My own experiments, Captain Maury says, show that the electrical torpedo, or mine has not hitherto been properly appreciated as a means of defence in war. It is as effective for the defence as ironclads and rifled guns are for the attack. Indeed, such is the progress made in what may be called this new Department of Military Engineering that I feel justified in the opinion that hereafter in all plans for coast, harbour and river defences and in all works for the protection of cities and places whether against attacks by armies on land or ships afloat, the electrical torpedo is to play an important part. It will not only modify and strengthen existing plans, but greatly reduce the expense of future systems.
These experiments have resulted in some important improvements and contrivances, not to say inventions and discoveries which as yet have been made known only to the Confederate Government. They are chiefly as follows:
First. A plan for determining by cross bearing when the enemy is in the field of destruction, and for "making connections" among the torpedo wires in a certain way and by which (the concurrence of two operators) becomes necessary for the explosion of any one or more torpedoes. This plan requires each operator to be so placed, or stationed that a line drawn straight from them to the place of the torpedoes may intersect as nearly as practicable at right angles, and it requires the connections to be such that each operator may put his station in or out of circuit at will. When the torpedoes are laid, a range from each station is established for every torpedo or group of torpedoes. When either operator observes an enemy in range with any torpedo he closes his circuit for that torpedo. If the enemy before getting out of this range should enter the range for any torpedo from the other station the operator then closes his circuit, and discharges the igniting spark.
Consequently if the range belongs to the same torpedo its explosion takes place. But if not there will be no explosion; hence, here is an artifice by which explosion becomes impossible when the enemy is not within the field of destruction, and sure when she is.
Second. The "Electrical Gauge," a contrivance of my own, by means of which one of the tests which the igniting fuse has to undergo before it is accepted, is applied. By means of it the operators can telegraph through the fuse to each other without risk to the torpedoes, and by which the torpedoes, may without detriment to their explosibility be tested daily, or as often as required. And thus the operator can at all times make sure that all is right.
Third. A plan for planting torpedoes where the water is too deep for them to lie on the bottom and explode with effect, by which they will not interfere with the navigation of the channel, and by which when the enemy makes his appearance they may, by the touch of a key be brought instantly into the required position and at the proper depth.
These contrivances are all very simple; they are readily understood from verbal instruction, they require neither models or drawings, and enable the operator chiefly to use the self same wire for testing his torpedoes daily after they are planted, and then to explode them at will.
Though these torpedoes, owing to the lack in the Confederacy of the proper materials and appliances for their construction and use, were make-shifts, yet so effective had their use become, especially during the last year of the war, that the Secretary of the American Navy, in his annual report of December, 1865, to the President of the United States, thus testifies to their efficiency: "Torpedoes always formidable in harbours and internal waters, have been more destructive to our naval vessels than all other means combined."
Since 1862, finding myself in reach of the facilities afforded in England, I have made the study of Electrical torpedoes a specialty, and the results are such, to say the least, as to show that it is capable of doing quite as much for the defence as ironclads and rifled guns are likely to do for the attack.
These results consist in improvements and discoveries which enable the adept in that new department of military engineering to explode his torpedoes whether buried on land or submerged in the water, singly or in groups, instanteously and at any distance to transmit through them without the risk of explosion, orders and commands, and as readily as through the ordinary line of telegraph. To determine with unerring certainty when the enemy is in the field of destruction of this or that torpedo. To render its explosion impossible, unless he be in such field, even though the igniting spark should be discharged; and so to set an electrical current to watch it, as to make the injuring of it without his knowledge impossible, and the removal of it by an enemy, if not impossible, extremely difficult and dangerous.