Union field photographers, Visiting photographers

Selmar Rush Seibert

The photographer credited with the 1865 views of a David-type torpedo boat aground at Charleston and of captured Confederate ordnance at the arsenal — pictures that survive in the National Archives and are among the few close records of Confederate naval technology.

Seibert is credited by the National Archives with photographs made at Charleston in 1865, including a David-type torpedo boat aground and Confederate torpedoes, shot and shell in front of the arsenal.

Biographical detail is thin. Archival descriptions give his dates as 1826–1909 and describe him as of Pennsylvania. This section has not traced a primary source for either and marks them unverified.

The Charleston connection

His subject was the machinery of the war rather than the city: the semi-submersible torpedo boats that had gone out against the blockading squadron, and the ordnance found in the arsenal after the evacuation.

War service and standing

Not established.

Attribution

The credit comes from the National Archives description of the photographs, and the photographs themselves are in a War Department series. Nothing further about the attribution has been established here.

Career

  • 1865Photographs a David-type torpedo boat aground at Charleston and captured ordnance at the arsenal. National Archives

Photographs in this collection

Another David
Another David23 March 1865 · Chisolm Causeway, Ashley River

Where the work is

Statement by statement

Every material claim on this page, with its standing and its source. A statement the record does not support is shown as unavailable rather than filled in.

  • AttributedCredited by the National Archives with 1865 Charleston photographs of a David-type torpedo boat and captured ordnance.National Archives
  • UnverifiedLived 1826–1909 and was from Pennsylvania.no source

Sources

  • National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. https://catalog.archives.gov/
  • Stephen Davis and Jack W. Melton Jr., 100 Significant Civil War Photographs: Charleston in the War (Charleston: Historical Publications LLC, 2020).