Booknotes: Rockets, Tanks and Submarines

New Arrival:

• Rockets, Tanks and Submarines: The Ingenuity of Civil War Texans by Edward T. Cotham, Jr. (State House Pr, 2025).

Texans fought in some of the most hard-charging and hardest fighting regiments on either side. While those units and their actions, along with the leaders involved, have been well documented, less generally known and appreciated are the innovative technological contributions of Texas citizens to the Confederate war effort.

Interested readers might recall Mark Ragan's Confederate Saboteurs: Building the Hunley and Other Secret Weapons of the Civil War (TAMU Press, 2015), which explored the activities of the Singer Secret Service Corps. Founded in Port Lavaca, Texas in 1863 and led by Edgar Collins Singer, the group was responsible for developing and producing a range of torpedo technologies for both land and waterborne mine warfare. Torpedo boat and submarine development also became a part of their mission to help the Confederacy win the war. That history and more is visited, or revisited, in Edward Cotham's Rockets, Tanks and Submarines: The Ingenuity of Civil War Texans.

When it comes to assessing wartime enterprise and innovation in the area of military technology, the works of both Ragan and Cotham clearly demonstrate that Texas was not a mere frontier backwater. Instead, "Texans were among the most creative in their designs, and added their talents to the mix, creating a variety of war machines and devices that are remarkable for their ingenuity." Cotham's study "takes the reader through a remarkable ride complete with all sorts of schemers, spies, tinkerers, and dreamers, trying to harness technology to help them win the war."