"The Arrival of the Naval Mine " Topic

"From the mid-19th Century onwards the naval mine developed in the general from we know today and which was to play a significant role in the American Civil War, the Russ-Japanese War of 1904-05, both World Wars and the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88. The famous order by Admiral Farragut as he drove his squadron into Mobile Bay in 1864 – "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" – referred to mines, then often labelled as torpedoes, and not the automotive weapons that emerged in the next decade. The concept of the floating mine had been around for centuries – often in the form of boats that would be allowed to drift downriver towards enemy bridges. The weakness was however that explosion would essentially be random, whether close to the enemy or not, as detonation would depend on a slow-burning fuze or a clockwork mechanism. The arrival of practical electrical technology in the 1850s and 60s got around this problem, allowing controlled detonation from shore of submerged mines, or detonation by systems integral to the mine itself and triggered by contact.

As the Confederate defences of Mobile Bay demonstrated, mines proved a very effective, and relatively cheap, way of defending harbour approaches – as was shown by the dramatic sinking of a unit of Farragut's squadron, the monitor USS Tecumseh. (One episode of my novel Britannia's Wolf describes the protection of a major Russian Black Sea anchorage in 1877 by mines anchored across the entrance and controlled through electrical cables connected to observation posts onshore)…"

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Amicalement
Armand

Interestingly, the first practical contact detonated mine was developed by Immanuel Nobel while he was working for the Russians. His son Alfred went on to even greater things.

Also interestingly, I am presenting a paper next month about a Confederate naval officer who worked for the Brazilians during the War of the Triple Alliance as a torpedo expert. This posting was most apt.

Happy it helps you my good friend!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand