“Having described this instrument in a way which I hope will be understood,” continues Fulton, “I may be permitted to put the following question to my reader, which is: Knowing that the explosion of one hundred pounds of powder, or more if required, under the bottom of a ship-of-the-line, would destroy her, and seeing, that if a ship in sailing should strike the lever of an anchored torpedo, she would be blown up, would he have the courage, or shall I say the temerity, to sail into a channel where one or more hundred of such engines were anchored? I rely on each gentleman’s sense of prudence and self-preservation, to answer this question to my satisfaction. Should the apprehension of danger become as strong on the minds of those who investigate this subject as it is on mine, we may reasonably conclude that the same regard to self-preservation will make an enemy cautious in approaching waters where such engines are placed; for however brave sailors may be, there is no danger so distressing to the mind of a seaman, or so calculated to destroy his confidence, as that which is invisible and instantaneous destruction.” But Admiral Farragut at Mobile Bay, half a century later, did have the “temerity to sail into a channel where one or more hundred of such engines were anchored.” The monitor _Tecumseh_ struck and exploded a mine that sent her to the bottom with almost her entire crew. The rest of the fleet began to waver when, from the main-rigging of the _Hartford_ Farragut shouted his immortal command: “Full steam ahead! Damn the torpedoes!” [Illustration: Sinking of the U. S. S. _Tecumseh_, by a Confederate mine, in Mobile Bay.] As the flagship led the way through the mine-field, those on board heard mine after mine bump against her bottom, but though the levers were struck and the primers snapped, the powder-charges failed to explode. Hastily improvised out of beer-kegs and other receptacles, with tin or iron covers that became rusty and useless soon after they were placed under water, many of the Confederate mines were in this respect inferior to the well-built copper torpedoes of Fulton. Yet crude as they were, they destroyed more than forty Northern warships, transports, and supply vessels. [Illustration: From Scharf’s History of the Confederate States Navy. A Confederate “Keg-Torpedo.”]