#70 Subversive Explosives

General Gabriel J. Rains, CSA



In January 1864 a small, black, iron object was placed on the desk of Jefferson Davis. The confederate president picked it up, turned it in his hands, and said, "Perfection itself." It was a bomb. The bomb was designed to be thrown into a stack of coal on a coal barge, which would be shoveled into a ship's boiler. The captured blockade-runner Greyhound was the first casualty of this secret weapon. It was designed by CSA General Gabriel J. Rains.

The coal-bomb was not the only weapon designed by Rains. Together with his brother, George Washington Rains, they created landmines composed of an iron cylinder with a conical top. On the top was a plank that, when pressed by marching soldiers or a horse, would activate the fuse and cause an explosion.

(Source: Davis, Burke. The Civil War: Strange & Fascinating Facts. New York: Wings Books. 1960.)