Dunn arrived in Houston several days later. Without orders or documents, he penned a letter of introduction to General Magruder that detailed the Singer groups’ activities related to torpedo boats over the past year:

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We were…ordered by the Secretary of War, to construct one boat at Selma, Alabama, and one at Wilmington, N.C., of the following dimensions vis. 160 feet long, 28 foot beam and 11 foot hold with flat deck, carrying all their machinery below—to be iron sheathed and with no capacity for guns, and only showing 2 feet above water when ready for work. They is to be arranged with torpedoes, worked from below decks, and through tubes, forward, aft, and on both sides.

It is believed by Engineers of the highest rank, after a full investigation of our plans, that these boats will be perfectly able to raise the Blockade of all the Harbors in the Confederacy. Quite a number of small boats, known as ‘cigar boats,’ for night attacks are now being constructed at Richmond, Wilmington, Charleston and Mobile.

Our success in the use of the stationary Torpedo, has been the destruction of the Enemies Transport Greg Claud in the Atchaffalger Bay, La. [not verified in Federal records], in June last, killing and drowning 140 men; the Gun boat Dekalb, of 13 guns on the Yazoo River in July last destroying her entirely with 180 men; A gunboat in York River (name not recalled) was blown up by one of them, destroying the boat and crew and injuring another Boat badly that lay near by. The sloop of war Housatonic was destroyed in Charleston Harbor, by one of our torpedoes, attached to the prow of [our] small submarine boat, propelled by nine men….These successes show conclusively the certainty of explosion of our torpedoes.

Dunn made a good case for “forcing the enemy’s fleet lying off our bars and harbors, to take some of our medicine” and soon was constructing four small submarines at Shreveport for the defense of the Red River, while two huge ironclad vessels—using torpedoes discharged through tubes as an offensive weapon—would be built for use against the Federal blockading squadron off Galveston.

As Dunn’s negotiations with Magruder continued, Singer and Braman were ordered back to Texas to help with the submarines’ construction. Fretwell left James McClintock and Baxter Watson in charge of the Mobile facility and went north to Richmond to oversee torpedo operations with fellow operative James Jones. Fretwell’s torpedo activities were well known to Robert E. Lee, who revealed in a handwritten document that Fretwell had personally “received my permission to operate on the James River.”

In the weeks that followed, the Singer operatives still on duty in Richmond worked around the clock rigging and deploying drift mines down the James in the path of advancing Federal warships.

David Bradbury and several other Singer operatives attached to the La Vaca facility prepared a similar mine surprise for Admiral Porter and his small armada of gunboats steaming slowly up the Red River toward Shreveport, La. On April 15, the Singer group’s efforts there paid off when the hull of the Federal ironclad Eastport was damaged by a torpedo. Northern forces later destroyed the vessel to keep it from being captured.

About this time, Admiral David Farragut, flag officer of the Gulf Blockading Squadron, was massing his forces for an all-out attack on Mobile Bay. McClintock and Watson were in charge of Singer operations in the region, overseeing the anchoring of more than 100 torpedoes near Fort Morgan at major entrances to Mobile Bay.

On the morning of August 5, 1864, Farragut’s attacking squadron weighed anchor and steamed toward the mouth of the bay. Spearheading his attacking column were the recently arrived single-turret monitors Tecumseh and Manhattan. Perhaps fearing that his vessel might run aground in the narrow channel, Tecumseh’s captain disregarded Farragut’s orders and unwittingly turned his vessel’s bow westward into a submerged cluster of Singer mines, triggering a huge explosion. The massive iron ship rolled to one side and slipped beneath the waves in less than a minute.

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