[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

July 20:

United States: Paul Koenig, head of the Hamburg-American Steamship Line's bureau of investigation, makes a report to Franz von Papen, German Military Attache to the United States, with regard to a payment of $150 to a man demonstrating a small bomb made to resemble a lump of coal.

I wonder f he paid an additional royalty (as Vicker's did Krupp for shell-fuze patents after the war!!!) http://armingallsides.on-the-record.org.uk/case_studies/vickers-and-krupp/ to the estate of Thomas Edgeworth Courtenay who invented the device he called a coal torpedo. The purpose of the coal torpedo was to burst the pressurized steam boiler, which had the potential to cause a tremendous secondary explosion. Boiler explosions were not uncommon in the early years of steam transportation, and often resulted in the complete destruction of the vessel by fire. In action, the coal torpedo would leave little evidence that a boiler explosion was due to sabotage.

The official count by the United States Customs Service was 1,800 out of 2,427 passengers. Many were recently released Andersonville prisoners. Final estimates of survivors are about 550. Robert Louden, made a death bed confession of having sabotaged Sultana by a coal torpedo. Louden, a former Confederate agent and saboteur who operated in and around St. Louis, had the opportunity and motive to attack it and may have had access to the means. (Thomas Edgeworth Courtenay, the inventor of the coal torpedo, was a former resident of St. Louis and was involved in similar acts of sabotage against Union shipping interests.) Supporting Louden's claim are eyewitness reports that a piece of artillery shell was observed in the wreckage. Still the biggest war-time ship disaster in American history; lost to history in the wake of Lincoln's assassination the day before. [wiki] Vickers shells: Every one stamped with 'Krupp Patent Zünder'!