Various methods have been devised to secure ships from torpedoes. Nets are sometimes extended in front of the ship, which catch the torpedoes before they can come in contact with the vessel’s bottom. This safeguard was adopted, in many instances with success, by the Federal war-ships when entering Confederate harbours. But a great deal may be done to secure a ship against these terrible engines of destruction by precaution simply, as was proved in the Crimean War, when the Russian torpedoes did little or no damage to our ships, by reason of the unceasing watchfulness maintained on board.
During the late war between Russia and Turkey one of the most daring exploits of the campaign was an attack by a Russian squadron of torpedo-boats on the Turkish monitor Hifse Rahman. The flotilla comprised four ships, the Czarevich, the Xenia, the Czarevna, and the Djirid. The two first named began the attack, the Czarevna and the Djirid holding themselves in reserve until their assistance should be wanted.
The launches were equipped with strong iron awnings which shielded their crews from the enemy’s fire. Each boat was armed with two torpedoes, fastened to the end of long spars projected over the bulwarks and working on pivots. The torpedoes could be detached from the spars when occasion demanded; while long chains were secured to the missiles, by which they were attached to the enemy’s vessel, as well as to the wire of a galvanic battery fastened round the waist of the commander of the launch. This battery was the means by which the torpedo was exploded.
The flotilla left the Roumanian side of the Danube on the 25th of June 1877 at about midnight, and in something less than an hour the Hifse Rahman loomed in sight, a shadowy mass on the dark waters. The approach of the torpedo-boats was almost noiseless, and the croaking of the frogs was said to have further favoured the Russians by drowning the sound of the engines, so that those on board the monitor were not aware of their enemy’s propinquity until the launches were almost alongside.
The sentry at once challenged, when Lieutenant Doubarsoff, the commander of the Czarevich, answered “Friends.” But his speech betrayed him; the alarm was spread; and the Hifse Rahman opened a sharp fire upon the launches. But Lieutenant Doubarsoff succeeded in attaching his torpedo-chain to a rope hanging at the monitor’s bows, and then rapidly backed his little vessel and fired the torpedo. A tremendous explosion; a column of water shot up into the air, and the launch was nearly swamped! A breach had, however, been made in the Hifse Rahman’s bulwarks.
The other monitors were now thoroughly alive to their danger, and the Russian launches had to sustain a deadly cannonade, upon which Lieutenant Doubarsoff ordered Lieutenant Schestakoff to bring up his launch, the Xenia, and apply a second torpedo, which the latter was able to do, attaching the missile amidships of the Turkish vessel. The fate of the Hifse Rahman was now sealed, and in a few minutes she sank.
The Russian launches succeeded in getting clear of their enemy again without losing a single man, and thus ended the first torpedo expedition ever made against an enemy’s ironclads, but which may, as a writer describing the event says, “end in completely revolutionising our present system of monster iron walls.” The Grand Cross of Saint George was awarded to Lieutenants Doubarsoff and Schestakoff for this intrepid and successful exploit.
Space is not left us to do more than revert for a moment to what is perhaps the deadliest weapon of offensive naval warfare yet devised,—rams. Some experts maintain that nothing can match the power of the ram of a modern ironclad skilfully handled; and a well-known naval authority has declared that the use of the guns in a naval action should be merely preliminary to that of the ram—in other words, that all effort should be concentrated upon making an opportunity of using the ram.
We close this chapter by recalling the reader’s attention to a feature in modern war-ships already alluded to, and which indeed the whole course of our remarks upon this subject points to—the almost universal use of machinery in modern naval tactics. Most assuredly in modern sea-warfare it may be said, in the Laureate’s words—used by him, of course, with a very different sense—that “the individual dwindles,” so that the prediction, which some of our readers may remember was once made by a First Lord of the Admiralty, seems not unlikely one day to become sober fact—that the time will come when we shall no longer require sailors, because all that our warships will need will be stokers and artillerymen. Whether this is a consummation to be desired we are not careful here to pronounce.