Thomas Edgeworth Courtenay

He and his brother were brokers, shipping supplies down the Mississippi River to plantation owners, and buying their cotton for shipment to England.

When the Civil War broke out, he moved his family to relatives in Harford County, Maryland and established a new insurance office in Baltimore.

When a coal bomb was shovelled into the firebox, it would explode, resulting in the explosion of the pressurized steam boiler and the destruction of the vessel.

Davis approved and forwarded Courtenay's letter to Secretary of War James A. Seddon, who arranged for the castings to be made by the army artillery shop in January 1864.

Courtenay was motivated by a Confederate Bounty Law that offered a reward of up to 50% of the value of Union shipping destroyed by means of new inventions.

Courtenay would not draw a regular Army salary, but would receive up to 50% of the value of ships and cargo destroyed or captured, payable in Confederate war bonds.

Captain Courtenay obtained permission from President Davis to leave the country and go to the UK to raise money for the Confederacy.

The coal torpedo was credited with sinking the Greyhound, a private steamboat that had been commandeered by General Butler for use as a floating headquarters on the James River, on 27 November 1864.

He returned to the United States in 1868, but he was in poor health for the rest of his life, and died at the age of 53 at Jordan's Sulphur Springs near Winchester, Virginia, on 3 September 1875.