Today in Jacksonville History: May 25, 1929

The Ancient Submariner slipped under the Eternal Sea.

James Hamilton Tomb, who engineered what was said to be the first torpedo attack, passed quietly at 91, a 2 o'clock on a Friday afternoon.

Death came far from the roiling sea. The old Confederate died of pnuemonia at his home on Park Street, one in a row of bungalows that still stand. Tomb departed as one of Jacksonville's most revered residents. A nephew was president of the Barnett Bank, a niece the wife of the tax collector.

He had come as a child with his parents to the banks of the St. Johns and a home along the river near St. Johns Bluff. At death he still had papers to the homestead.

Tomb declined a career in the U.S. Navy as a youth and joined the nascent sea arm of the Confederacy. In the blockaded port of Charleston he conceived plans for the submarine David, a submarine craft powered by a steam engine. On its nose was a long boom with an explosive charge on its tip.

Three times the David ventured into Charleston harbor before it whacked the side of a federal warship variously described as the Ironclad and the New Ironsides.

The attack put the David out of commission. Tomb and two others were rescued some distance away. The Florida Times-Union said the frigate New Ironsides was wrecked; the Jacksonville Journal said little damage was done to the Ironclad.

Both agreed Confederate President Jefferson Davis decorated Tomb for bravery.

Tomb later served six years on the staff of the Brazilian Navy and later went into business in St. Louis. He returned to Jacksonville in 1905 and had lived quietly here since.

Relatives said he died of his first and only illness.   

Also on May 25, 1929  

- Federal agents cracked 11 Baker County stills within 2 miles of each other in a one raid. Not a single person was found at any of the stills.

- County commissioners urged the Legislature to authorize a St. Johns River bridge from Black Point to Mandarin.

- County Judge John DuBose said 80 fisherfolk jammed his office for statewide fishing licenses after reading in the Times-Union the Legislature planned to increase the license fee from $1 to $3.

Bill Foley was a Times-Union reporter, editor and columnist for more than 40 years. He’s best known for his quirky columns about Jacksonville and Northeast Florida’s history. He wrote this series of Millennium Moments columns in 1999 leading up to the year 2000. Foley died in 2001 at age 62