Combat· American Civil War
Spar Torpedo Attack on USS Wabash
One of the earliest successful defenses against the Confederate torpedo boat, the new weapon that had just shown its menace.
On the evening of 18 April 1864, a lookout aboard the frigate USS Wabash, lying off Charleston, sighted a small craft heading straight for the ship, and the fear was at once that it was one of the semi-submersible torpedo boats that had sunk the Housatonic some months before. The call to general quarters brought the crew up, and as the ship slipped her cable and got underway, her Marine detachment lined the rail and blazed away at the attacking craft. The boat was only forty yards off when a round shot splashed beside it and it vanished beneath the water. Whether it was holed by Marine musketry or simply swamped could not be told. Either way the Wabash was saved, an early lesson in countering the spar torpedo.
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Record no. 424