s Torpedo Bureau under general Gabriel Rains. It dealt with the development and use of self-contained “sub-terra” torpedoes, known today as land mines or improvised explosive devices (IED’s).

The second bureau was the Submarine Battery Service commanded by Matthew Fontaine. Maury. A commander in the US Navy, Maury as a Virginian resigned his commission and offered his services to the fledgling Confederate Navy. Placed in charge of the Submarine Battery Service, Maury gathered a number of former US Navy officers who had “Gone South” when the war started, using their engineering knowledge to develop devices that would protect the shores and waterways of the Confederacy from Union naval incursion.

Over the course of the Civil War, the dependability and destructive power of torpedoes, both static and mobile, was instrumental in sinking 27 Union vessels and severely damaging 48 more; a proud and fearsome record indeed.

This article will focus on two designs that are used by the Confederacy in the game “Infernal Machine: Dawn of Submarine Warfare.”

Whether on land or the water, the torpedo has a fairly simple design. A waterproof container is packed tight with finely-ground or “mealed” gunpowder. A fuse, the firing mechanism to ignite the gunpowder, is installed and the torpedo’s container is sealed tight.

A typical fuse could be as simple as a slow-burning cotton rope soaked in flammable chemicals. It could be a mechanical, “gunlock–type” fuse. It could be chemically triggered, or by using a timing device or by using a friction fuse trigger mechanism. Any and all would cause the torpedo to explode.

(Gunpowder does not detonate: it “deflagrates.” Its explosive force is created by very rapid burning of its component chemicals at the physical level. By comparison, trinitrotoluene (TNT) “detonates;” its explosive force is caused by a rate of reaction occurring at the molecular level.)

The design most familiar to contemporary historians is the so-called Rains torpedo, created by the Torpedo Bureau’s chief, Gabriel Rains.

The Rains torpedo is easily identified by its conical – shaped friction fuses affixed to both ends of a keg of gunpowder, creating the torpedo’s familiar lozenge-shape.

As constructed, static-deployed Rains torpedoes found widespread use in harbor and channel defense as the war progressed.

The Rains torpedo also found use in an offensive role. Using a tow-rope the Rains torpedo could be trailed behind a fast steam-powered launch in action against an enemy vessel.

However, due to the sometimes erratic motion that a keg filled with gunpowder could take when being towed, deployment in this manner could be as dangerous to the attacker as to the defender.

A new method for torpedo delivery on target would have to be developed.

Next, we visit Charleston, South Carolina and Captain Francis D. Lee of the Confederate Army.

Captain Lee determined that, rather than towing the torpedo at the end of a long rope, a better method was to place the torpedo at the end of a fifteen or twenty foot long spar of wood or metal, and attach the spar to the prow of an attacking vessel.

Lee’s torpedo design was a modified metal can, tightly packed with anywhere from 50 to 130 pounds of “mealed” gunpowder.

Rather than using an electrically activated fuse, Lee hit upon the idea of a chemically-activated fuse that would ignite the gunpowder upon impact. To do this Lee used a glass vial filled separately with both sulfuric acid and potassium chlorate. One or several of these fuses would be installed into the front end of the torpedo can prior to its being fitted onto the spar.  When rammed into the side of an enemy ship, the impact caused the glass vial to shatter, mixing the two chemicals explosively and igniting the torpedo’s gunpowder.

Lee’s chemical fuse, though ingenious, often caused casualties; rough or careless handling could cause premature explosion. Though stricter handling and safety procedures were adopted, the Lee fuse was still a tricky and dangerous device to work with.

It was an engineer from a family of engineers who would solve the problem of fusing and safe handling of the torpedo.

Edgar Singer, Texan and nephew to inventor Isaac Singer of sewing machine fame, invented a reliable torpedo fuse that used a dependable spring mechanism. The fuse would activate only if it struck something heavy and hard enough to dislodge its safety cap, which released a spring-activated striker upon two sealed percussion caps containing fulminate of mercury, setting the gunpowder off.

Also, an armed Singer torpedo could be “rendered safe” through the removal of the fuse, something that the armed Lee fuse could not. The Singer fuse found extensive use beginning late in 1863 and through the rest of the Civil War, triggering the Singer sea mine as well as Singer’s version of the spar torpedo.

You will note in the above image that there is an upper spar mounted on the “Hunley” which has been frequently mistaken for the torpedo’s spar. This upper spar provided guide rings for the lines used to deploy the ‘real’ torpedo spar which was attached via a hinge on the front keel of the “Hunley.” This assured its explosive payload would be positioned for maximum effect.

This last image shows what was left of the “Hunley’s” spar torpedo after it exploded.

Note the few pieces from the torpedo’s copper can still attached to the iron spar, testifying to the awesome destructive power unleashed against the “USS Housatonic” on that fateful night of February 16, 1864 when submarine warfare literally burst upon an unprepared and fearful world.

No wonder these devices of destruction were referred to as “Infernal Machines.”

(Note: All graphic images of Infernal Machine game materials used in this series of articles are subjective and may change and appear different in their final form.  All images show sourcing unless otherwise noted.)

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