Chief Engineer James Hamilton Tomb (1839-1929) devoted almost 12 years of his early life to wartime naval service--first in the Confederate States' Navy during the American Civil War and then in the Marinha do Brasil during the War of the Triple Alliances. A steam engineer by profession and a torpedo expert by circumstance, Tomb was in the forefront of naval weapons technology of the period. Tomb quickly amassed not only the knowledge required of a steam engineer, but also the courage and capacity to assume important positions of command. Within days of his commissioning, he was on his way to his first assignment--first class engineer on the CSS Jackson at New Orleans, Louisiana, a point of great strategic importance. Here, amid a tightening blockade and a growing fear of Federal attack from the Gulf, Tomb's memoirs begin...