On Easter Monday last, when several thousands of persons were
holiday-making in a public garden out north-westward of London, a loud
bang startled the inmates of houses many miles from the spot in all
directions--louder than any discharge of artillery, and comparable to
a blowing-up on a tremendous scale. It proved on investigation to be
due to the explosion of a cylinder no more than twenty-five inches in
length by two inches in diameter, filled with one or other of those
destructive compositions which chemistry has lately presented to
us, and to which have been given the mysterious names of dynamite,
lithofracteur, gun-cotton, nitro-glycerine, &c. How such a diabolical
sausage got into such a place at such a time, and what the police
authorities have had to say about it, we need not detail here; but the
subject sets people thinking ugly thoughts about Torpedoes and Infernal
Machines.
The French have had much to do with (so-called) infernal machines,
which, under various forms, have been employed to assassinate
successive sovereigns, but happily failed in the wicked attempt, though
not without inflicting injuries on onlookers. In 1804, when Napoleon
thought that he had England pretty nearly in his grasp, a _catamaran_
expedition was fitted out by the English to act against him. This
catamaran was an oblong water-proof box lined with lead; it contained
fifteen hundred pounds of gunpowder, various inflammable substances,
clockwork to produce an explosion at a given moment, and ballast to
steady it. Being towed towards an enemy's ship and left for the tide to
float it onward, it would cling to the ship by means of grappling-irons
buoyed up with cork; and in a given number of minutes the clockwork
acting on a trigger would explode the combustibles. Such at least was
the theory; but the chances of failure were found to be too numerous
and varied in practice. Some years after this, Colonel Colt, the
inventor of the celebrated revolver, devoted a great deal of time to
this subject of infernal machines, making many combinations which were
useful as hints to later contrivers.
In 1809, when Lord Cochrane was engaged against the French in the Bay
of Biscay, he employed a destroyer most formidable in character. He
filled a number of empty puncheons with about fifty thousand pounds
of powder; on the tops of these puncheons were placed three hundred
and fifty explosive shells, with fuses, and upwards of two thousand
hand grenades among and between them. The whole were bound and jammed
together with cables, wedges, and sand, on board a small vessel called
the _Devastator_. A fifteen minutes' time-fuse being ignited, the crew
(Cochrane himself, a lieutenant, and four seamen) rowed away quickly in
a boat. The infernal monster did not produce quite the kind of mischief
intended; the explosion was one of the most tremendous ever heard; but
the enemy's ships were rather too far away to be materially damaged,
while Cochrane lost some of his gallant little crew by over-fatigue and
drowning by tumultuous waves.
During the short war between England and the United States in 1812-13,
many submarine boats were suggested and partially tried, but with no
great result.
The Crimean War (1854-56) brought to the Admiralty a deluge of
inventors and projectors, each armed with some new scheme of a
'diabolical' kind. The Earl of Dundonald (the Lord Cochrane of 1809)
sounded the government concerning a plan which he had matured long
before; but there was hesitation in the matter; and the public learned
little more than that the scheme related to a kind of fire-ship.
Captain Warner's 'long range' was another crotchet, by which an enemy's
vessel was to be destroyed at an immense distance by _something_
being hurled against it; this something, whatever it may have been,
did not find favour with the government. Then there was a talk also
about Captain Disney's war-projectile, consisting of a metal cylinder
having a bursting charge at one end, and at the other a highly
combustible liquid; the liquid, when exposed to the air, set fire to
almost everything with which it came in contact. This pleasant kind of
plaything was to be propelled against ships, buildings, or masses of
troops. Captain Disney had another mode of employing what he frankly
called his 'infernal fluid,' which would 'cause blindness for several
hours to all troops coming within a quarter of a mile of it.' The real
nature of the liquid was his peculiar secret, which, so far as we are
aware, the government did not think proper to purchase.
While discoverers and inventors were directing their attention to these
intentionally destructive contrivances, the principal governments were
cautiously testing some of them as opportunity offered. The Russians
studded the Baltic with submerged torpedoes in 1854-55; iron cases
containing combustibles, sulphuric acid, and chlorate of potash, so
placed that a sudden concussion would make the whole explode. Very few
British ships were really hit by them; but a good deal of uneasiness
was felt by the crews of Admiral Sir Charles Napier's fleet, who would
much rather have encountered an open enemy than a concealed submarine
foe, the whereabouts of which could not be determined beforehand. In
1866 the Austrians in their brief war with Italy used torpedoes in
which gun-cotton was fired off by an electric current. During the
American Civil War, 1861 to 1865, nearly forty vessels were destroyed
by torpedoes. (We may here mention that this name, first given to these
contrivances by the Americans, was derived from one designation of
the torpedo or electrical fish.) Three-fourths of the destruction was
wrought by the Confederates against Federal vessels, but the remainder
blew up or disabled the Confederates' own ships. The torpedoes
employed were of various kinds and sizes, some exploding by mechanical
concussion, some by chemical action, some by electric discharge. One
of them was a complete submarine boat, which could be lowered to
several feet below the surface of the water, and there propelled with
hand-paddles at the rate of four miles an hour, by men shut up in a
water-tight compartment, and provided with half an hour's compressed
fresh air. This submarine boat dragged a floating torpedo, allowed it
to come under the bottom of an enemy's ship, paddled away to a safe
distance, and then fired the torpedo by an electric fuse. Such at least
was the theory; but it proved to be a case of the engineer 'hoist by
his own petard;' for although the torpedo really did destroy a Federal
ship, the submarine boat and its crew were never afterwards seen or
heard of.[A]
Some of the contrivances to which naval engineers are directing their
attention are called _outrigger torpedoes_. A small swift steamer has
an outrigger or pole projecting twenty or twenty-five feet from one
side; a torpedo case is fastened to the outer end of the pole, and a
concussion-fuse is fitted to it, or an electric-wire extends along the
pole. When the steamer has cautiously and silently brought the torpedo
(which may be either a little above or a little below the surface of
the water) under the bottom of an enemy's ship, the composition within
it is fired by the fuse or current, and the explosion left to do its
destructive work. It is supposed and intended that the distance of
twenty or twenty-five feet between the steamer and the torpedo will
keep the former free from peril. Some torpedoes are self-explosive on
touching the enemy's ship. One variety is a hollow iron cone, kept
at a certain depth under water by a mooring chain; the cone contains
from one to three hundred pounds of powder; above this is an air-space
to give buoyancy, over this a small apparatus of chemicals, and at
the top of all a projecting rod. If the bottom or lower part of the
hull of a passing ship happens to strike against this rod, a kind of
trigger explodes the chemicals and then the powder--with what result
the evil fates are left to determine. Another kind, not self-explosive,
is ignited from the shore. The torpedo-cone is moored as in the
former case, and electric wires extend from it to a battery on shore.
When an enemy's ship is seen to be passing just over the torpedo,
a shock is sent from shore, and the demon of mischief explodes. A
self-exploding torpedo has the disadvantage of destroying one's own
ships occasionally, by a mishap; while the others are with difficulty
coaxed to explode just at the desired instant.
Six or eight years ago, the public were a good deal mystified about
Captain Harvey's torpedo, what it was and what it was intended to
accomplish. It was described as an oblong box, to be towed beside
a steamer by means of a long rope. It was charged with a powerful
explosive composition; it had projecting levers at the top, a tube
containing a detonating compound, and a bolt that could be pressed down
upon the detonator by the levers. Towed out to its place by a steamer
of great speed, it is brought close to the side of a hostile ship,
the tow-rope is then slightly slackened, the torpedo sinks a little,
and as the rope tightens again, it comes with a violent blow against
the ship's bottom, exploding and making (theoretically at anyrate) a
big hole in the ship's hull: a short process, but by no means a merry
one. (The English authorities are said to be manufacturing Harvey's
torpedoes at Woolwich Arsenal at the time we write, June 1877.)
Rather more recently, Captain Ericsson's torpedo attracted the
attention of the American government. It had one feature of a
remarkable character--a hempen cable utilised as a tube or pipe by
making the centre hollow. The torpedo, a cylinder of light galvanised
iron, was about ten feet long by nineteen inches in diameter, and was
charged with nearly four hundred pounds of nitro-glycerine. It was
towed by a steamer, with a tubular cable or rope half a mile long. When
brought into a desired position, the torpedo was propelled swiftly
in any direction by compressed air driven through the tubular rope.
The torpedo could be wound in so as to be any less distance than half
a mile from the steamer. One rather fails, however, to see how the
commander of the steamer is to send the explosive matter against an
enemy's ship exactly at the right time and in the right direction.
The Whitehead or fish torpedo, one of the kinds now being experimented
upon by the English government, appears to be a very elaborate
contrivance. It is a sort of submarine rocket, a cigar-shaped iron
case five or six yards long by about half a yard in diameter at
the thickest part. At one end is a charge of three or four hundred
pounds of dynamite or of compressed gun-cotton, with a pistol or
trigger-detonator to ignite it; then a pneumatic chamber for compressed
air, with an apparatus for maintaining the torpedo at any predetermined
depth below the surface of the water; then an air-chamber, tested to a
thousand pounds on the square inch, and containing an air-engine with
compressed air; and lastly, a double action screw propeller. So much
for the torpedo; but how to make it travel along and then explode? It
is either driven into the sea out of an apparatus called an ejector,
fitted in the bow of a steamer built for the purpose, or it can be
launched from a special carriage placed on deck. The arrangements can
be so made that the torpedo will travel along at any depth below the
water varying from one foot to thirty feet, for a horizontal distance
of a thousand yards, and with a speed of seven miles an hour. A
torpedo-vessel called the _Lightning_ has just been built by Messrs
Thorneycroft and Donaldson for the Admiralty, to contain two or more
of these torpedoes, and to eject them one at a time against an enemy's
ships. The idea is, to steam to a distance of a few hundred (less than
a thousand) yards from the enemy, and eject a torpedo, with its engine,
screw, &c. working, in the right direction; the head of the missile,
if it dashes under water against an enemy's ship, will explode, and
burst a huge hole in the ship's bottom. Or by another adjustment the
explosion can be timed to occur in a definite number of minutes after
the ejection. A missile of great cost this will be, whether it hits the
enemy or not; seeing that the whole of it will be hurled to fragments
if it explodes at all; a cost, per missile, of four or five hundred
pounds sterling.
A school of torpedo-warfare has been established at Portsmouth; and
there can be little doubt that foreign powers are doing the like. Alas
for humanity and civilisation! It is contended, however, that all this
_diablerie_ will lessen slaughter, by deterring armed ships from coming
within torpedo-distance; but a great naval war can alone determine the
matter.
As to infernal machines, contrivances planned for some dastardly and
nefarious purpose, an incident about four years ago gave us a little
insight into them. A cargo of highly insured but worthless goods was
shipped at a French port in a steamer, and in the midst of the cargo an
infernal machine, intended to explode, destroy the ship and cargo, and
earn the insurance money for the miscreant conspirators. The machine
was a sort of chest, provided with explosive compound, an exploding
apparatus, train of clockwork, primed cartridge, trigger or striking
needle--the clockwork being timed to produce the explosion in a given
number of days after leaving port. An occurrence at Bremerhaven a
year or so ago afforded a further illustration of this application
of scientific discovery and mechanical invention to purposes at
once fraudulent and barbarous. Whether any case is on record of the
_coal-torpedo_ having been really applied to its Satanic purpose, we
do not know; but that such a thing exists is certain. It is a hollow
shell of iron, carefully moulded from a lump of coal, and blacked to
look like coal; an irregular cube of a few inches on each side, and
filled with terrible combustibles of the dynamite kind. What does this
mean? It means that a steamer laden with almost worthless goods insured
at a very high value has a coal-torpedo purposely mixed with the coal
in her bunkers, ready to explode whenever thrown into the furnace, or
perhaps before! Another infamous contrivance, darkly hinted at, is
the _rat_-torpedo, which, placed secretly in the hull of a ship, will
after a time explode, and burst a hole in the ship's bottom. Specimens
of these two kinds have come into the hands of European and American
governments.
The Easter Monday torpedo in a place of public amusement, whatever it
may have meant, was only one (the reader will perceive) among many
forms of cylindrical, cigar, cubic, and globular missiles, of the
'Infernal Machine' character.
* * * * *
In the war lately commenced between Russia and Turkey, torpedoes are
playing a notable part. The Russians, having a weaker navy than their
antagonists, supplement the deficiency by employing these subtle
agents. One Turkish war-vessel, guarding the passage of the Danube, has
unquestionably been blown to pieces by Russian torpedoes, and its crew
destroyed. The Russians have shewn much daring in approaching Turkish
ships during the dark hours of night, attaching torpedoes to the ships'
bottoms, retiring quietly and swiftly, and leaving the explosive
monsters to do their fell work. On the other hand, torpedo-defence has
been practised with some success by the Turks--preventing the approach
of torpedo-vessels, or fishing up the torpedoes themselves before they
explode. Torpedo-tactics, in the naval warfare of the future, will
evidently embrace the two parts of torpedo-attack and torpedo-defence.
Where is it all to end?