Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the James Hamilton Tomb Papers, #723, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Alternate Form of Material

Memoirs have been published in part in the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion.

Typed copy of memoirs in folder 5 available on microfilm.

Acquisitions Information

1935 and 1941

Additional Descriptive Resources

A copy of the original finding aid for this collection is filed in folder 1a.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: SHC Staff

Encoded by: Noah Huffman, December 2007

Updated by: Kathryn Michaelis, March 2011; Nancy Kaiser, February 2021

This collection was processed with support from the sponsorship of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Office of Preservation, Washington, D.C., 1990-1993.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Brazil--History, Naval.
• Confederate States of America. Navy--Officers.
• Tomb, James Hamilton, 1839-1929.
• Tomb, James Harvey, d. 1946.
• Tomb, William Victor, d. 1941.
• United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Naval operations--Submarine.
• United States. Navy--Officers--Diaries.
• World War, 1914-1918--Personal narratives, American.

James Hamilton Tomb was the chief engineer in the Confederate and Brazilian navies and an officer of the Norfolk and Western Railroad.

The collection contains the papers of two generations of naval officers. The papers of James Hamilton Tomb (died after 1900) of Florida include his memoirs of the Civil War when he was a chief engineering officer in the Confederate navy; correspondence (partly in Portuguese) while a Brazilian navy officer, 1866-1867, and recollections and manuscript drawings of a torpedo which sank a Brazilian warship; and postwar correspondence about Civil War naval actions with former Confederate and Union navy officers and other interested persons. The Civil War papers especially concern Confederate torpedoes and the submarines used in the attempt to break the Charleston blockade. Other papers include various records of the naval service of his sons, captains William Victor Tomb (died 1941) and James Harvey Tomb (died 1946), including a diary, 1917-1918, of W. T. Tomb while on convoy duty in the Atlantic during World War I.

• Photographs (P-723/1-7)
• Extra-oversize paper (XOPF-723/1)
• Microfilm (M-723/1)