154 MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY 



Maury was relieved, on the 20th of June, 1862, by 

 Lieutenant Hunter Davidson of the duty of ''devising, 

 placing, and superintending submarine batteries in the 

 James River". Davidson was at the time in command 

 of the Teaser, and to signalize his new appointment, he 

 had the misfortune, on July 4, of losing his ship to the 

 enemy, together with the diagrams showing the exact 

 position of the mines already laid down. 



Although Maury's participation in this new field of 

 warfare had extended over only a little more than the 

 first year of the war, still his pioneer work therein de- 

 serves high consideration as it laid the foundation for 

 experiments by other Confederate officers, and these 

 mines, electric and otherwise, resulted in the loss during 

 the war of a large number of Union ships, varying from 

 20 to 58 according to different authorities. These facts 

 bear out the following claim made by Maury: "All the 

 electrical torpedoes in that (James) river were prepared 

 and laid down either by myself or by Lieutenant David- 

 son who relieved me after having been instructed by me 

 as to the details of the system. These were the first 

 electrical torpedoes that were successfully used against 

 an enemy in war". 



Maury did not pretend that the idea was original 

 with him. Robert Fulton had had a device for firing a 

 mine by electricity, but had never succeeded in making 

 his battery work. Also Colonel Colt experimented with 

 some success with such mines as early as 1842. Maury's 

 work was so important because he was the first to dem- 

 onstrate that such weapons could be made of practical 

 use in warfare. He has, however, been given almost no 

 credit, until recently, for this pioneer work. Even 

 Jefferson Davis, in his "Rise and Fall of the Confederate 



