The device itself was studied independently by two sets of military
experts of the United States government with these results:
First, that it was mechanically perfect; second, that it was practical
under the conditions of adjustment to a ship’s rudder which Fay had
devised; and third, that the charge of trinitrotoluol for which the
container was designed, was nearly half the quantity which is used on
our own floating mines and which is calculated upon explosion twenty
feet from a battleship to put it out of action, and upon explosion
in direct contact, absolutely to destroy and sink the heaviest
superdreadnought. In other words, beyond all question the bomb would
have shattered the entire stern of any ship to which it was attached,
and would have caused it to sink in a few minutes.
A brief description of the contrivance reveals the mechanical ingenuity
and practical efficiency of Fay’s bomb. A rod attached to the rudder,
at every swing the rudder gave, turned up, by one notch, the first
of the beveled wheels within the bomb. After a certain number of
revolutions of that wheel, it in turn gave one revolution to the next;
and so on through the series. The last wheel was connected with the
threaded cap around the upper end of the square bolt, and made this
cap slowly unscrew, until at length the bolt dropped clear of it and
yielded to the waiting pressure of the strong steel spring above. This
pressure drove it downward and brought the sharp points at its lower
end down on the caps of the two rifle cartridges fixed below it—like
the blow of a rifle’s hammer. The detonation from the explosion of
these cartridges would set off a small charge of impregnated chlorate
of potash, which in turn would fire the small charge of the more
sluggish but stronger dynamite, and that in turn would explode the
still more sluggish but tremendously more powerful trinitrotoluol.
The whole operation, once the spring was free, would take place in a
flash; and instantly its deadly work would be accomplished.