It was a great triumph for conservatism—the same spirit of conservatism that threatens to send our navy into its next war with no battle-cruisers, too few scouts and sea-planes, and the slowest dreadnoughts in the world. Though Fulton published a wonderful little book on “Torpedo War and Submarine Explosions” in New York in 1810, the United States navy made no use of it in the War of 1812. A privateer submarine from Connecticut made three dives under the British battleship Ramillies off New London, but failed to attach a torpedo for the old reason: copper sheathing. Further attacks were prevented by the captain of the Ramillies, who gave notice that he had had a number of American prisoners placed on board as hostages. Fulton himself was hard at work superintending the building both of the Demologos, the first steam-propelled battleship, and the Mute, a large armored submarine that was to carry a silent engine and a crew of eighty men, when he died in 1815.
CHAPTER IV
SUBMARINES IN THE CIVIL WAR
The most powerful battleship in the world, half a century ago, was the U.S.S. New Ironsides. She was a wooden-hulled, ship-rigged steamer of 3486 tons displacement—about one tenth the size of a modern superdreadnought—her sides plated with four inches of iron armor, and carrying twenty heavy guns. On the night of October 5, 1863, the New Ironsides was on blockade duty off Charleston Harbor, when Ensign Howard, the officer of the deck, saw something approaching that looked like a floating plank. He hailed it, and was answered by a rifle ball that stretched him, mortally wounded, on the deck. An instant later came the flash and roar of a tremendous explosion, a column of water shot high into the air alongside, and the New Ironsides was shaken violently from stem to stern.
The Confederate submarine David had crept up and driven a spar-torpedo against Goliath’s armor.
But except for a few splintered timbers, a flooded engine-room, and a marine’s broken leg, no damage had been done. As the Confederate craft was too close and too low in the water for the broadside guns to bear, the crew of the ironclad lined the rail and poured volley after volley of musketry into their dimly seen adversary till she drifted away into the night. Her crew of seven men had dived overboard at the moment of impact, and were all picked up by different vessels of the blockading fleet, except the engineer and one other, who swam back to the David, started her engine again, and brought her safely home to Charleston.
Views of a Confederate David.
From Scharf’s History of the Confederate States Navy.