DAMN THE TORPEDOS ! - Naval Incidents of the Civil War by Hoehling, A.A

Winston-Salem, 1989, Blair Publ, First US edition in dust jacket, 9 1/2 x 9 1/2, Fine/Fine condition, 207 pages, numerous illus, notes, index. In early 1864, a handful of Confederate sailors boarded the experimental submarine Hunley and let it sink to the bottom of the harbor off Charleston, South Carolina, for an extended submergence test. A candle served as their only means of telling when their oxygen supply was low; after twenty-five minutes, its flame would burn no more. The hatch covers could not be lifted because of the water pressure. Four crews, the men knew, had already perished aboard the deadly vessel. Fighting panic, the sailors began turning the manual cranks that drove the propeller-the Hunley's only means of propulsion. It was a harrowing two hours before they reached the surface. Weeks later, the Hunley destroyed the USS Housatonic in history's first submarine attack, though its unfortunate crew died in the moment of glory.Such acts of uncommon bravery are the subject of DAMN THE TORPEDOES! NAVAL INCIDENTS OF THE CIVIL WAR. Too often, the scope and casualties of the great land battles of the war have overshadowed naval actions, though the fight was pressed with at least the same passion at sea as on land, and with considerably more improvisation. The Civil War at sea was demanding, real, and frightening. It is told here largely in the words of the participants, North and South alike.The stories of the epic battle between the Merrimack and the Monitor, of Davy Farragut s entrance into Mobile Bay, and of the Alabama's disruption of Union shipping before her sinking at the hands of the USS Kearsarge have seldom been told with such concern for the thoughts of the principals themselves. And the stories of the fleets of ferryboats hurriedly turned into men-of-war, of the hapless Mississippi riverboat captain ordered to transport a boatload of prostitutes to a town that had no intention of accepting them, and of the brash Confederate raider who brought the war as far north as Portland, Maine, finally get the wide telling they have so long deserved.