During the Civil War, CSN Captain John Taylor Wood made innovative use of scarce Confederate resources by having four thirty-foot double-ended cutters built at Rockett's Shipyard in Richmond. Light and fast under oar power, the boats could be carried on specially modified supply wagons and launched in remote areas to capture unsuspecting Union boats and their cargo. One of the most illustrious military men to fight in Middlesex County during the war, Wood was the grandson of Zachery Taylor and the nephew of Jefferson Davis, as well as an accomplished soldier, sailor, and tactician. In two raids in 1862, he successfully captured several commercial vessels. In August 1863, Jefferson Davis ordered him to the Piankatank River to target Union gunboats rather than commercial vessels, and with eighty-two men and four boarding cutters he camped at Wilton Creek and ambushed the Union gunboat U.S. General Putnam; the gunboat escaped, but its captain was killed and several crewmen were wounded. Several weeks later, during a raging storm on the Rappahannock River off Stingray Point, Wood and his men captured the gunboats U.S. Satellite and U.S. Reliance with the boarding cutters. After commandeering the Satellite, he seized three commercial vessels the next day, then escaped up the Rappahannock River with his prizes ahead of three pursuing Union gunboats, salvaging guns, engines, anchors, and chains worth tens of thousands of dollars and capturing ninety prisoners without losing a single one of his own men.