150 MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY 



tightening of the line will pull a trigger and let the things 

 off. I think I can drive the enemy out of the Chesa- 

 peake. This is a business, this thing of blowing up men 

 while they are asleep, that I don't glory in. . . .1 

 shall endeavor to pick up and save the crews from 

 drowning". 



Maury was not given an opportunity to demonstrate 

 his improved mine, until late in July or early in August, 

 1861, when the Secretary of the Navy, the Governor of 

 Virginia, and the Chairman of the Committee of Naval 

 Affairs consented to witness a trial on the James River 

 at Rocketts, where the James River Steamboat Com- 

 pany's wharf is now located. Maury thus describes the 

 trial : "I made a pair of submarine batteries. Your man 

 Mallory pronounced them humbugs. I got him and 

 Conrad (Chairman of Naval Affairs Committee, House 

 of Representatives) to go and see them blow up the 

 James River. I put them adrift aiming them at a buoy. 

 They caught, drifted down, tightened the rope, pulled 

 the trigger, and off they went blowing the river, or some 

 of it, sky high and killing innumerable fish. So Mallory 

 after that asked for an appropriation of $50,000 to enable 

 me to go ahead". 



This money was not, however, immediately forth- 

 coming, and Maury complained that he was forced to 

 lay on his oars and wait for the word from Congress, *'Go 

 ahead!" He also wrote that he was anxious to mine the 

 river passes to both Richmond and Fredericksburg with 

 these submarine batteries which would be exploded by 

 electricity, but that lack of materials was delaying the 

 project. During this delay, he planned another attack 

 on the Union ships off Newport News. This material- 

 ized in an attempt which was made, on October 10, by 



