SW078 Confederate Torpedo Service Chief, Unsung ‘Father‘ of Coastal Defense, First Blasted Seminole with Early Land Mine Munitions in 1840

Gabriel Rains was a Confederate general who ran their torpedo service during the Civil War. HIS torpedoes – we call them sea mines today – were what Union Admiral David Farragut was damning when he ordered his fleet full speed ahead in the 1864 Battle of Mobile. Today, some consider him an unsung father of coastal defense through World War II. His land mines ripped a horrendous cost on soldiers passing critical road points. 

 

 

A mine-clearing ship, the USS Patapsco, assigned to the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, joined eight other ironclads in a vigorous attack on Fort Sumter, and received 47 hits from Confederate gunfire during that day. In time, Fort Sumter was reduced to a pile of rubble, but remained a formidable opponent.  On 15 January 1865, while participating in obstruction clearance operations in Charleston Harbor, Patapsco struck a Confederate mine and sank, with 75 lost. Most of its sailors remain entombed in the underwater wreck. Five who died are buried outside Fort Moultrie, next to Seminole leader Osceola's grave. 

 

An infantry officer by branch, the 1827 US Military Academy graduate had a sideline tinkering with explosives. He employed land mines around forts the Army was evacuating and scored a few hits on curious Seminoles attempting to enter a fort’s walls. He sustained serious wounds in one skirmish between his troops and the Seminole. It was for these wounds that Rains requested compensation in the 1870s. And he DID finagle a pension of sorts out of the Federal government after the war. No, it was not for his service in coastal defense and sea-land mine technology and employment in the Civil War, but rather, for taking wounds in the Second Seminole War!

Chris Kimball, who devoted a chapter to Rains in his Alachua Ambush collection, returns to discuss and describe Rains’ impact as an officer in two armies.

Host Patrick Swan is a board member with the Seminole Wars Foundation. He is a combat veteran and of the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Kosovo, and at the Pentagon after 9/11. A military historian, he holds masters degrees in Public History, Communication, and Homeland Security, and is a graduate of the US Army War College with an advanced degree in strategic studies. This podcast is recorded at the homestead of the Seminole Wars Foundation in Bushnell, Florida. 

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