It has also been suggested that ships of war should be furnished with a sharp beak of steel, and with such powerful engines as should secure for them great speed, and, without trusting at all to the use of their guns, should be used as rams to run into and crush their adversaries. This suggestion, which is practically returning to the practice of the ancients before the invention of either gunpowder or steam, has never yet, however, been carried out in fact. So far, therefore, the most serviceable modern ships of war are the monitors. The largest and most expensive of these, the Dunderberg, was not finished until after the war was over, and was sold, with the consent of the government, by her builder, to Russia for $1,000,000, and crossed the Atlantic safely, a feat which showed her to be sea-worthy, and more worthy of confidence than any of the armored vessels built by the English Government.
In modern times attention has also been given to constructing vessels which should be navigated under the water. Fulton, whose name is so inseparably connected with the introduction of the steamboat, made an attempt, the first on record, in the harbor of Brest, on the west coast of France, in 1801, under the order of Napoleon I., to blow up an English ship with a torpedo, a weapon of warfare which is said to have been first suggested by Franklin, who experimented with them in the Revolution. Fulton used, in this attempt, a submarine boat of his own invention, the model and construction of which have never been made public. His attempt being unsuccessful the project was abandoned, as Napoleon withdrew his support from the scheme.
THE RAM IRONSIDES.
During our late civil war, while the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, was blockaded by the ships of the national navy, and the bombardment of Fort Sumter continued, attempts were made by the besieged to destroy the blockading ships by torpedoes, which were to be fastened by a submarine craft. One of these boats, called a "cigar boat," though both ends were pointed, is thus described: She was thirty feet long and six feet broad, painted a lead color. Her propelling power consisted of a six-horse engine, geared to a shaft turning a propeller. At her bow was an iron bowsprit, so arranged that it could be lowered to the required depth, and at the end of this the torpedo was secured. When afloat only about fifteen feet of her length projected some fourteen inches above the water. For fuel she used anthracite coal, and attained a speed of about six miles an hour. Her tonnage was about seven or eight tons, and in this craft Lieutenant Glassells, of Virginia, volunteered to attack the iron-clad, the Ironsides, which was the most powerful ship at that time afloat in the navy, rated at from three to four thousand tons. The Ironsides was a very heavily armed ship, provided with eleven-inch guns, and capable of delivering the heaviest broadside ever fired from a single ship. On the night of the sixth of October, 1863, Lieutenant Glassells set out on his expedition from one of the wharves of Charleston. The sky was covered with clouds, and the night was very dark. His crew consisted of a fireman and a pilot, and his offensive armament of a torpedo, in position, and a double-barreled fowling-piece. Being asked why he carried a gun on such an expedition, he answered: "You know I have served in the United States navy, and I shall not attack my old comrades like an assassin. I shall hail and fire into them, with this, then let the torpedo do its work like an open and declared foe." This speech is a fair specimen of the singular mixture of honor and disloyalty which characterized the whole secession movement. This lieutenant could desert his navy, could take up arms against his country, but could not attack one of its ships without first giving its crew warning.
