Description

Front: Thomas E. Courtenay, April 19, 1822 – September 1, 1875, Emigre ~ Patriot ~ Inventor, Captain, Confederate States of America. The Coal Bomb or Coal Torpedo

Back: Thomas Edgeworth Courtenay was born in Belfast to a landed family of very old nobility. However, his lot was to go into the world and make his own way. Thomas landed in New Orleans in 1842 and eventually settled in St. Louis. The War of Northern Aggression forced him to move with his family to Baltimore. Courtenay possessed a working knowledge of steamboats and out of necessity imagined a revolutionary new weapon; a bomb which appears as a simple lump of coal. It quickly became known as the Coal Torpedo. It was an irregular iron or steel hollow casting in the shape of a lump of coal, filled with explosive, finished to resemble a lump then quietly placed in a coal hopper to be loaded into the target boiler. His invention proved successful and was used by governments as late as WWII. Courtenay never profited from his invention