TORPEDO (ante). The machine is a development of an idea which dates back to the invention of gunpowder—the petard on land, the powder-ship at sea ; but Bushnell, of Connecticut, appears to have invented at once, during our war of the revolution, the two factors of success—a sunken boat and an explosive torpedo, His was exploded by clockwork, and is of the first, or applied kind, the true torpedo; though he after ward experimented, and as fruitlessly as usual, with the second kind, tl.e drifting tor pedo, or infernal machine. The third variety, the aniila , is the submarine mine. The drifting torpedo is usually sunk by a line from a log or keg. and explodes when driven up against an obstacle by the tide or current. During the Turkish war of 1877-78 a floating can with surrounding arms was iu use, as also a shuttle-shaped torpedo with a surrounding ring. All are evidently precarious in their action, and dangerous to all, whether friends or foes, who may chance to encounter them. If their use cannot be discontinued by national agreement, it seems only fair that any caught setting them should be subjected to martial law forthwith, ranking by right with spies, marauders, and pi ivate corps. There has yet been no fair trial by an invading fleet armed with the latest am.liances of the efficiency of the third, or submarine mine. The Turks, with divers and the electric light, cut loose and raised the Russian torpedoes; nor is it necessary for this to capture the firing-stations. The English, working on the fact that the explosion under water of the equivalent of 300 lbs. of powder will explode all mines within a radius of 100 yards, invented a steam launch, directed by wires, which could be sent ahead, could drop two torpedoes, retire, and filially explode them, without other handling than the battery wires. It has not yet bee• tried, and probably, in a sea-way, never will be. Nothing is so effective as the torpedo run out by a spar and exploded by a Ours of the late war were percussive. The torpedo-boat invented by admiral Porter, and con
structed before the Turkish war, is an almost submerged steam launch, of iron, with a double skin, carrying four persons--the spar-man, who commands and manages the torpedo, the battery-man, a steersman, and an engineer. The idea was borrowed by the English about 1878, but almost all these boats are too large for the purpose. They carry a spar from the bow, and sometimes one on either side. The torpedo is launched, by dropping the spar, so as to strike the enemy at about 10 ft. below water; and a bowsprit, often spring buffer, prevents the launch approaching nearer than 20 ft. at the least, the limit of safety for the equivalent of 150 lbs. of powder. The Whitehead and its American prototype, the Harvey, and other towed torpedoes, and boom or spar tor pedoes from a vessel itself, are all either uncertain in effect or impotent when in action and in a sea-way, from the very necessities of the case. Defense against torpedoes lies in booms of logs, with nets and, if possible, battery attachments, to show where the attack is made, and guns ready trained on certain points. Against torpedo-boats Hobart pacha was the first to use a cordon of logs, made fast by lines to his yard-arms, and haunted out from the gull. Nets, and now wire-netting, have been substituted, with a line of spars all round to keep them at proper distance. The electric light should be used, with patrol boats, and a sufficient number of handy guns should be kept in readiness, so as to be quickly trained on any point. Gatling guns in the tops will pierce any common launch, made as they are of boiler iron; and the English rocket battery might be found useful. Better than anything is the new Hotchkiss repeating gun, and it is a question whether two patrol-boats, armed with this and a spar torpedo, will not prove a sufficient protection against, the only thing that has yet proved an entire success, an open launch, manned by a resolute crew;