Whitehead torpedoes and the Civil War blockade

Moving the Whitehead torpedo earlier than its historical 1866 appearance brings it into the American Civil War. The Confederacy probably lacked the industrial capacity to manufacture the weapon in quantity, which makes Union use the more plausible scenario. Northern blockade squadrons had turned to monitors to counter Confederate armored ships, but a self-propelled torpedo with even a modest hit probability offered a different answer. Factories could turn out weapons faster than shipyards could build, launch, and fit out armored vessels, changing blockade procurement through asymmetric production. One possible response was a United States torpedo battleship, an appealing concept with serious practical weaknesses. The early Whitehead saw little use before repeated development produced a far more capable system, so a small change in timing could have altered both weapons and fleets.