Warships and their story

by R. A. Fletcher

A TORPEDO. DISCHARGED FROM A DESTROYER, TRAVELLING BY ITS OWN ENGINES TOWARDS AN ARMOURED BATTLESHIP.

In the case of the latest pattern 18-inch Whitehead torpedo, a speed of 28 knots for 2,000 yards, or 34½ knots for 1,000 yards when using the ordinary cold air, has been obtained. For longer distances, such as 3,000 and 4,000 yards, the speed is proportionately less, falling to about 20 knots for the 4,000 yards range. When using the heater, “the same torpedo maintains a speed of over 40 knots for 1,000 yards, 37 knots for 2,000 yards, 30 knots for 3,000 yards, and 27 knots for 4,000 yards. The speeds are quite extraordinary, as they represent exactly 100 per cent. more power from the engines, and it is further pointed out that the heater is extremely small, simple, and burns any ordinary lamp oil, and is capable of being fitted to practically any existing type of torpedo. The Admiralty has never been slow to adopt improvements in the torpedo armament of the fleet, and for years Great Britain has led in the matter of submarine tubes for firing torpedoes.”[57]

The explosive carried, usually gun-cotton, weighs 200 lb. An ingenious arrangement of gyroscope, valve and pendulum causes the torpedo to remain at the required depth, and to return to it if it should be diverted from it.

There have been several attempts to solve the problem of directing torpedoes by means of wireless telegraphy. The great drawback, however, has been that the receiving apparatus which the torpedo had to carry was outside it and must appear above the surface of the water, and was, therefore, liable to be sighted and shot away. The same objection has been raised to the equipment of submersible torpedo boats with “wireless.” Of recent years a torpedo has been contrived which the inventors claim can be directed by wireless telegraphy, and as there seems no reason why the principle applied cannot be improved and extended to submarines and submersibles, the utility of these under-water craft may be augmented to an inconceivable degree. The “Actinaut” is the name of the torpedo, and the jet of salt water which it ejects serves not only to indicate the position of the torpedo, but is an “indestructible receiver for the electric waves.”[58]

SUBMARINES

Submarine warfare and exploration are no new ideas, but in the past as in the present, the great difficulties have been to ensure the provision of sufficient power for rapid propulsion, and to keep the air pure enough for the crew to breathe for a long journey under water.

Efforts at submarine warfare seemed to have been made many centuries ago, but none of the contrivances then used had any fighting value, and were more interesting as freaks than in any other capacity. It is unnecessary to attempt even to summarise all the schemes which early and late inventors evolved to render possible under-water attacks upon an enemy’s fleet. The problem was as fascinating seven or eight hundred years ago as at the present time. Most of the alleged mediæval inventions probably never got beyond the imaginative or paper stage, and however wonderful the inventors’ theories or written descriptions may have been, even when embellished with weird illustrations showing the contrivance at the bottom of the sea, it is not recorded that any of the submarines achieved any actual success whatever. One of the earliest submarine descents which is supposed to have been made was that of Alexander the Great, who is mendaciously represented to have been lowered to the bottom of the sea in a glass barrel, too small for him to stand up in, with a smoky oil lamp or two, and an animal which might have been a dog or a cat (it is difficult to say which the artist intended) for company, the circumstances being such that he could not have failed to be asphyxiated in a very short space of time. It appears, too, that he wore a crown and his royal robes on that occasion, so that he evidently visited Neptune in state.

As early as the year 1190 a man is said to have constructed a diving boat of leather. Numerous suggestions were made to enable men to go under water in order to bore holes through the sides of an enemy’s ships, which, considering the thickness of the planks, must have been a somewhat laborious undertaking. The Barbary corsairs are stated to have used some sort of submarine explosive against the ships of their opponents, but this explosive or combustible was most likely Greek fire.

William Bourne, who served in Queen Elizabeth’s navy, is said to have had a submarine boat which could have been made useful, but there are no records in existence to show that the experiment ever took place. An interesting feature of the suggestion was that he proposed to sink or raise the vessel by admitting and expelling water. About the middle of the seventeenth century, a Dutchman is said to have invented a boat which travelled under water from Westminster to Greenwich, and it is even asserted that it carried passengers, in addition to twelve men at the oars, and that the air in the interior of this vessel was purified by a “chymicall liquor.” A Royal Warrant, dated June 29th, 1626, ordered the delivery of “360 fforged iron cases with fireworkes, 50 water mynes, 290 water petards, and two boats to conduct them under water, for H.M. special service to goe with the fleete.”

Two worthy friars of the Order of Minims turned from their spiritual contemplations to devise a submarine, and they appear to have been the first to suggest that it should be built with both ends alike, and pointed so that it could move either end foremost; it was to be given wheels to move along the sea floor, and to be propelled by oars. It was even to carry guns, to be fired through holes in the side. Another inventor in the seventeenth century waxed so enthusiastic over his submarine, that, besides pointing out its advantages in all manner of possible and impossible circumstances in time of war, he represented that it should be used for submarine hunting parties, who might have great sport shooting the fish as the boat went along. A Frenchman named De Son, built in 1663, at Rotterdam, a vessel about 72 feet in length, circular, and running to a cone at each end, by which he promised, but did not perform, great things. A few years later a boat was designed by the Abbé Borelli to travel under water, his idea being that the boat should rise or sink according to the amount of water admitted through holes in the hull to skins provided for the purpose. Bushnell, an American inventor, had a vessel he called the Turtle, which seems to have been shaped more like an egg. It floated at the surface of the water with the pointed end downward, and had a small screw propeller, jutting out at one side. On the opposite side of the body of the vessel was a magazine containing about 150 lb. of powder. This magazine was detachable from the inside of the ship, and was fastened by a rope to a powerful screw which the inventor intended to drive into the hold of the opposing warship, and then make the best of his way to safety, leaving the magazine attached to the screw. He was more anxious to find someone to make the attack on the British ships than to do it himself.