“ Dedicated to Research
and Preservation 
Pre-Columbian North America” 

Unexplained Artifacts

Unexplained Artifacts

Mines or “torpedoes"

“ Often when working on a site we come across various artifacts from a different time period. This was discovered in the river directly under a bridge in Georgia. Records show that a bridge was located at the same location during the war between the states.

Mines—or “torpedoes,” as they were then known—were largely a Confederate weapon. Originally developed by General Gabriel J. Rains, these antipersonnel explosives were typically iron containers rigged with gunpowder, a fuse and a brass detonation cap. Rains first used the subterranean booby traps in 1862 during the Peninsula Campaign, and later buried thousands more around Richmond and in various parts of the Deep South. In fact, some of these still-active landmines were only recovered in Alabama as recently as the 1960s.

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