against her and exploded the torpedo under her bilge. The fires were extinguished, and the boat was nearly swamped by the concussion and the descending water, and Lieutenant Glassell and Sullivan, supposing her to be lost swam off and were picked up by the enemy. Engineer Tomb and Pilot Cannon succeeded in reaching Charleston with the boat.
"Although Lieutenant Glassell failed to accomplish his chief object, it is believed that he inflicted serious injury upon the 'Ironsides,' while his unsurpassed daring must be productive of an important moral influence, as upon the enemy as upon our own naval force."
The annals of naval warfare record few enterprises which exhibit more strikingly than this of Lieutenant Glassell the highest qualities of a sea officer.
At this time there were sixty officers and men on torpedo duty at Charleston alone.
The most remarkable career in all torpedo history was that of a little boat built in Mobile Bay, and operated upon the fleet off Charleston. She was the pioneer of all submarine torpedo boats, as she was the first to achieve success.
She was built in 1863–4 at Mobile by Mr. Horace L. Hunley, at his own expense. She was made of boiler plate, was shaped like a fish twenty-four feet long, five feet deep, three feet wide she had fins on each side, raised or depressed from the interior; her motive power was a small propeller worked by manual power of her crew seated on each side of the shaft she was provided with tanks which could be filled or emptied of water to increase or diminish her displacement but had no provision for air storage. The captain stood in a circular hatchway well forward and steered the boat, and regulated the depth at which she should proceed. When she
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