| [8] | See [Appendix.]—The Naval Apprenticeship System. |
CHAPTER XIV.
PERRY DISCOVERS THE RAM.
An accident which happened to the Fulton belongs to the history of modern warfare. It revealed to Perry’s alert mind a valuable principle destined to work a revolution in the tactics of naval battles. Like the mountaineer of Potosi who when his bush failed as a support, found something better in the silver beneath, so Perry discovered at the roots of a chance accident a new element of power in war.
The Fulton was rather a massive floating battery than a sea-steamer. Once started, her speed for those days was respectable, but to turn her was no easy matter. To stop her quickly was an impossibility.
On the 28th of August, the Fulton, while making her way to Sandy Hook amid the dense crowd of sloops, schooners, ships and ferry-boats of the East river, came into partial collision with the Montevideo. The brig lay at anchor, and Lieutenant Lynch in charge of the Fulton, wished to pass her stern, and ahead of her starboard quarter. When nearly up with the brig, the flood tide running strongly caused her to sheer suddenly to the full length of her cable and thus brought her directly in line of the contemplated route. Lynch, to save life, was obliged to destroy property and strike the brig.
The steamer’s cutter and gig were stove in and her bulwarks, in paint and nails, somewhat injured. With the brig the case was different. Though only a glancing stroke, the smitten vessel was all but sunk.
Captain Perry was not on board the Fulton, having remained on shore owing to indisposition. On hearing the story of Lieutenant Lynch, there was at once revealed to him the addition that steam had made to the number and variety of implements of destruction. The old trireme’s beak was to reappear on the modern steam war vessel and create a double revolution in naval warfare. The boiler, paddle and screw had more than replaced the war galley’s banks of oars, by furnishing a motive power that hereafter should not only sink the enemy by ramming, but should change the naval order of battle. The broadside to broadside lines of evolution must give way to fighting “prow on.” In a word, he saw the ram.
Perry required written reports of the affair from his lieutenants, and wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Navy suggesting the possibilities of the rostral prow.
To think of the new weapon was to wish to demonstrate its power. He proposed to try the Fulton again, purposely, upon a hulk, to satisfy himself as to the sinking power of the steamer. He arranged to do this by special staying of the boiler pipes and chimneys, so that no damage from the shock would result. He was also prepared, by exact mathematical computation of mass, velocity and friction, with careful observations of wind and tide, to express the results with scientific accuracy.
The report duly was received at Washington and, instead of being acted upon, was pigeon-holed. Perry was unable, at private expense, to follow up the idea, but thought much of it at the time, and the subject, though not officially noticed, remained in his mind.