Matthew Fontaine Maury, the Pathfinder of the Seas

by Charles Lee Lewis

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 deserves 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 Davidson 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 demonstrate 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 Government”, makes no mention of Maury’s name in connection with the electric mines, but gives all the honor to General Gabriel J. Rains, who did not become head of the Torpedo Bureau until October, 1862. Scharf’s “History of the Confederate States Navy” names not only Rains but also Hunter Davidson and Beverly Kennon as rivals for priority in the invention and practical use of the electric mine. The claims of the first two are so extravagant and so unjust to Maury as to merit no consideration; while those of Kennon cannot be successfully sustained in comparison with the well-established priority of Maury’s “electrical torpedoes”.

These electric mines were not the only new naval weapons that Maury advocated and had a hand in devising. In the autumn of 1861, he wrote a series of articles for the Richmond Enquirer under the pseudonym of “Ben Bow”, in which he urged the necessity of building a strong navy for the South without delay, and of providing, at least, for the protection of bays and rivers by the construction of small ships armed with big guns. Maury had had in mind such a fighting craft for years, and as early as 1841 he had urged the building of ships of this sort in his “Scraps from the Lucky Bag”.

In these “Ben Bow” articles he called attention to the fact that the Confederate government had not as yet realized the need for a navy. “The sums appropriated by the Government”, he wrote, “for building and increase will indicate its policy touching a navy, and show what, for the present, is proposed to be done. Two Navy Bills have passed since Virginia seceded and joined the Confederacy. One was passed in May at Montgomery, and the other in Richmond in August. In the Montgomery Bill there is not one dime for construction or increase. The whole appropriation is $278,500, of which $100,000 is for equipment and repairs. Now a navy without vessels is like lamps without oil. The Richmond Bill gives $50,000 to buy and build steamers and gunboats for coast defense, and $160,000 for two ironclad gunboats for the defense of the Mississippi River and the city of Memphis.... We may safely infer that $50,000 will neither purchase nor build a great many steamers or gunboats, nor enable us to provide very efficiently for the defense of all the rivers except the Mississippi, and of all the harbors, bays, creeks, and sounds of our coast all the way from Washington on the Potomac to Brownsville on the Rio Grande. Thus we perceive that since Virginia and North Carolina, with their defenseless, open, and inviting sea-front, seceded, the sum of only $50,000 has been voted towards the ‘purchase or construction’ of a navy, for the defense of the entire seacoast of the Confederacy! From this analysis, and from all that we can see doing on the water, it appears that the Government has not yet decided to have a navy”.

It was a mistake, he thought, to believe that there was a magic power in cotton, that “Cotton is King” and could do all and more than it was possible for a navy to accomplish. Along this line, he declared, “There seems to be a vague idea floating in the public mind of the South that, somehow or other, cotton is to enable us to do, if not entirely, at least to a great degree, what other nations require armies and navies to accomplish for them. Because cotton-wool is essential to the industry of certain people, and because we are the chief growers of cotton-wool, therefore, say these political dreamers, we can so treat cotton, in a diplomatic way, as both to enforce obedience to our revenue laws at home and secure respect to our citizens abroad. But can we? Did ever unprotected wealth secure immunity to its owner? In the first place, cotton becomes, when handled in any other way than the regular commercial way, a two-edged sword, as apt to wound producer as consumer. Every obstacle, which we place between it and the channels of commerce here, operates as a bounty for its production elsewhere. It is a very current but mistaken idea to suppose that this is the only country in the world properly adapted to the cultivation of cotton. No such thing. Should even the present paper blockade continue for a few years, and cotton rule at the present New York prices of 22 cents, or even at 15 cents, our political dreamers may wake up and find the cotton scepter, if not entirely lost to our hold, at least divided in our hand.... Suppose England and France do not choose for a few months to come to break this paper blockade, which we have not the naval strength to force, paper though it be, does it follow that that blockade, weak and ineffectual as, up to this time, it has notoriously been, will continue so until those nations get ready to act? The amount appropriated for the Lincoln navy during the current year is upwards of $40,000,000.... We cannot, either with cotton or with all the agricultural staples of the Confederacy put together, adopt any course which will make cotton and trade stand us as a nation in the stead of a navy”.

Then followed his statement as to the kind of war vessels that were needed to give the Confederacy command, at least, of its own waters, and at an expense of no more than three million dollars. “In this change of circumstances”, he wrote, “it so happens that the navy which we most require is for smooth water and shallow places. Such a one, consisting of small vessels, can be quickly and cheaply built. We want at once a navy for our rivers and creeks and bays and sounds; a navy consisting chiefly of vessels that, for the most part, will only be required to keep the sea for a few days at a time.” These ships would be so small as to present little more than a feather-edge as a target to the enemy, and therefore be more invulnerable than the best shot-proof men-of-war. They would be not more than twenty or twenty-five feet broad, and with coal, crew, and guns aboard would float only two or three feet above the surface of the water. They were, in fact, to be really nothing but floating gun carriages, propelled by steam, and each was to carry two rifled cannon of the largest caliber. Such a ship would be able to engage, at long range, one of the largest ships of the Union navy, the Minnesota, for example; and in attacking head on, she would present a target of but forty square feet as compared with one of six thousand square feet of the Minnesota. This, at a distance of two or three miles, would be a great advantage to the smaller vessel. Maury claimed for this type of ship facility of construction, rapidity in equipment, economy in outfit, and efficiency in battle. The cost of one hundred of these small vessels, including armament, engine, and machinery, he estimated, would be $10,000 each.

This dogma of “big guns and little ships” made a very favorable impression on Governor Letcher and other prominent Virginians, and so Maury decided to bring the matter of their construction before the state government. But beyond his expectation, his plan met with favor in the Confederate Congress, which took over from the state of Virginia the support of the measure by passing two acts on December 23, 1861. These authorized the construction of not more than a hundred of the gunboats, according to a plan submitted by Maury and approved by a board of naval officers, and provided also $2,000,000 for that purpose.

Maury set to work superintending the building of the gunboats on the Rappahannock and at Norfolk. They were 21 feet in beam and 112 feet in length, and drew six feet of water. Their armament consisted of a 9-inch gun forward and a 32-pounder aft, and each carried a crew of forty men. By the middle of April, 1862, Maury expected to have the last hull ready for the machinery and guns. But delay was occasioned through the difficulty of procuring materials, both iron and wood, and steam engines, and also by the lack of a sufficient number of mechanics. Meanwhile the Merrimac[14] (C. S. S. Virginia) had demonstrated the great possibilities of iron-plated rams, and the Confederate Congress authorized, on March 17, 1862, the discontinuance of all such construction of wooden gunboats as might retard the building of ironclad rams.

Secretary of the Navy Mallory, who had not warmly supported Maury’s scheme, then suggested to President Davis that the fifteen already commenced be finished according to the original design, but that the remainder of the appropriation be diverted to the building of ironclads. A few days later Maury wrote, “All my gunboats are to be converted into shot proof or abandoned”. Thus ended in comparative failure this ambitious experiment, one that was very dear to Maury. That he held Mallory very much to blame is evident from the following: “The administration is gravely proposing to build here at Richmond a navy to go down and capture Fortress Monroe! Mal. proposed the other day that I should undertake to build such a navy, asserting that it could be done. That, I should say, is a considerable stirring up. Less than a year ago, I was to be banished for advocating a navy. Now since all our naval waters have been taken away and we have nowhere to float a navy, yet we are to have a navy to take the strongest fortress in America. Hurra for Mal.!”