Confederate "Coal Torpedo"

[Barrycdog]

Expired Image Removed

Confederate "Coal Torpedo" designed by Mr.Thomas Courtenay in circa 1864 A gunpowder bomb disguised by genuine pieces of anthracite coal and deployed as a weapon of sabotage by the Confederate Secret Service Corps against steam powered yankee vessels. The bombs were loaded or smuggled into coal supplies in ships. When workers stoked the furnace, the bombs exploded.

 

[Specster]

These devices were pretty big 3-4 lbs. They packed a pretty good punch, not enough to sink a ship on their own but the hope was that it would cause the boiler to explode and cause a fire that could sink the ship or at a minimum disable the engine. One such charge was found in J. Davis's desk after he fled Richmond. The union became aware of their existsnce through an intercepted letter.

 

[Seduzal]

I would not like to be the man shoveling coal into the boiler and one of these coal exploded!

 

[Patrick H]

It's interesting to see these examples. There was a pretty good discussion of coal torpedos some months ago, centering around the Sultana disaster.

 

[Specster]

A death bed confession was made by a southern operative who claimed he used the devise to sink the Sultana, a river boat which went down killing app. 1800 people, mainly Union soliders, many of whom were recently released from 2 POW camps. The official cause of the explosion is thought to have been a faulty boiler. The confession is taken by most to be a boast. Since so many people died, there was a significant investigation into the causes of the disaster. Most historians believe it was the faulty boiler. There are several reasons for this including make-shift, shody repairs to the boiler made just before the disaster, low water level in the boiler, high pressure in an attempt to overcoming spring current from melting ice on the Mississippi and the location of the intial explosion (which was not in the firebox, where coal would have been).

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Related discussion at http://civilwartalk.com/threads/sultana-disaster-on-pbs.101228/#post-899912

I am not a believer in the 'coal torpedo' story for the Sultana, for a number of reasons; the two principal ones being that riverboats blew up on their own with alarming frequency, and that the typical fuel was wood, rather than coal... a coal torpedo in a wood-pile would have been rather obvious.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

(In fact, some of my recent reading would seem to indicate that one possible cause for the explosion could have been nothing more than too many passengers on the boat going to one side of it and heeling it over just enough to expose a boiler flue... as overloaded as the boat was, it's not all that far-fetched.)

 

[Specster]

Yes, there is a pretty extensive discussion on this under Coal Torpedo started back in May 31. In that tread a poster commented that the boilers were abreast and when the ship heeled the water would move from one boiler to the other very possibly exposing excess heat to the boiler with less water.

 

[Major James B. Ronan II]

Reviewed a book on this subject some time ago.

No claim was made in the book for any success by the device, much less sinking the Sultana. It was revived and shelved as an idea during WW II.

My impression was that the inventor sought to make a killing monetarily, obtain a commission as an officer and avoid front line service.

 

[7th Mississippi Infantry]

Although normally I will go out of my way NOT to use wikipedia, I did find this interesting:


After the Civil War[edit]

Various forms of exploding coal, whether directly descended from Courtenay's original idea or independently developed, have surfaced multiple times throughout history.

The Fenian Brotherhood, an Irish nationalist organization operating in the United States in the late 1860s–1870s, reportedly considered placing coal torpedoes in the furnaces of New York City hotels as well as English transatlantic steamships.[16] They were a strong suspect in the destruction of the warship HMS Doterel at Punta Arenas in 1881, but later evidence proved the explosion was accidental.[17]

Both the American OSS and the British SOE used forms of exploding coal in World War II.[18][19] The German commandos who came ashore on Long Island in 1943 as part of Operation Pastorius carried plastic explosives disguised as coal for use against coal-fired electric generating plants.[20] Such a German coal torpedo was given to the British double agent Eddie Chapman (also known as "Agent Zig-Zag") to sabotage the merchant ship City of Lancaster, but he passed it on to his MI5 handler instead.[21] Similar devices were also made by the Japanese during World War 2.[22]

Stanley Karnow hints in his book Vietnam: A History that the CIA prepared explosive coal for use against North Vietnamese railways during the Vietnam War.[23]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_torpedo

 

[nitrofd]

The deathbed confession about the coal torpedo used on the Sultana comes from the 2013 book titled Sultana. A Case for Sabotage by D.H.Rule. this book was actually a result of an article in North and South magazine Vol.5 #1 Dec 2001 by Debra Houses Rule.
I have read the book and I' m not sure if it is true or just a dying man being boastful.the book is available as an ebook on amazon if anyone is interested.

 

[leftyhunter]

Reviewed a book on this subject some time ago.

No claim was made in the book for any success by the device, much less sinking the Sultana. It was revived and shelved as an idea during WW II.

My impression was that the inventor sought to make a killing monetarily, obtain a commission as an officer and avoid front line service.

Did said inventor obtain a commission? If he did he was one smart cookie from all the biographies that I read on both sides being an infantryman was not the most fun one could have with their cloths on and the pay was not nearly high enough to make the job worthwhile.
Leftyhunter

 

[Major James B. Ronan II]

Did said inventor obtain a commission? If he did he was one smart cookie from all the biographies that I read on both sides being an infantryman was not the most fun one could have with their cloths on and the pay was not nearly high enough to make the job worthwhile.
Leftyhunter

Can only speak for myself but entered the combat arms to serve my country.

 

[Barrycdog]

Weekly Intelligencer, May 24, 1865 -- page 3

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

That's not really evidence that a coal torpedo was involved-- at the very least, a coal torpedo story would direct attention away from the engineering crew's performance-- but it's interesting that it does seem to indicate that Sultana was using coal for fuel. That's odd. I'm sure the coal would have been more expensive than wood.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Odd also that both engineers survived (though one was expected to die). Whether boiler explosion or torpedo, one would expect the engineers to have been at the epicenter of whatever happened.

 

[Major James B. Ronan II]

Mark, think you and nitrofd are right.

The aforementioned review is here as posted on this site and contains publication data:

http://civilwartalk.com/threads/book-review-confederate-coal-torpedo.95129/#post-801233