Civil War torpedoes and the global development of landmine warfare

Civil War Torpedoes examines the history of landmine development and use in the Civil War and beyond.

The author organizes his scholarship around three thematic elements: tactics, technology, and morality.

Hess uses multiple archival sources to tell a compelling narrative, one that stresses not only the tactical and technological challenges faced by torpedo pioneers but one that also considers the moral stigma most contemporaries attached to this new weapon of war.