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    Gabriel Rains and the Confederate Torpedo Bureau
    Gabriel Rains and the Confederate Torpedo Bureau
    Gabriel Rains and the Confederate Torpedo Bureau
    Ebook208 pages1 hour

    Gabriel Rains and the Confederate Torpedo Bureau

    By W. Davis Waters and Joseph Brown

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    “Ironclads are said to master the world, but torpedoes master the ironclads.” Gabriel J. Rains was a Confederate Brigadier General who was more than a military officer—he was a scientist. His Civil War appointment gave him an opportunity to develop explosives. He invented three mines: the “subterra shell” (land mine), the keg torpedo, and the submarine mortar battery (both naval mines). After the Battle of Seven Pines in 1862, he served the Confederacy in two ways, Superintendent of Conscription and Commander of the Torpedo Bureau. He and his men mined the roads around Jackson and the harbors of Mobile, Savannah, and Charleston. His naval mines sank many ships and were more effective than heavy guns.

    In 1864, at the request of President Jefferson Davis, he mined the principal roads leading into Richmond as well as the lines around Fort Harrison. When it came time to evacuate the city, Rains and his family joined the president and cabinet as they traveled by train to Greensboro.

    After the war, he earned a patent, prepared a notebook for West Point, and wrote an article on mine warfare. Rains had a significant military career as he introduced a new form of weaponry. To some, he is regarded as the “father of modern mine warfare.”

    Gabriel Rains and the Confederate Torpedo Bureau by W. Davis Waters and Joseph I. Brown tells his remarkable story.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSavas Publishing
    Release dateMay 19, 2017
    ISBN9781940669700
    Gabriel Rains and the Confederate Torpedo Bureau
    Author

    W. Davis Waters

    W. Davis Waters was born in Bennettsville, South Carolina and grew up in Hampton, Virginia. In 1972, he received his MA degree at Wake Forest University and that same summer he attended the 13th Annual Seminar for Historical Administrators at Colonial Williamsburg. On the Peninsula, he learned a lot about the Civil War.Waters worked for the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources for thirty-three years, serving as site manager at Historic Edenton and at Bennett Place. He also wrote articles for historical journals, such as Confederate Veteran, Confederate Generals (edited by William C. Davis), and The North Carolina Historical Review, including gone entitled “‘Deception Is the Art of War’: Gabriel J. Rains, Torpedo Specialist of the Confederacy.”In 2005, W. Davis Waters was awarded the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the highest civilian award bestowed by the Governor, for extraordinary services to the State of North Carolina. Although retired, Waters continues to research and write about history. He lives with his wife Denise in historic Hillsborough, North Carolina.

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      Book preview

      Gabriel Rains and the Confederate Torpedo Bureau - W. Davis Waters

      PREFACE

      THE Civil War produced many soldiers, but few men with military inventiveness. Gabriel J. Rains was such a man. Unlike most commanders, the brigadier general was an inventor and proponent of modern war tactics. His interest focused upon scientific endeavor. Working with chemicals, fuse Plugs, mortar shells, and gunpowder, Rains created ingenious land and naval explosives which acted as defensive deterrents. Utilized by Confederacy, Rains’s torpedoes served to strengthen a 3,600 mile coastline, supplement an inadequate navy, protect vital harbors, reinforce military lines, and shield important cities.

      Although the advantages were many, the road to Confederate approval and adoption was long and difficult. Four years of struggle and commitment transformed the brigadier general into an administrative weaponry specialist. And in the waning months of the war, his devices achieved complete and unrestricted acceptance.

      Rains fought diligently with weapons designed for use on land and sea and due to that fact, he was truly involved in total war. Because he directed a secret military organization, his achievements are not widely known. Yet officials and commanders in the Southern Confederacy knew G. J. Rains, his skills, and how his weapons could materially harm and cripple the enemy.

      GLOSSARY

      LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

      Chapter I

      1. Home of Gabriel Manigault Rains

      2. Mary Jane McClellan Rains

      3. Gabriel Rains, U.S. Army Officer

      Chapter II

      4. McClellan’s army at Yorktown

      5. Explosion of a torpedo

      6. General Joseph E. Johnston

      7. George W. Randolph, [third] Secretary of War

      8. General Robert E. Lee

      9. Barrel or keg torpedo

      Chapter III

      10. General Pierre G. T. Beauregard

      11. James A. Seddon, [fourth] Secretary of War

      Chapter IV

      12. President Jefferson Davis

      13. Circumventor of the Devil

      14. CSS H. L. Hunley

      15. Map: locations of special assignments

      Chapter V

      16. City Point Explosion

      17. Battle of Mobile and sinking of the ironclad Tecumseh, lead ship of Admiral David Farragut’s fleet

      18. Tools used to plant mines – subterra shells

      19. Fort McAllister, Georgia

      20. Telegram to General Rains

      Chapter VI

      21. Henry, Sevier, Gabrielle, and Katherine Rains

      22. St. Thaddeus Episcopal Church

      Chapter VII

      23. Sensitive Primer

      24. Subterra Shell

      25. Parts of a fuse primer

      26. Barrel Torpedo

      27. Submarine Mortar Battery

      28. Spar Torpedo

      29. Dart Grenade Belt

      30. Uniform and sword of General Rains

      CHAPTER I

      EARLY MILITARY SERVICE AND YORKTOWN

      AT daybreak, May 4, 1862, cruel murder took place in the streets of Yorktown, Virginia. A horrifying episode unfolded as Federal troops experienced their first encounter with enemy land mines. The Army of the Potomac, moving through unoccupied Rebel defense, confronted the effects of an unorthodox method of warfare. An observer within the works, Dr. Francis Lieber, a noted professor of Columbia College in New York, watched in horror and disbelief as the grim sight of death enveloped him. Unlike earlier engagements of the war, this human suffering was the product of villainously concealed weapons rather than hand-to-hand combat. Along the streets, beneath the trees, and at the base of telegraph poles, Lieber saw and heard infernal machines tear the earth and spit fire and fragments into the air. ¹

      Movement through the deserted yet dangerous garrison became one of extreme caution, for few knew when a fatal explosion might erupt. Confederate land mines were common mortar shells filled with powder. However, the addition of a detonating primer and their ingenious placement made the shells a most terrifying weapon of warfare. After evaluating these deceptive and deadly shells, Lieber, a political scientist by profession, ruled they exceeded the limits of civilized warfare. The use of this unethical weapon, he concluded, could be attributed to only one man, the Rebel commander of Yorktown, Brigadier General Gabriel J. Rains.²

      Rains was not a typical military general of the l860’s. Most generals of this period were skilled commanders of infantrymen. Military commanders of the two contesting sides knew the importance of mass concentration of men on the field of battle. They also knew that the war would be won by infantrymen and to that end they studied closely Hardee’s Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics, as they pushed their men toward strategic points and enemy forces. But while many commanders followed devotedly this 1855 manual,³ Gabriel J. Rains waged war in an unconventional manner. His maxim: Deception is the art of war,⁴ and Rains adhered faithfully to this dictum in a war based on infantry tactics. Risking disapproval and possible ultimate rejection, Gabriel Rains tried and perfected the land mine for the Confederate government.

      There was little in the Confederate general’s career to indicate he would adopt weaponry development as his special interest. Gabriel James Rains was born in l803 in New Bern, North Carolina, one of eight children of Gabriel Manigault and Hester Ambrose Rains. His father was a successful cabinet maker and upholsterer. The family lived on Middle Street for a while, and in 1816 moved to Johnson Street, near the New Bern Academy. Like many of his brothers and sisters, Gabriel attended the academy, graduating in 1820. After attending local schools, Gabriel left his home state to become a cadet at the United States Military Academy.⁵

      Home of Gabriel Manigault Rains

      The Rains house in New Bern, renovated twice and moved since Rains owned it. Architecture of New Bern and Craven County (New Bern, Tryon Palace Commission, 1988), p. 279.

      In July 1823, Rains entered the military world of West Point. That summer, he and ninety-seven other young men embarked upon a rigorous course of study. The better than average student survived four years of strict discipline and military training, to graduate thirteenth in a class reduced to thirty-eight members.⁶ His academic record showed that he excelled in three courses – mathematics, chemistry, and engineering.⁷

      While at West Point, Rains formed a close association with fellow cadets who were later to serve the Confederacy. There was Leonidas Polk, a fellow classmate and a North Carolina native from Raleigh. Polk’s roommate was Albert Sidney Johnston, a Kentucky native. Also in attendance during Rains’s years were underclassmen Joseph Johnston, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis.⁸ Acquaintances and friendships that Rains made during his cadet years proved to be important during the Civil War. All these cadets learned well the lessons of tactical defense taught by the engineering faculty.⁹

      In July, 1827, Rains left the academy a second lieutenant. The soldier then travelled to Missouri and on to Fort Gibson, to join the 7th Infantry for frontier duty. In the Indian Territory, Rains spent twelve years assisting and supplying the tribes as they moved westward.¹⁰

      This relatively calm period of assignment was notable for two events. In 1834, while Rains was at Fort Gibson, Lieutenant Jefferson Davis was arrested for missing a morning bugle call and answering an officer in a disrespectful manner. Two days after the incident, he underwent court- martial proceedings which lasted for six days. Rains served as a witness and at the end of the proceedings, Davis was found not to be guilty of the charges against him.¹¹ One year later on October 1, 1835, near Fort Coffee, Rains, now a first lieutenant, married Mary Jane McClellan, the granddaughter of John Sevier, the well-known Indian fighter and governor of Tennessee. This marriage produced seven children: five girls--Stella, Leila, Katherine, Gabrielle, and Fanny May, and two sons--Henry and Sevier.¹²

      Mary Jane McClellan Rains

      Married to Lieutenant Gabriel Rains on October 1, 1835. They had

      seven children, five daughters and two sons. Jane Hillard Collection.

      From guarding the welfare of Indians to fighting Indians was a transition which Rains had to face in 1839. That year, Captain Rains left the peaceful Arkansas territory and general frontier duty for assignment in the hostile swamps of western Florida. To help suppress the natives during the Second Seminole War, Rains assumed command, first of Fort Micanopy and then neighboring Fort King, in the northern interior of Florida. ¹³

      At this time, Rains’s interest in explosives became evident. In early April 1840, after a Seminole band ambushed two of his men outside the swamp encircled post, Rains decided to employ an explosive shell which he had devised. To prevent similar occurrences and to extend his line of fortification, the post commander took a small torpedo, ¹⁴ concealed the instrument and placed it near a pond, frequently visited by Seminole war parties. Following an explosion one evening, Rains and a dragoon unit advanced to the area of placement, seeking signs of its destructive effects only to be ambushed by a large Seminole band. Evident failure of the device forced the small army unit to take up a defensive line behind trees and to fight unyieldingly, until a prominent Indian warrior fell. Upon his removal from the field, the Seminoles retreated. Captain Rains was seriously wounded in the struggle. His men carried him to the fort, where a physician judged the lung laceration to be of a mortal nature.¹⁵

      The diagnosis proved to be incorrect. It was two months, however, before the captain recuperated to the point where he could submit an official report.¹⁶ By that time, some of the Florida papers reported he had died in action. The Niles National Register, a Baltimore paper carrying information from the St. Augustine News stated:

      We look upon this [Fort King engagement] as the most brilliant affair occurring during the whole war … It

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