The coal torpedo, developed by Thomas Edgeworth Courtenay for use by the Confederate Secret Service, was a hollow iron casting filled with gunpowder, which looked like a piece of coal. When shoveled into the firebox of a Union steamboat or locomotive, it would explode, wrecking the boiler and possibly sinking the ship. These documents tell some of the story of how, when and why the coal torpedo was developed and used.

	A brief biography of Thomas Edgeworth Courtenay, Captain in the Confederate Secret Service and Inventor of the Coal Torpedo.
	Deconstructing an Infernal Machine. Pictures and newly discovered details about the production of coal torpedoes correct a 140 year-old misconceptions about its size, ease of concealment, and destructive power.
	"The Courtenay Coal Torpedo," by Joseph M. Thatcher Jr., reproduced with permission from Military Collector and Historian, Vol. XI, Spring 1959.
	Citations relating to the coal torpedo from The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies and The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies