The losses of HMS Blenheim and HMS Java are just two of hundreds on the world’s oceans in the Age of Sail, and the fate of the two ships is mere speculation. Yet the disaster that took them both is history that deserves to be remembered.
During the civil war, the manufacture of powder and explosives was often handled by the most vulnerable, young women and children, whose labor was needed when so many men had been sent off to war. On March 13, 1863, the confederacy experienced a munitions disaster, in the confederate capitol of Richmond.