In the defense of Southern harbors, mines and torpedoes for the first time came into general use, and the submarine scored its first victim. Experiments with these devices had been going on for centuries, but were first brought close to practical success by David Bushnell, a Connecticut Yankee of the American Revolution. His tiny submarine, resembling a mud-turtle standing on its tail, embodied many features of modern underwater boats, including a primitive conning tower, screw propulsion (by foot power), a vertical screw to drive the craft down, and a detachable magazine with 150 pounds of gunpowder. The Turtle paddled around and even under British men-of-war off New York and New London, but could not drive a spike through their copper bottoms to attach its mine.
Robert Fulton, probably the greatest genius in nautical invention, carried the development of bath mines and submarines much further. His Nautilus, so-called because its collapsible sail resembled that of the familiar chambered nautilus, was surprisingly ahead of its time; it had a fish-like shape, screw propulsion (by a two-man hand winch), horizontal diving rudder, compressed air tank, water tank filled or emptied by a pump, and a torpedo[1] consisting of a detachable case of gunpowder. A lanyard ran from the torpedo through an eye in a spike, to be driven in the enemy hull, and thence to the submarine, which as it moved away brought the torpedo up taut against the spike and caused its explosion. Fulton interested Napoleon in his project, submerged frequently for an hour or more, and blew up a hulk in Brest harbor. But the greybeards in the French navy frowned on these novel methods, declaring them "immoral" and "contrary to the laws of war."
[Footnote 1: This name, coined by Fulton, was from the torpedo electricus, or cramp fish, which kills its victim by electric shock.]
| BUSHNELL'S TURTLE |
Later the British Government entered into negotiations with the inventor, and in October, 1804, used his mines in an unsuccessful attack an the French flotilla of invasion at Boulogne. Only one pinnace was sunk. Fulton still maintained that he could "sweep all military marines off the ocean."[2] But Trafalgar ended his chances. As the old Admiral Earl St. Vincent remarked, "Pitt [the Prime Minister] would be the greatest fool that ever existed to encourage a mode of war which they who command the sea do not want and which if successful would deprive them of it." So Fulton took £15,000 and dropped his schemes.
[Footnote 2: Letter to Pitt, Jan. 6, 1806.]
| FULTON'S NAUTILUS |
Much cruder than the Nautilus, owing to their hurried construction, were the Confederate "Davids" of the Civil War. One of these launches, which ran only semi-submerged, drove a spar torpedo against the U. S. S. New Ironsides off Charleston, but it exploded on the rebound, too far away. The C. S. S. Hunley was a real submarine, and went down readily, but on five occasions it failed to emerge properly, and drowned in these experiments about 35 men. In August, 1864, running on the surface, it sank by torpedo the U. S. Corvette Housatonic off Charleston, but went down in the suction of the larger vessel, carrying to death its last heroic crew.
By the end of the century, chiefly owing to the genius and patient efforts of two American inventors, John P. Holland and Simon Lake, the submarine was passing from the experimental to the practical stage. Its possibilities were increased by the Whitehead torpedo (named after its inventor, a British engineer established in Fiume, Austria), which came out in 1868 and was soon adopted in European navies. With gyroscopic stabilizing devices and a "warmer" for the compressed air of its engine, the torpedo attained before 1900 a speed of 28 knots and a possible range of 1000 yards. Its first victim was the Chilean warship Blanco, sunk in 1891 at 50 yards after two misses. Thornycroft in England first achieved speed for small vessels, and in 1873 began turning out torpedo boats. Destroyers came in twenty years later, and by the end of the century were making over 30 knots.
Long before this time the lessons of the Civil War had hastened the adoption of armor, the new ships ranging from high-sided vessels with guns in broadside, as in the past, to low freeboard craft influenced by the Monitor design, with a few large guns protected by revolving turrets or fixed barbettes, and with better provision for all-around fire. Ordnance improved in penetrating power, until the old wrought-iron armor had to be 20 inches thick and confined to waterline and batteries. Steel "facing" and the later plates of Krupp or Harveyized steel made it possible again to lighten and spread out the armor, and during the last decade of the century it steadily increased its ascendancy over the gun.