CSS David

Pen-and ink drawing of CSS David, showing external and internal plan
History
Name:	David
Launched:	1863
Commissioned:	1863
Decommissioned:	1865?
Fate:	unknown
General characteristics
Length:	50 ft (15 m)
Beam:	6 ft (1.8 m)
Draft:	5 ft (1.5 m)
Propulsion:	Steam engine
Complement:	4 officers and men
Armament:	1 spar torpedo

CSS David was a Civil War-era torpedo boat. On October 5, 1863, she undertook a partially successful attack on the USS New Ironsides, then participating in the blockade of Charleston, South Carolina.

Based upon a design by St. Julien Ravenel, the David was built as a private venture by T. Stoney at Charleston, South Carolina, in 1863, and was put under the control of the Confederate States Navy. Eventually over twenty torpedo boats of the David type were built for and operated by the CSN. The cigar-shaped boat carried a 32 by 10 inch (81 × 25 cm) explosive charge of 134 pounds (about 60 kilograms) gunpowder on the end of a spar projecting forward from her bow. CSS David operated as a semi-submersible: water was taken into ballast tanks so that only the length of the open-top conning tower and the stack for the boiler appeared above water. Designed to operate very low in the water, David resembled in general a submersible submarine; she was, however, strictly a surface vessel. Operating on dark nights, and using anthracite coal (which burns without smoke), David was nearly as hard to see as a true submarine.

On the night of October 5, 1863, David, commanded by Lieutenant William T. Glassell, CSN, left Charleston Harbor to attack the casemated ironclad steamer USS New Ironsides. The torpedo boat approached undetected until she was within 50 yards of the blockader. Hailed by the watch on board New Ironsides, Glassell replied with a blast from a shotgun and David plunged ahead to strike. Her spar torpedo detonated under the starboard quarter of the ironclad, throwing high a column of water which rained back upon the Confederate vessel and put out her boiler fires. Her engine dead, David hung under the quarter of New Ironsides while small arms fire from the Federal ship spattered the water around the torpedo boat.