"Shortly after 9 p.m. on a dark October night in 1863, four intrepid Confederates launched one of the most daring attacks of the Civil War. Nestled into the David, a cigar–shaped vessel 50 feet long and barely 5 feet in diameter, they steamed toward one of the Union Navy's mightiest warships, the New Ironsides, on blockade duty in Charleston harbor. Each member of the crew — Capt. William T. Glassell, the pilot Walker Cannon, the assistant engineer J. H. Toombs and the seaman James Sullivan — carried a shotgun and revolver. But the real damage they intended was to come from a 134-pound explosive charge of at the end of a 30-foot spar extended from the prow of their vessel.
Sitting low in the water, the attacker was invisible until it was within 50 yards of its target. When challenged by the watch commander, Ensign C. T. Howard, Captain Glassell responded with a shotgun blast, killing him. Within seconds, the torpedo struck the New Ironsides, detonating about seven feet below the waterline just under the starboard quarter. The explosion rocked the 3,500-ton warship and created a geyser that swamped its Confederate attacker, dousing the fire in the small ship's boiler and rendering her powerless. Cannon, who could not swim, remained aboard, but his three shipmates abandoned ship.
Shortly afterward Toombs, the assistant engineer, returned and was able to rekindle the fire in the boiler and steer the ship back to the safety of the inner harbor. Glassell spent over an hour in the water before being pulled out by a passing schooner and turned over the next morning to the Union Navy. Sullivan was discovered clinging to the anchor chain of the New Ironsides and was put in irons…"
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