Confederate Coal Torpedo
Thomas Courtenay's
Infernal Sabotage Weapon
by
Joseph M. Thatcher
&
Thomas H. Thatch
This is the first book that has ever been completed on this topic. Joe Thatcher is a local writer and he and his son researched their family history and their great great grandfather's invention.
The coal torpedo was a weapon of desperation and opportunity. It was a hollow casting shaped like a lump of coal, coated with coal dust, and filled with gunpowder. When hidden in the coal piles used by the Union Navy, it would be shoveled into the firebox where it would explode, bursting the boiler and setting fire to the ship. It was invented by Thomas Edgeworth Courtenay, an Irish immigrant with Confederate loyalties, who was authorized to form a Secret Service Corps to distribute the torpedoes and who was paid a bounty for each Union ship destroyed. One of these coal bombs was discovered in Jefferson Davis's office in the Richmond White House, an indication of Davis's interest and support.
This is the first book to tell the true story of the coal torpedo in the Civil War, using original document preserved by the family and never before published. The book describes Courtenay's life and career in Missouri before the Civil War and his reason for joining the Confederacy, his development of the coal torpedo, and his fight to gain approval for his own Secret Service Crops to employ his explosive weapon against Union shipping. Sometimes erroneously credited to Gabriel Rains, the history of Courtenay and his torpedo are revealed in original documents signed by Jefferson Davis, James Seddon and others. Includes never-before published photographs and descriptions of the only know surviving examples.
This is a well written book with substantial documentation and actually very interesting. We hope you will enjoy it as much as my family did.
To purchase a book you can find them at the Little Book House in Stuyvesant Plaza in Albany or email Coal.torpedo@gmail.com or call 518-280-1232
Two of the three surviving coal torpedoes
