The fact of my failure was pointed out to me by Joseph Williams of Faith, who accompanied the late historian George Raynor on some of his research trips in years past.

Williams says that as a friend of Raynor, he found that the “key to informative writing is research, research, research.” And I have to admit I did not do enough of it before writing the article, which appeared in the Aug. 2 issue of the Post.

At the time of the writing, however, I was only quoting from an earlier newspaper story that Union paymaster Billings, 35 years after the sinking, told some writer. This is the way he put it: “The torpedo boat was the invention of a lieutenant in the Confederate navy. It was called the David, because it was intended, little thing that it was, to slay the federal navy, the Goliath of the occasion.”

The story of the Davids of the Confederacy is detailed in a publication put out by the Evening Post Publishing Co. and written by Arthur M. Wilcox and Warren Ripley. First written as a series of stories in two Charleston newspapers, the stories were later published in tabloid and other forms. One series describing the Davids was headed “Tiny Davids Were Mighty Weapon.” It went on to say:

“In any catalog of the ‘ifs’ and ‘might-have-beens’ of the Civil War, room should be left for an account of the tiny warships the Confederates called ‘Davids.’

“Union naval officers entering Charleston in 1865 found the hulks of these little ships scattered like so many worm-wasted logs along the banks of the Ashley River. They looked upon the wreckage with respect. None knew better that if there had been more Davids, the South might have won the war.

“The Davids, semi-submersible torpedo boats, conceived, designed and built at Charleston, were a new form of naval weapon which had the virtue of being practical as well as novel.

“The technology of a truly successful submarine was beyond the capacity of American engineers — the Hunley notwithstanding. The construction and operation of semi-submarine was well within their grasp. The Davids, unlike the Hunley, were not ahead of their time. Just one thing stood between them and brilliant success — the incapacity of the South to provide materials for construction.

“There were six Davids in various stages of construction or disrepair in Charleston Harbor when the Union Navy finally sailed in at the war’s end. These were all that were ever built.”

In a later paragraph, the story says:

“The David and her sisters were much of a kind. With the exception, those that the Yankees found at Charleston were 50 feet long and 512 or 6 feet wide. Each had a boiler and a steam engine which turned a single propeller.

“They were equipped with tanks which permitted them to sink low in the water. In fighting trim, only a few inches of freeboard remained. High above, however, was the tall smokestack required to furnish adequate draft for the fires under the boiler.

“After the first David had proven itself, the Navy finally saw the light and ordered a number for its own use. None, so far as can be determined, ever saw service. One was to have been 150 feet long, a formidable ship. She was incomplete at the war’s end.”

In another part of the story titled “Submarine Sinks U.S. Warship,” the author writes that the “Hunley was brought up from Mobile on flat cars and was between 30 and 40 feet long, made of boiler plate and from four to five feet in diameter — in essence a tube of iron, closed at both ends, with two hatches whose coamings were raised above the hull and provided with portholes. It was named, prosaically, H.L. Hunley for the man who built it. It was a true submarine.”

The article goes on to tell of the trials and errors that left at least 25 dead men before the Hunley made its final run to sink the Housatonic.