The great man has written a novel high on my must-read list. Jimmy Carter is the first US President to write a fictional novel, and this one a is well researched historical fiction about the Revolution in the South. A part of US History that is conspicuous by it's absence in our educational curricula, especially as this conflict is basal to all our modern political woes; from gun-addiction, white supremacy, to our national inability to adress climate change head on.
The U.S.S. Vesuvius was a Spanish-American war era cruiser armed with three "dynamite guns". These weapons were giant pneumatic tubes fired by steam driven air compressors. They lobbed a shell that was effectively a can of gun-cotton to create enormous blasts. The main problems were that it was very inaccurate. And a bit prone to mechanical breakdowns, oh, also pressure kablooeys were a hazard...as was a large pile of guncotton cannisters in a ship that might be under fire.
