Shifting their ground they said that the submarine would be of no use as a weapon of offence, because it was blind; that it would never be able to fire a torpedo at a moving vessel whilst itself in motion; that its speed was so small that big ships could always avoid it; that it would be unable to remain under water for long, as the effect of “potted air” on the crew would be disastrous; and that its lack of longitudinal stability was a fatal drawback to its employment in action.
The behaviour of the Gustave Zédé, the Narval, and the Holland in manœuvres, during the course of which they have all fired fish torpedoes whilst moving, which have hit targets, again showed that such arguments could not hold water.
Now whilst it is one thing to say that the submarine boat is a useless weapon to-day, it is quite another to prophecy that it will never be of any value to a navy whose ships are intended to act on the offensive.
The introduction of gunpowder; of steam; of the screw-propeller; of iron-built ships; of high-pressure engines; of rifled ordnance; of explosive shells; of armour plating; of twin-screws; of breech-loading guns; of steel-built ships; of the locomotive torpedo; of electricity on shipboard; of quick-firing and machine guns; of collapsible boats; of wireless telegraphy; of turbine vessels; of devices for coaling ships at sea; of magazine-rifles, &c., &c., have been successively ridiculed by those responsible for the condition of the British Navy.
Officialism is, and always has been, a foe to inventive progress, and the official mind still seems incapable of realising that invention is a plant of slow growth; that improvements or innovations when first mooted do not necessarily represent their final form, and that all the great advances and revolutions in the past in the world of science, invention, and discovery have sprung from small beginnings which have grown gradually and slowly until they forced upon themselves the recognition that was their due.
Faraday, when asked by “practical people” the use of any of his experimental researches, would reply, “What is the use of a baby?” An invention resembles a baby, in that it needs to be carefully watched, tended, and cared for in its initial stages if ever it is to be of any value in the world.
We all remember the gentleman who said that he would eat the first steamboat that crossed the Atlantic; the Quarterly Reviewer who wrote with reference to the proposal to build a line to Woolwich that “he should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off by one of Congreve’s ricochet rockets as trust themselves to the mercy of a high-pressure steam engine travelling at the awful speed of eighteen to twenty miles an hour”; and the wiseacres who pooh-poohed the electric telegraph and telephone, the electric light, the electric car, the pneumatic-tyred bicycle, and many other inventions which have come into general use.
Granting, as we do, that the submarine is at present in a very inefficient stage of its existence, the necessity for experiment in view of the march of science during the past century is obvious. What should we say of a professor who pleaded that his experiments were a waste of time and money, as he could arrive at his end quite as well by simply reading what other professors in foreign countries were doing?
One cannot too often insist on the fact that it is only by actual experiment that useful facts are arrived at, and that in the investigation of new devices more can, as a rule, be learnt from an experiment carefully arranged and personally carried out than from the reading of voluminous reports of the work of others.
