It is almost certain that the submarine craft that attacked H.M.S. Ramilies as she lay off New London was one of Fulton’s boats.
In the year 1814 Fulton constructed the Mute, a huge submarine capable of holding a hundred men, and deriving its name from the silent engine that propelled it. The Mute was 80 feet 6 inches long, 21 feet wide, and 11 feet deep. It was armoured on the top with iron sheets, beneath which was a wood lining almost a foot in thickness. Before the trials could be completed Fulton died, and thus the story of this ardent inventor’s notions concerning submarine warfare comes to a close.
In 1810 Fulton published at New York a book, “Torpedo War and Submarine Explosions,” in which he gives an account of the various devices he had contrived for blowing up ships, piers, &c., and of the actual experiments he had made. He seems to have elaborated his submarine boat after his torpedo had been invented, and his idea was that an under-water vessel would be useful in discharging torpedoes. His method of attack was to float the torpedo down to the object to be attacked, and to guide and even explode them by means of lines. He seemed not to have thought of the use of the spar torpedo as we know it to-day.
CHAPTER XIII
SUBMARINES DURING THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
From the death of Robert Fulton down to the commencement of the American Civil War no very startling developments in under-water warfare are to be chronicled. During the Schleswig-Holstein War of 1848–50 the modern subaqueous explosive mine first came into use in actual warfare, and mines were also employed during the Crimean War; in 1859 by the Austrians at the time of the threatened attack on Venice by the French, and by the Chinese in 1857–58 to defend the streams in the neighbourhood of Canton.
The mine and the torpedo both played their part in the American Civil War, and since then both these weapons have been adopted as valuable factors of offence and defence by all the great Powers. When the Southern Confederacy seceded from the United States in 1861, one of the first steps of its naval department was to form a torpedo section to protect approaches to places liable to attack by the Northern fleet. It was during the war that the idea was applied of taking the mine to the hostile ship by means of a boat, for the mine, besides being immovable, was liable to be picked up or cut adrift by the enemy. A charge of powder was placed at the end of a long pole carried in the bows of the boat; when darkness came on the boat crept up to the enemy, the pole and charge were run under water until in contact with the hull of the enemy, and the explosive was then ignited by means of electricity. Thus came into being the “spar” or “outrigger” torpedo, a weapon which still finds a place in the armament of the British fleet. The Confederates affixed the spar torpedo to at least one ironclad ship and many small steam vessels, and much damage was inflicted on the enemy by its employment.
It must be remembered that automobile or fish torpedoes had not been invented at this time, and that the only under-water weapons used on both sides were fixed mines and spar torpedoes.
It was in order to use the spar torpedo to the greatest advantage that the diving torpedo-boat was employed, and in this chapter we shall have to deal with a very famous incident in the history of submarine navigation, namely, the sinking of the Federal frigate Housatonic by a submarine boat manned by the Confederates and armed with a spar torpedo.
Early in the war the Federal or Northern Government entered into negotiations with a Frenchman, whose name we have been unable to discover, to build and operate a submarine boat against the Confederate or Southern vessels. In particular the North desired to blow up the Confederate Merrimac in Norfolk Harbour. It has been stated that $10,000 were to be paid for the boat when finished, and $5,000 for each successful attack with her. The boat was apparently constructed at the Navy Yard at Washington, and paid for by the Federals, but before they could learn the art of navigating the vessel the Frenchman, taking his gains with him, left the country. Whether the boat would have proved of much value is to be doubted, and the probability is that the inventor would have been as unsuccessful as were the Federals in working the craft.
Admiral Hichborn terms it “an absurd arrangement of duckfoot hand-worked paddles in an age when the screw-propeller was in common use.”