Standing Well Back
Accidental Explosions

Echoes of the Past – Beirut Explosion and Erith, 1864

I am fortunate to have “inherited” an archive of historical material from “IJ” which I am slowly cataloguing. I can’t help but to dive in on some of the historical documents which although perhaps not connected with IEDs and EOD have a broader historical interest in those interested in explosives.  One particular set of documents relate to the latter part of the 1800s when the UK was undergoing a period of regulatory development of controls on the production and storage of explosives. Until then it appears that safety and good practice were unregulated and the industrial expansion of the explosives industry  was little constrained, and as a result a number of accidents occurred.  This led to investigations by military officers (first Lt Col Boxer RE in 1864, and later by 1874, Major (later Colonel) Majendie RA.  I have often mentioned Colonel Majendie in earlier posts as he was really the first “formal” practitioner of both Improvised Explosive Device Disposal and what is now called Weapons Technical intelligence in relation to IEDs.

As I looked at the early reports by Col Boxer and Maj Majendie I was struck by some similarities in a major explosion that occurred in Erith and the recent explosion in Beirut.  I propose no particular comment here on the Beirut explosion other to say that I was disappointed at the volume of technically illiterate comments in the news media.  But it is interesting to see how two events in 1864 caused the establishment of suitable regulatory control. The two events, which I’ll discuss below, and a number of other explosions in the latter part of the 1800s heightened public and government awareness of the safety issues in the manufacture and storage of explosives, and the appointment of Majendie as the lead government authority on the matter of explosives also provided him, inadvertently but happily, with the powers to investigate IEDs.

The first incident in 1864 was the explosion of the “Lottie Sleigh” a sailing barque carrying 11 tonnes of gunpowder on the River Mersey on 15 January 1864. A sailor aboard knocked over a lamp causing a fire. All the crew “baled out” and were picked up by a ferry. Shortly afterwards the unmanned vessel exploded. No-one was killed but the damage on both sides of the Mersey was significant. Thousands of windows were broken and doors were blown open in both Birkenhead and Liverpool and most of the gas lamps in the streets of Liverpool were “blown out”.  The explosion was heard 40 miles away.  Subsequently insurance companies were involved in complex process to assess liability.  Here’s a pic of the vessel exploding:

Later that year, on October 1st two storage warehouses containing a total of 50 tonnes of gunpowder exploded at Erith on the Southern Bank of the Thames, not far from Woolwich. No cause of the explosion has ever been established.  The explosion was felt 50 miles away. The store was adjacent, like in Beirut, to some docks,

This quote helps us understand the significant devastation:

Everything within its reach was annihilated. Man and matter perished together, shivered into a thousand fragments and whirled into space. People know there used to be a magazine in the Erith marshes, but there is now only a yawning crater there. The very ruins are lost. A visitor to the spot went to look for a cottage which he
remembered ; it had been ” swept entirely away, as with a broom.” Every witness whose evidence could have thrown light on the catastrophe has been hurried out of the world by that tremendous thunder- clap. Those immediately concerned can hardly be returned as killed-they are “missing”-that is to say, their very bodies have disappeared.

Property was damaged 20 miles away but only 10 people died.

These two explosions caught the imagination of the public and communities adjunct to “powder stores” up and down the country. There seems to have been a campaign by many of them to write to the Home Secretary to request oversight of the storage of explosives, and so Lt Col Boxer RE was tasked with inspecting many of these sites up and down the country. In effect this became the first Report of the Chief Inspector of Explosives, a report which became annual under Major Majendie 10 years later and which provide today a treasure trove of historical research. I have copies now from 1864 and then from 1874 till recent reports.

The Erith explosion has a number parallels with the Beirut explosion. Lessons can still be learned 150 years later.  Alas, this was not the last explosion in this vicinity. There was an explosion at Woolwich in 1883, and another in 1907. In World War One (1917) there was a massive explosion of 50 tons of TNT in Silvertown docks on the North bank of the Thames nearby.  Weirdly there was another explosion at a factory in Erith 4 months ago.

I have somewhere a catalogue of such accidental explosions in history, a remarkable number, which perhaps I’ll pull together in blog post – going back hundreds of years.  Bottom line – every explosive store should be sited and managed on the presumption that it will explode.  Major Majendie’s report of 1874 is a fantastic “tour de force” of the explosives industry of the time and the needs of detailed explosive regulations – I’d recommend it to anyone with an interest in explosive storage.

 

Railway IEDs

Strategic IED campaign on railways 1899-1902

I continue to uncover remarkable details of the Boer IED campaign against the British in South Africa.  I have detailed some of these in previous posts and railway attacks here in particular.  What I hadn’t quite realised was the scale of the campaign, which is huge, and indeed provides a template not only for the Russian partisan campaign against Nazi railways of WW2, but also in a sense the insurgent campaign in Iraq in 2003/2004.  Also see my other posts on railway attacks by clicking on the link of subjects in the right hand column – quite a few over history, including Lawrence of Arabia, the German East African campaign of WW1 and others.

The details I’m going to show you highlight that this was very much a strategic campaign targeting the British Military’s ability to move around South Africa. It also goes to demonstrate a comprehensive range of operations by the British military to respond to these IED attacks, by repairing the railway system, maintaining it, and implementing a range of C-IED security measures, not least being the “blockhouse” concept where small detachments of soldiers established patrol bases at frequent intervals along the railway.

I think it’s important to mention that the Boers were particularly effective at targeting the railway in a number of ways:

  1. By taking out key bridges. The number of bridges destroyed and then either repaired or replaced by the British Army is staggering. The Boers had significant numbers of personnel familiar with using explosives, and no lack of explosives.
  2. By blowing numerous culverts were the railway line crossed them.
  3. By damaging rails.
  4. By attacking trains and rolling stock either moving on the line or in sidings. sometimes by explosives and sometimes by simple sabotage such as removing key components, or by fire.
  5. By attacking supporting infrastructure such as watering points and water supplies. Coal supplies were set alight in depots.

There were of course plenty of Boers from the mining community with the experience to set and lay simple charges, and the IED technology evolved over time. My guess is that with no great shortage of explosives, a knowledge of what explosive placement and quality to use evolved rapidly over time – certainly the images below suggest sufficient expertise (or sufficient quantities of explosive) to blow large structures.

A variety of devices initiation methods were used:

  1. Simple burning-fuze time detonation for bridges, and track where no enemy was present.
  2. Command wire attack in an ambush situation on a train coming down the line, so the Boer’s were in sight of, but a tactical bound away from the site of the explosion.
  3. Victim operated devices placed under rails which were initiated by the train (as discussed here)

I’ve obtained a copy of the report written by the British Army Royal Engineer responsible for running and repairing the railway, where he details a lot of the repair work undertaken – from these I can derive details of the successful IED attacks over quite a period. To be clear, this account doesn’t focus on the IED attacks themselves in particular but the running of the railway as a system, and with the repair process as a part of that but we can draw useful analysis of the IED campaign against the railways from it.  So here’s some summaries and exemplar detail. I should mention that the name of this Engineer officer is Édouard Percy Cranvill Girouard. (!) Or rather Lieutenant Colonel EPV Girouard KCMG, DSO, RE, to give him his full title.

  • Largely because of the distances involved, the British Army, relied extensively on the railway system for strategic movement and routine logistics. There were 4600 miles of track in the system in a series of interconnected networks.
  • The British Military took over the operation of the railways completely in 1899, retaining local staff were possible. There were, of course, challenges were railway works were Boer sympathisers. This was a managerial challenge. A huge “lesson-learned” for the Royal Engineers was the need to develop competency in complex railway systems management.
  • Repairs to the railways were often carried out under fire, or at least in the presence of the enemy
  • Water is a crucial component of running a steam railway and the Boers realised this and disrupted water supplies too. The British on occasions resorted to running “water trains” to supply water for other trains. At one point the entire water supply for the railways around Bloemfontein was cut by the Boers from April 1900.
  • The number of bridges damaged by explosions is significant. here’s a summary of bridges reconstructed following an attack – divided into two lists depending on whether they were built originally in imperial dimensions or metric:

So that’s a total of 278 railway bridges requiring reconstruction following attack by the Boers with explosives.  After these were repaired, military posts were set up to guard every span over 30ft – leaving only smaller bridges,  culverts and regular track as the target for Boer IEDs. As you can see, that’s quite a manpower bill in itself in terms of a counter-IED strategy. Later, blockhouses were set up providing a blockhouse protected against rifle fire and surrounded by barbed wire every 2000 yards along the railway lines, each manned by a small number of troops (about ten each) – quite an investment in resources, but crucial to keep logistics functioning.

Here’s just a few of the bridges damaged by Boer IEDs, and subsequently repaired:

The Modder River Bridge:

The Vaal River Bridge:

The Colenso Bridge over the Thukela river with two parallel Royal Engineer replacement bridges being built (often under enemy fire)

The Orange River bridge, with replacement bridge alongside

The Norvalspont Bridge: This bridge was repaired in 14 days, or at least a secondary Laine installed (see the rails at the base)..

The Bridge at Fourteen Streams

I could post many more pictures of IED damaged bridges, but I hope I’ve got my point over that this was a strategic IED campaign, and required a strategic repose from he British Army.  The files I have obtained detail the amazingly short periods of time it took the Sappers to temporarily rebuild many of these significant bridges.  Here’s an excerpt of just one page of dozens more, note the speed of the engineer operation:

 

As well as these major bridges, many smaller bridges were also blown along with probably hundreds of culverts. Lines and points were damaged either by pulling them up or damaging them too with explosives. To give an idea of intensity of IED attacks, this is an excerpt listing just one month of attacks on just one part of the network:

With the adoption of the pressure sensitive IEDs used by the Boers, train engines were armoured to protect the crew and then trucks were pushed ahead of the engine on every “first train of the day” as sacrificial elements to initiate any IEDs ahead of the train.

One particular counter-measure against IEDs that I have discovered fascinates me and returns to the theme of Remotely Operated Vehicles. An “inventor” in England suggested deploying a carriage powered by a heavy electric motor some distance ahead of the engine, to which it was connected by long electric leads. So a wire controlled ROV on rails, in effect. This was trialed in theatre (like sometimes such ideas still are!) but found to be impractical, for the following reasons:

  • It was sacrificial and was expensive in itself to be replaced.
  • It was difficult to control, keeping the wires sufficiently taut so the train didn’t run over them or have the leads pulled from the controller.
  • The wires caught in any trackside object (including trees, blockhouses, telegraph poles etc.
  • It couldn’t cope with curves without causing more problems.
  • The Boers had already started using electrically initiated command wire IEDs anyway, so could ignore the ROV.

Nonetheless this demonstrates, that even in 1901 that innovative ideas were being sought to deal with IED threats. And .. it’s another early ROV.

With regards to other innovations, this next one is a bit peculiar too. Over time the “blockhouses” placed 200 yards apart were added to so there was even less distance between them. The gaps between were under observation (in some cases at night with the use of searchlights) to prevent insurgents placing IEDs on the rails and patrolled frequently. Do this was a strategic effort to observe all of the communication routes used by there British.  Another innovative concept implemented, I kid you not, was the use of specialised bicycles.  These “war cycles” consisted, at first, of two bicycles, fastened on a common frame with wheels adapted so that the cycles ran on opposite rails.  two sliders would pedal between blockhouses providing route coverage. The adapted wheels enabled the cyclists to use both hands to fire weapons , and progress was relatively stealthy.  Later, a larger “8 man” war-cycle was built proving more firepower. a lot of these machines were made in Cape Town and used by the Royal Australian Cycle Corps.

Other innovative responses to attacks included this fabulous add-on armour to a train (admittedly not necessary against IEDs). British soldiers, almost inevitably, came up with the nickname:

The conflict also prompted innovative use of other battlefield technologies such as armoured vehicles, and use (by both sides) of wireless radio communications – perhaps a first in a conflict.

To summarise, I think we can see in this conflict:

  • A strategic and extensive IED campaign by the Boers as a part of an insurgency campaign. The patterns of similar strategies with later campaigns up to the modern day are clear, and in particular the Russian inspired partisan campaign against the Nazi rail system in WW2.
  • A coherent response of sorts from the British Army, in terms of resourcing appropriate management control of the crucial national rail network
  • A component of that response included resourcing repair teams and military engineering capabilities of sufficient size and flexibility to respond to the intensity of IED attacks
  • A manpower intensive (but ultimately successful) security operation to protect the exposed logistic capability
  • A search for innovative counter IED methodologies and ideas, some of them implemented successfully but time wasted on others. Sounds familiar.

 

 

19th Century

IEDs in the Boer War

I’m currently digging in to instances of the British Army using IEDs in various campaigns. There’s a couple of interesting stories from the Siege of Mafeking (1899-1900). The British were surrounded at Mafeking and held out for quite a period against the Boers.   They were short of supplies, but led by Baden-Powell used all sorts of ingenious methods, including improvised explosive devices (and hoax explosive devices) to keep the Boers at bay. Certainly the Boers were intimidated by the threat of these improvised landmines (often placed in likely artillery positions). The Boers too made extensive use of IEDs at this time.

Other munitions were developed at a workshop in the railway yard.  There were a large number of improvised grenades made , using dynamite, a tin can and a burning fuze.   Other IEDs used Boer artillery shells that had failed to function, and indeed on more than one occasion using recovered Boer IEDs that and been rendered safe. Here’s the description of one such, by Baden-Powell the Garrison-Commander, talking about a forward Boer position that they abandoned:

Their somewhat noisy retirement made me suspicious, and two scouts were sent on to see if all was clear. They found some wires, quite newly laid, and a mine of nitro-glycerine, so something equally soothing, awaiting our entrance into the work. The wires were therefore cut and wound in for future use against the layers. And while we sang ‘God save the Queen,’ the Boers were probably touching the button at the other end of the wire with considerable impatience at their failure of their fireworks.

Seasoned “standingwellback” readers will recall that I have written before  about Boer railway line IEDs here.

The defenders too used electrically initiated IEDs – one here was awarded a “Mention in Dispatches” thus:

Koffyfontein Defence Force-Corporal H J Jellard (promoted Sergeant); on October 11, for exposing himself to heavy fire at 60 yards’ range when getting on to a debris heap to connect a wire from a battery to a mine, and also for holding an advanced position with assistance of one native

One particularly effective method of delivering improvised grenades to the target was drawn by Baden-Powell himself – no mean artist:

Sgt Page (other reports name him as Sgt Moffatt) used a fishing rod and line with the grenade attached to the end of the casting line. Apparently he could deliver the improvised grenade a distance of 100 yards with some precision.  Baden-Powell suggest that the fishing rod technique replaced a mechanical spring device which was less effective (a technique seen in recent years in Syria). The Baden-Powell sketch was then used as a basis for this image below, which also shows on the right an ingenious “dummy” to draw fire.

In one of those odd parallels, you may recall that I wrote about an improvised artillery piece used during the Boxer rebellion (1899) here, that had been dug up in a garden. Well there was also an improvised artillery piece art Mafeking also used in 1899. It too was dug up in a garden It is described here by Baden-Powell himself:

The third gun was one which Mr. Rowlands dug up from his garden: an old muzzle-loading ship’s gun with a history.  We had it cleaned up, sighted, and mounted on a carriage, and it did right good work. Owing to its ancient Naval connection the gun was named ‘Lord Nelson.’   It was made in 1770 and weighted 8 cwt. 2 qrs. 10 lbs. These figures 8.2.10 were inscribed upon it and led some people to suppose it was made on February 8, 1810. It also had the initials ‘B. P.’ Upon it, which might have led such people further to suppose that it belonged to me in former times. It didn’t really; those initials stood for Bailey, Pegg & Co., the makers, of Brierley Foundry, Staffordshire. The absence of the Royal Cypher showed that it had not been a Royal Navy gun but belonged to a privateer. According to local tradition two Germans brought it to Linchwe, a neighbouring chief, some forty years ago, and he sold it to the Baralongs for twenty-two oxen, to aid them in their defence against Boer freebooters.  It fired a 10-lb. shot, and carried 2,000 yards, though not with great accuracy. We found its sister-gun in Rustenburg, where in 1881 it had been used by the Boers to shell the British defence works. And a third gun of the same family was found by General Burn-Murdoch near Vryheid; while a fourth stands, I believe, at Brierley Hill, having been presented to the town by the makers.

How extraordinary that in two sieges in separate parts of the world, at the same time, they both used ancient cannon dug up from a garden.

Other artillery pieces were entirely improvised, here described by Baden-Powell again:

Our great gun was our home-made one, ‘The Wolf’ (my nickname from Matabeleland). This was made from a steampipe round which were lapped iron rods which were welded and turned till a good strong barrel was made. The breech and trunnions were bronze castings. The whole was built up by the railway workmen under Mr. Coghlan, the energetic and ingenious foreman, and under the general supervision of Major Panzera. The blast furnace for making the castings alone was a triumph of ingenuity made out of a water-tank lined with firebricks — the blast being introduced through a vacuum brake tube.

The “Wolf” is now held by the Royal Artillery Museum, due to open later this year.

Baden-Powell also mentions this IED attack – reminiscent of more recent IED attacks I have also blogged about here and here

The Boers sent a trolley loaded with dynamite rolling down the railway into Mafeking, but it luckily exploded before reaching us — about a mile outside.

 

Rather oddly Baden-Powell doesn’t mention that the British themselves used the same tactic. On 13th October, a British locomotive pushed TWO carriages full of dynamite out of Mafeking on the railway until they saw Boer’s in the distance. Fuzes were lit and the carriages rolled towards the Boer position – but were detonated by rifle fire from there Boers.
 It’s clear that the demands of the remote and isolated town of Mafeking demanded innovation and improvisation from the occupants – and many of the same pressures were prevalent on the Boer side. I’m struck by the leadership shown in reading Baden-Powell’s notes on his command during the siege. Quite remarkable. It also further highlights the prevalence of improvised munitions in history, and shows the same patterns, driven by tactics and tactical design as we still see today.
Update:   Here’s a pic of the Wolf howitzer, made in the railway workshops in Mafeking, and some improvised munitions for it.  Sometimes Pounder shells fired at the British by the Boers, but which failed to function were recovered, somehow re-fuzed and fired back.
And here’s a sketch of the “Nelson” in action:
Command IED

Command-Initiated IED – 1809 – Peninsula War

I’m finding lots of interesting use of explosives by both sides in the Peninsula War (1807 – 1814) particularly the French who clearly had developed extensive capabilities with explosives. These engineering capabilities and the use of explosives in both attack and defence were, I think, largely developed about a hundred and fifty years earlier by Vauban, the famous French military engineer. I should write about him more in the future, but his writing and ideas were used extensively by the French through the latter part of the the 17th century, through the entire 18th and on well into the 19th – I certainly see his influence in French actions in the Crimean war in the 1850s, some 200 wars after the start of Vauban’s career. But this post is about a command-pull IED.

But this particular device in this post is attributed to the Portuguese who fought as allies of the British. It’s also an interesting “Assault EOD operation” by the French, based on careful observation, planning and intelligence.  Alas I have no imagery but nonetheless a good description provided by a famous French engineer, Captain Pierre Bouchard. In May of 1809, the Portuguese were defending a key crossing, a bridge over the Tampa river near Amarante. This was, in military terms, a “reserve demolition“. The Portuguese were defending the bridge but if it came to it they were prepared to destroy the bridge to prevent the French crossing.  Captain Bouchard had spotted through his telescope where the Portuguese “mine” had been placed on the bridge. The initiation mechanism was not a burning fuze but Bouchard could see a line running from the covering Portuguese positions to a wooden box placed adjacent to barrels of powder under one of the arches of the bridge. He assessed, correctly as it turned out, that this was a “pull mechanism” with the cord attached to the trigger of a flintlock mechanism in the wooden box. This in turn would initiate an explosive chain which would explode the barrels of gunpowder.

Bouchard (reportedly) came up with a plan. His engineers under cover of thick fog surreptitiously moved a large charge of their own as close as they dared to the command pull cord. Bouchard believed his counter charge would break the or snap the pull cord without initiating the Portuguese main charge, or at least disorientate the Portuguese long enough for an immediate assault to take their position. And so it was. Three barrels were placed close to the Portuguese redoubt and a battalion of grenadiers stood by to make the assault backed up by an entire brigade of infantry. Bouchards’s charge was lit with a burning fuze 30m long.  Whether it actually broke the pull cord or not is perhaps in doubt but the assaulting grenadiers were so quick in taking the position, the demolition charge was not fired.  Bouchard led a company of his sappers on to the Bridge alongside the grenadiers and doused the Portuguese charge with buckets of water, as an initial “render safe procedure”

I understand that the Portuguese had a habit of using pull cords rather than burning fuzes because of the volume of fire often experienced in such battles – which they felt may have caused initiation of the explosive charge by a hit on an exposed fuze.  As an aside, Captain Bouchard was also responsible , in Napoleon’s Nile campaign, of finding the “Rosetta Stone” ten years earlier in 1799. Captain Bouchard had the distinction of being captured three times by the British during his military career and spent considerable time as a prisoner-of-war. Here’s a pic. Cheerful looking fella, for a sapper, ain’t he?

I’ve written before here, about the principles of using flintlock mechanisms to initiate explosive devices and you will see that this idea wasn’t that unusual, but it’s the only occasion I can find a record of it being used in this war.

19th Century

Massive Command Wire IED in Charleston, USA

In my last post I discussed a massive electrically initiated command wire IED from the Crimean war in 1856. This article is about a massive command-wire device in Charleston during the American Civil War in 1863. I’ve been finding stuff on explosive devices during that conflict for a few years now, but this one is new to me, possibly because it failed to explode.  Importantly I think this IED was the biggest ever seen in the USA – perhaps my US colleagues would care to comment.

This Confederate device was constructed using an entire ship’s steam boiler as a container. It was packed with 5000 pounds of blackpowder (other reports suggest 3000 pounds)  and sunk in 6 fathoms of water 1500 yards off Fort Sumter, just outside Charleston, South Carolina. Insulated electrical cables led from the boiler to an electrical charge generator in the Fort, defended by Confederate Forces. There had been a series of naval bombardments of the Fort over several months. On 8 September 1853 the Federal Navy approached the Fort again to bombard it.  The flagship “New Ironsides” placed itself directly above the device and fired nearly 500 rounds at the Fort. Every attempt was made to initiate the device but it failed to function. After 90 minutes the Ironsides moved off. The device had been in place for 4 months before it was attempted to fire. The man responsible for testing the circuit daily was put in irons, although he claimed he had circuit tested it the previous day. Probably there had been an ingress of water or there was insufficient voltage.   But 5000 pounds of powder exploding a few feet underneath a battleship would have been quite an attack.

Here’s a report on the laying of the device, which suggests that the resulting cable length was over a mile longer than expected – perhaps the power source was insufficient to cope with that:

The torpedo was successfully sunk on the spot located by General Ripley, but while running the cable the steamer (Chesterfield) ran out of steam, and, unable to hold against the tide and wind, went aground near Fort Sumter. On the increase of the flood we had to run back a long circuit reach Cummings Point and land the cable. It resulted from this accident that we played out 2 miles of cable, instead of 1, as expected.

Here’s a couple of diagrams of the explosive device, which I think are contemporary:

The boiler, full of powder, is probably still there…

There is some mention of the use of powder filled boilers being used unsuccessfully on the James River by the Confederate explosive expert Captain Maury at an earlier time during the Civil War. Apparently the boilers were not anchored well and moved in the current, parting the electrical cables. Captain Maury’s electricity generator apparently “weighed nearly a ton” which also made the devices awkward to deploy. Maury was later sent on a mission to England to procure better electrical power sources (in modern parlance, “IED components”)  from the scientist Sir Charles Wheatstone.

Fort Sumter in August 1863, a month before the incident:

 

Here’s the USS New Ironsides, the target of the IED:

I have found some new material on underwater Confederate devices used to prevent Federal ships moving up the James River subsequent to Captian Maury’s boilers, but I need time to check this new material against other records. I’ll put up a post at some time in the future when I have time.

In one of those strange “mirrorings” in history the following year it was Union forces who considered use of a massive IED against Fort Sumter. Union commander ,Major-General John Foster had in mind a plan to level Fort Sumter by way of a large explosive device.  “As soon as a good cut is made through the wall,” Foster wrote to Washington on July 7, 1864, “I shall float down against it and explode large torpedoes until the wall is shaken down and the surrounding obstructions are entirely blown away.”

Later that month Union naval forces had made a “cut” in a protective wall and pushed an explosively-laden barge towards Fort Sumter. But due to miscommunication and bad weather the attack was abandoned.  Other attempts were then made in August 1864 by land forces using improvised rafts, laden with explosives and initiated with timing devices. These were to be pushed into place by boat. Here’s one contemporary report:

On the night of the 28th ultimo, a pontoon-boat, fitted up for the purpose and containing about twenty hundredweight of powder, was taken out by Lieut. G.F. Eaton, One hundred and twenty-seventh New York Volunteers, boat infantry, and floated down into the left flank of Fort Sumter. The garrison of Sumter was alarmed before the mine reached them, and opened upon our boats with musketry, without, however, doing them any injury.

The device exploded, but in the wrong place and too far away to cause significant damage. Then:

On the night of the 31st ultimo six torpedoes, made of barrels set in frames, each containing 100 pounds of powder, were set afloat with the flood-tide from the southeast of Sumter with the view of destroying the boom.  They probably exploded too early and only injured perhaps two lengths of the links of the boom, which are now not visible.

Another attempt was made the following night on 1 September 1864, the device exploded but again causing no significant damage.

Here’s a drawing of the devices being launched:

 

 

I also have found some new interesting technical material about very large submerged electrically initiated devices used in the defence of Venice, in 1859, that appear also to have used Samuel Colt’s “Camera Obscura” command post technique – again to follow when time permits. I continue to view Samuel Colt’s amazing explosive device initiation command post of 1836 as one of the most remarkable things I have ever come across in all my research.

 

 

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