INVENTION AND INDUSTRY AT THE SOUTH. 387 



experimented with by the Russians in the Crimea, but it had 

 proved ineffectual against the allied fleets. Under the spur of 

 dire necessity the Confederates turned their attention to it, and it 

 was brought to such a state of efficiency that Charleston, Wil- 

 mington, and Savannah maintained a successful defense till near 

 the end of the war, despite the efforts of Dupont and Dahlgren to 

 force an entrance through their harbors. Their destructiveness 

 was demonstrated at many other points, and fifty-eight vessels, 

 including ironclads, were destroyed by this means in Southern 

 waters. 



Shortly after the breaking out of the war, the naval depart- 

 ment of the Confederacy began experiments of various sorts with 

 floating batteries and naval rams, many of which were conducted 

 under the supervision of Lieutenant Catesby ApR. Jones. The 

 name of Lieutenant Jones, together with that of Lieutenant John 

 M. Brooke, the inventor of the " Brooke gun," and deviser of the 

 plan by which the hull of the frigate Virginia was converted 

 into the ironclad Merrimac, deserve mention along with Maury 

 and Buchanan, as being the men who probably did most toward 

 rendering the naval appliances of the Confederates effective. 

 English and French officers who witnessed the fight in Hampton 

 Roads of March 8, 1862, when the Merrimac sunk what were then 

 considered as among the finest war ships, remarked to a Confed- 

 erate naval officer, Captain H. B. Littlepage : " We have not a war 

 ship in our navy ; a wooden ship is no longer a war ship ; that 

 fight will rebuild and remodel the navies of the world." " The 

 British navy," says Captain Littlepage, " which cost hundreds of 

 millions of dollars, was as effectually destroyed on that eventful 

 8th of March as was the noble old Cumberland, sunk to her top- 

 sail yards by the Merrimac's ram, a weapon practically unknown 

 before. The 9th of March but emphasized the value and impor- 

 tance of iron-plated vessels, and illustrated two principles in the 

 construction of war ships which must last for all time i. e., the 

 deflecting and turreted armors." 



The Confederate Ordnance Department had at its head a 

 highly competent officer, Colonel Gorgas, and through a system 

 of rigid civil-service examinations a set of efficient men were 

 obtained. In the early part of the war, before the blockade be- 

 came stringent, ordnance stores were purchased in Europe, and 

 these, with what were captured from the enemy, were used. 

 Many instances might be cited to show the difficulties that were 

 gone through with to supply the army, such as the making of 

 percussion caps for the last year of the war (the Confederates be- 

 ing armed entirely with muzzle-loaders) out of turpentine and 

 brandy stills gathered in North Carolina, the only copper mines 

 in the South having fallen into the hands of the enemy. Another 



