Thank you! I misundertood what you were saying. I had always understood that Rains did his torpedo development work AFTER the war began. If he spent some of his pre-war career working on various devices then others in the North would certainly have known of them. Is his 33 year Army career well enough known to say where he might have experimented with coal torpedoes? I could then look for people who would have been aware of his pre-war experiments to have been in the islands where the blockade runners coaled or at least be connected to people who were placed to sabotage blockade runners. Consular dispatches do hint at various plans to cause blockade runners trouble, (some succeeded) but I have not found any hint of explosives being used on runners in diplomatic correspondence from the islands. Is there another source you would recommend which mentions coal torpedoes besides Perry's Infernal Machines and the Boat Burner and Courtenay web pages?