The lights had been used in lighthouses and theaters since the 1830s, but Gillmore’s engineers were the first to adapt them for combat. Better known as “limelights,” these chemical lamps used superheated balls of lime, or calcium oxide, to create an incandescent glow. Gillmore’s Union guns bombarded the fort day and night with the help of a strange invention: the calcium light. Calcium floodlightsĭuring an 1863 operation to retake Charleston Harbor, General Quincy Adams Gillmore laid siege to the Confederate stronghold at Fort Wagner. Hunley destroyed the Union sloop-of-war Housatonic after ramming it with a pole-mounted torpedo, becoming the first combat submarine to successfully sink an enemy ship. The Confederacy also succeeded in using submarines to turn mines into offensive weapons. Maury’s “infernal machines” made the James River virtually impassable, and mines later terrorized the Union Navy during battles at Mobile Bay and Charleston Harbor. The rebels owed their skill at underwater warfare in part to Matthew Fontaine Maury, an oceanographer who first demonstrated the use of mines in 1861. Union torpedoes, meanwhile, only sank six Confederate Navy vessels.
Starting in 1862 with the sinking of the ironclad Cairo, Confederate torpedoes destroyed dozens of Union ships and damaged several others. Both sides mined harbors and rivers with torpedoes, but the Confederacy enjoyed greater success. Underwater minesĪlong with landmines, the Civil War was also a major testing ground for underwater mines. 7 Momentous College Football Coaching Hires 5.
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