biography
| name: |
Brooke, John Mercer
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1826–1906)
|
| biography:
| US naval officer and inventor, born in Tampa Bay, Florida, USA. He served in the US Navy (1841–61) and invented the deep-sea sounding apparatus (1851–3). He joined the Confederate States Navy in 1861 and was largely responsible for the fitting-out of the CSS ironclad Virginia. He was chief of the Bureau of Ordnance and Hydrography (1863–5), where he invented the Brooke cast-iron rifle. |
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