PART II—THE PRESENT ERA OF STEAM AND STEEL

The introduction of steam made little difference in naval affairs at first, so far as either strategy or tactics are concerned, although it changed the conditions of naval action in two principal ways and in many minor ones. Ships could now, like the early galleys, be placed in any position the commander pleased, and, unlike galleys, this effort could be sustained a long time, for engines do not tire out like human arms. On the other hand, ships propelled by steam needed to return to port at frequent intervals to obtain coal, and naval powers found it necessary to provide, either by possession or treaty, safe coaling-stations in various parts of the world for the use of their cruising fleets.

The first steam war-ships were naturally fitted with side paddle-wheels; but as soon as the screw-propeller came into use the navy was quick to adopt it. “By its use the whole motive power could be protected by being placed below the water-line. It interfered much less than the paddle with the efficiency and handiness of the vessel under sail alone, and it enabled ships to be kept generally under sail. Great importance was attached to this, as the handling of a ship under sail was justly thought an invaluable means of training both officers and men in ready resource, prompt action, and self-reliance.” For this reason masts and sails were retained long after they were admitted to be detrimental to the fighting qualities of battle-ships. Naval reformers had to wait until the last generation of “old salts,” trained on “blue water,” had died off, and their scornful sneers at “tea-kettle” seamanship had been silenced in the only way possible, before they could persuade governments to build or men to serve in the new style of vessels. In truth, the transition from the fighting machinery and methods that prevailed until, say, the bombardment of Acre, in 1840, to those that decided the inferiority of China in her struggles with Japan at the Yalu and elsewhere, was rapid enough to make even a sea-dog dizzy.

Excellent types of the war-steamers, intermediate between the old two- and three-deckers and the sailless “ironclads” that followed, were those two actors in that most glorious sea-fight of the American Civil War—the _Kearsarge_ and _Alabama_.

In this great fight, which took place a few miles off the harbor of Cherbourg, France, one beautiful summer Sunday (June 19th) in 1864, much the same tactics prevailed as in any one of the earlier ocean duels. As the _Alabama_ came on she began firing the two-hundred-pound pivot-rifle forward, which was her main gun, while the _Kearsarge_ was yet a mile away. The latter waited a little before replying, but only a few moments elapsed before both were near enough and hard at it, each doing its best to get a position ahead of its antagonist for raking,—a disadvantage which the other steadily avoided; and this caused them to follow one another about in advancing circles, of which seven were described before the end came.

We have a story of the battle as seen from the deck of the _Kearsarge_, written by her surgeon, who had little to do except observe the conflict.

The _Kearsarge_ gunners [he tells us] had been cautioned against firing without direct aim, and had been advised to point the heavy guns below rather than above the water-line, and to clear the deck of the enemy with the lighter ones. Though subjected to an incessant storm of shot and shell, they kept their stations and obeyed instructions.

The effect upon the enemy was readily perceived, and nothing could restrain the enthusiasm of our men. Cheer succeeded cheer; caps were thrown in the air or overboard; jackets were discarded; sanguine of victory, the men were shouting as each projectile took effect: “That is a good one!” “Down, boys!” “Give her another like the last!” “Now we have her!” and so on, cheering and shouting to the end.

After exposure to an uninterrupted cannonade for eighteen minutes without casualties, a sixty-eight-pounder Blakely shell passed through the starboard bulwarks below the main rigging, exploded upon the quarterdeck, and wounded three of the crew of the after pivot-gun. With these exceptions, not an officer or man received serious injury. The three unfortunates were speedily taken below, and so quietly was the act done, that at the termination of the fight a large number of the men were unaware that any of their comrades were wounded. Two shots entered the ports occupied by the thirty-twos, where several men were stationed, one taking effect in the hammock-netting, the other going through the opposite port, yet none were hit. A shell exploded in the hammock-netting and set the ship on fire; the alarm calling for fire-quarters was sounded, and men detailed for such an emergency put out the fire, while the rest stayed at the guns.

The _Kearsarge_ concentrated her fire and poured in the eleven-inch shells with deadly effect. One penetrated the coal-bunker of the _Alabama_, and a dense cloud of coal-dust arose. Others struck near the water-line between the main and mizzen masts, exploded within board, or passing through burst beyond. Crippled and torn, the _Alabama_ moved less quickly and began to settle by the stern, yet did not slacken her fire, but returned successive broadsides without disastrous result to us.

Captain Semmes witnessed the havoc made by the shells, especially by those of our after pivot-gun, and offered a reward for its silence. Soon his battery was turned upon this particular offending gun for the purpose of silencing it. It was in vain, for the work of destruction went on. We had completed the seventh rotation on the circular track and begun the eighth; the _Alabama_, now settling, sought to escape by setting all available sail (fore-trysail and two jibs), left the circle, amid a shower of shot and shell, and headed for the French waters; but to no purpose. In winding the _Alabama_ presented the port battery with only two guns bearing, and showed gaping sides through which the water washed. The _Kearsarge_ pursued, keeping on a line nearer the shore, and with a few well-directed shots hastened the sinking condition. Then the _Alabama_ was at our mercy. Thus ended the fight after one hour and two minutes.

One incident of this battle much talked of at the time, and given as an excuse for their defeat by the Confederates (though without good reason), was the fact that the waist of the _Kearsarge_, opposite the engines, was protected by anchor-chains, hung in close festoons on the outside of the ship, and kept in place and concealed by a boxing of thin boards. This, however, was not the first attempt at protecting ships by armor, which had now become necessary to meet successfully the better guns and projectiles that year by year were increased in penetrative power. New powders and explosives were constantly being invented also, each more effective than the preceding; and as these were not only used in guns but applied to the filling of shells, these bursting missiles for a time almost displaced solid shot.

Along with this the discovery and perfection of the Bessemer and other processes of making steel, and methods of adapting rifling to great cannon, produced a rapid and varied increase in size and an improvement in quality in the guns supplied to ships as well as in those used upon shore.

Against these new weapons the old “wooden walls” were of no avail. Oak and teak, however sound and thick, failed to turn aside the conical projectiles as they had the old round shot and shell. The ponderous missiles would crash clear through, smashing everything in their path, and sending showers of death-dealing splinters right and left. The navy had to protect itself by a revival of the armor with which knights of the middle ages guarded against arrows and javelins and sword-points. By and by, when guns and bullets came, the knights thickened their armor in an attempt to resist these new missiles, until at last it reached a weight too great to be carried, and the whole cumbrous panoply had to be laid aside, and knightly tactics altogether changed. Many persons believe that this history will be repeated in the case of the sea-warriors of the world, which, within the memory of many a grizzled admiral, have changed from buoyant and beautiful ships to grim and shapeless fortresses afloat.

The Americans, fearless of sea-traditions, were the first to propose armor for ships, but the French first practically applied it, building several “floating batteries,” covered with iron 4¾ inches thick, in 1855. The English copied them, in somewhat more ship-shape form; and then the French began boldly to sheathe some of their frigates with iron plates and call them “ironclads.” By this time iron hulls had begun to be used commonly in the British merchant service, but of course the men-of-war’s men, the slowest class of persons on earth to accept any change, insisted that iron would by no means do for war-ships. Nevertheless a few progressive spirits persuaded their high-mightinesses, the Lords of the Admiralty, to try an experiment in building one, and, in 1860, the first iron war-ship was launched and named _Warrior_, while all the old salts wagged their heads and predicted the end of “Britannia rules the waves,” until there wasn’t a really _jolly_ tar to be found from Penolar Point to Pentland Firth. To a certain extent these hardy old growlers were right, though their idea of a remedy was wrong. It proved a failure to build old-style battle-ships of iron or even of steel, or to coat them all over with armor, even when greatly thickened. Not only were they slow and somewhat unmanageable, but by the time one of them had been built with thicker walls than its latest rival, somebody had invented artillery whose projectiles would penetrate it. Ships that are “ship-shape,” that is, possess masts and sails, but are constructed wholly of iron or steel, and more or less heavily armored, have survived, and will always be a part of the world’s navies, no doubt, but their uses will be subsidiary to heavy fighting; and with the disappearance of the wooden sailing line-of-battle ship in the Crimean war and of the iron war-steamer a quarter of a century later, all traditions of the “old navy” were ended—traditions that went back to the days of Drake.

But who could have foreseen that this swift and momentous upsetting should come about, not through the efforts of the great sea powers of Europe,—the giants who had been struggling for the control of the ocean for three hundred years,—but from the brain and purse of landsmen in a country of the New World not taken into account as a naval power at all.

You need not be told that it was Ericsson’s invention and Henry Grinnell’s building and Lieutenant Worden’s courageous fighting of the little _Monitor_ in Hampton Roads, on that fair March Sunday in 1862, that brought about this change. When her turret—the “cheese-box on a raft”—successfully withstood the assault of that heavily armed floating battery, the _Merrimac_ (or _Virginia_), all the war-ships of the world felt themselves beaten, too, and wise seamen saw that they must prepare to face a new foe.

At once all maritime governments began to build fighting-vessels which were castles of steel afloat, and smaller ships for various services that more resembled a Nootka war-canoe in outline than one of the frigates that used to do their work. So shapeless were they that a new term had to be used, and we began to call them _cruisers_. All war-ships, in fact, are now classified by their work, not by their shape or size or rig.

First, fewest, and heaviest are the harbor-defense vessels—monitors and massively walled floating batteries, intended to remain in harbors, or close to the coast, as movable forts.

Second, battle-ships—the strongest, most thickly armored, heavily armed style of ships that can be made, and still be able to go to sea; but these are not expected to leave their home ports for a long time, nor to go to any great distance unless compelled to do so in actual war.

Third, cruisers. These take the place of the old-fashioned lesser fighting-ships, the seventy-fours, frigates, corvettes, and sloops, and vary greatly in size, model, speed, and power of armament.

Fourth, small, swift, strongly armed but lightly armored, torpedo-boat chasers, small gunboats for use in rivers and shallow coastal waters, despatch-boats, dynamite-cruisers, such as our American _Vesuvius_, tow-boats, and similar minor craft—the run-abouts of the naval service.

Fifth, torpedo-boats.

The material of all these is steel. Wood is no longer permitted even in the fittings of their cabins, because wood will splinter and burn.

The great hull of a modern battle-ship, as described by Lieutenant S. A. Staunton, U. S. N., which supports and carries the vast weights of machinery, guns, and armor, aggregating perhaps more than ten thousand tons, is built of plates of rolled steel, varying from 1⅜ inches thick at the keel to ¾ inch at the water-line. These are closely jointed and fitted, and bound together with straps, angle-irons, and brackets, so as to make a strong unyielding structure braced in all directions. Then, through the central part of the ship, at least, vertical plates are erected upon the frame and outside plating, which bear a second or inner bottom, thus forming the “double bottom” as high as the water-line, having the space between the inner and outer sheathing separated into a multitude of small water-tight cells, so that an injury to the outside hull would not cause the vessel to leak unless the inner bottom were also punctured.

Throughout the whole length of the vessel, reaching from side to side and from the keel to the main deck, are many steel bulkheads, sufficiently strong to resist the pressure of the water, and communicating only by water-tight doors, so that even were an accident, such as a collision or running upon a rock, or an enemy’s shell, to open a hole through both bottoms, the ship would still float, because the inflowing water would be confined to a single compartment, leaving the rest of the ship dry and buoyant. Nothing less than the blow of a ram, smashing through everything and throwing several compartments into one, would be likely to sink such a ship, and this is one reason why ramming has again become prominent in naval tactics.

But while safety from sinking is thus reasonably assured, this is more a precaution of seaworthiness against the accidents of storms than toward injuries receivable in battle. Passenger and freight steamers now have the double bottoms and water-tight compartments, and the best of these have arrangements for mounting light but powerful guns upon their decks, so that they may be utilized by the government in a war emergency as light cruisers, as armed transports, as swift scouts, or in other highly important ways; they will then be coated with a light protective armor, but will not be expected to engage in a contest with a real fighting-vessel.

The idea of armor-plate is, as has been said, scarcely half a century old, and the moment it was put on (amid the jeers of the old line-of-battle tars, who thought they had done all that the dignity of the profession permitted when they arranged their rolled-up hammocks along the bulwarks to catch musket-balls, and spread nettings to prevent somewhat the flight of splinters) ingenious men began to improve their powder and strengthen their guns to overcome the new defenses. To meet these improvements armor has been increased and perfected, until now war-vessels are no longer “ships” in any proper sense of the word, but floating fortresses of steel, the names of whose defensive parts, even, have been borrowed from land fortifications, such as _turret_ and _barbette_.

A limit to this defensive strength is marked in two directions. First, by the size it is possible to make a vessel, and still keep her seaworthy and manageable; and, second, by the weight of armor such a vessel can carry, in addition to the weight of the framework, machinery, guns, and other things necessary. These limits seemed to be reached some time ago in some of the monstrous battle-ships built in Europe, and when it was found that even while they were in construction rifled guns had been invented that would drive their projectiles through the thickest wall of wrought-iron or steel that these or any other vessels could carry, naval constructors began to despair of keeping ahead of the gun-makers, and there was even talk of abandoning armor altogether, and fighting battles out with bared breasts as we used to do.

The percentage of weight which may be allotted to armor in the design of a ship limits the area which can be wholly protected, but often permits the partial protection of other areas of less importance to her vitality and destructive force. Motive power, steering-gear, and magazines stand first upon the list of those features demanding complete protection.... The heavy shells from an enemy’s guns may do many other forms of injury besides sinking a vessel and disabling her crew. They may strike and disable her engines, or pierce her boilers, causing disastrous explosions. They may injure her steering-gear, destroy the mechanism which controls her turrets and guns, or injure the guns themselves and their carriages. In every feature of offense which renders her a formidable and dangerous foe—her speed, her mobility, the fire of her guns—a man-of-war is dangerously vulnerable unless she be protected by armor, unless the enemy’s shot be rejected by plates which it cannot penetrate.

Then came an invention that put a new face upon the matter,—the surface-hardening of plates, composed of a mixture of nickel with steel,—which, from one of its perfectors, is known as “Harveyizing” it. Other processes also are known. This gave to the surface of the metal such a flinty hardness that the heaviest and most highly tempered steel projectiles would almost invariably break to pieces when they struck it—the same projectiles that were able to punch a hole clear through a target-plate of ordinary wrought-steel twenty-two inches thick!

Plates thus surface-hardened are now made in Europe, and as well, if not better, in the United States, where we have learned and taught the rest of the world how to make them by rolling—a much better, as well as cheaper, process than the former method of hammering them into shape.

It was found that with these hard-surfaced plates much less thickness was required to contend successfully with the great guns opposed to them than had been the case before; and the great saving of weight enabled a much larger extent of armor to be borne upon a ship than was formerly possible, so arranged as to protect all her hull and vital parts.

Thus, in a typical modern battle-ship, say 360 feet long, 72 feet broad, and drawing 24 feet of water, having an armor of surface-hardened nickel-steel, this armor is thus disposed: amidships, and a quarter of her length behind the point of the prow, is built up a semicircular “barbette,” or wall, of the thickest armor, behind which is a “turret,” moving to the right or left through an arc equal to half the horizon, no higher than necessary to cover and work the guns, and having its motor mechanism fully protected by the barbette. This is the forward turret—a swinging fort, carrying with it, as it turns, two of the heaviest guns in the ship.

Half-way from the center to the stern stands the after turret and its barbette, similarly built of the strongest armor,—ten to twelve inches thick,—and sweeping with its guns half the horizon.

From a point just in front of the forward barbette two walls of the heaviest possible armor, reaching vertically from four and a half feet below the water-line (loaded) to three feet above it, extend diagonally backward to the sides of the ship, then continue along its side in a “belt” to points opposite the after barbette, where they bend inward as before and meet just aft of the after barbette; but hereafter the increased efficiency of armor, by further reducing its weight, will probably enable the armor-belts to be carried to the extreme ends of the ship, which otherwise can be so seriously damaged by an enemy as to interfere with the speed and control of a ship in action, even if it does not disable her.

But while these upright walls will resist a direct shot, it is equally necessary to guard against a plunging fire, and therefore the space between the turrets, at least, must be roofed over with a steel deck, two or three inches thick, to deflect shot that come just over the top of the armor-belt.

In addition to this, on each side of the vessel are erected one or two smaller turrets, carrying somewhat smaller guns than those of the forward and after turrets, and also protected by heavy barbettes which reach down to the armor-belt and thoroughly protect the turning mechanism, passage of ammunition, etc. These various upper parts are connected by defenses which may not resist the largest shells, but are safe against smaller shot.

Now, what is the armament of this fortress which thus protects all the motive power and interior machinery of the ship, by which she can be made so terrible an engine of combative force? Well, it is as different from the bronze “long-toms” and carronades of the old three-deckers, or even from ten-inch smooth-bore “Dahlgrens” of the days of our Civil War, as is the ship itself from old-time models. In place of broadside batteries of forty or fifty cannon hidden in clouds of smoke, there are now six or eight big rifles, from whose muzzles wreaths of thin gas only drift to leeward; and, more striking still, in contrast, a ship is no longer comparatively helpless when headed or turned sternward to an enemy,—when the “raking,” formerly so justly dreaded, would be received,—but is rather more able to do damage in that position than by a “broadside.”

The guns themselves are marvels of structure and power. All of those used in the United States navy are made by the government in the gun-shops at the Washington navy-yard, and are “built up.” The methods and tools required for this are the invention of Americans, as well as the complicated arrangements for closing the breech, and the carriages and mechanism for overcoming the tremendous recoil and handling the ponderous ammunition; the latter, often weighing hundreds of pounds, is handed up to the gunners from the magazines below by hoists worked by electricity.

The history of the development of heavy ordnance, especially that applied to naval uses, is one of the most interesting chapters in mechanics; and a surprising number of ways of making a ship’s cannon have been tried and rejected. Out of this two things seem now to be settled: namely, that a gun composed of steel in separate parts welded together is best, and that the best missile to shoot from it is a conical shell, very hard and heavy, yet containing an explosive small in quantity but exceedingly powerful.

Such guns are built up of a tube or “core” of steel of the required size, upon which is shrunk a jacket, covering the rear, or breech half of the core, outside of which are shrunk on several broad hoops. The cutting out of the bore to exactly the proper caliber and the plowing of the spiral riflings put the gun in readiness for its breech-closing and other attachments. This process requires several months, involves large capital and powerful machinery, and good results imply the very highest workmanship.

Such are the guns of modern men-of-war; and a first-class battle-ship carries four twelve- or thirteen-inch rifles (that is, having a bore twelve or thirteen inches in diameter), several eight- or ten-inch rifles, and many smaller guns arranged to be fired with extraordinary speed, and hence called “rapid-fire” guns; while her upper works and “military tops” fairly bristle with fierce little six-, four-, and one-pounders,—revolving magazine rifles, capable of discharging rifle-balls as fast as a man can turn the crank.

To give some idea of the size and power of one of the 13-inch guns, whose long muzzles, in pairs, project so far out of the turrets that hide their mountings and firing-crew, let me tell you that it is 40 feet long, more than 4 feet in diameter, and weighs 60½ tons. “It requires 550 pounds of powder to load it, and the projectile weighs half a ton. The muzzle-velocity of the projectile is 2100 feet per second, with the stated charge, and its energy is sufficient to send it through 26 inches of steel at a distance of 600 yards. At an elevation of 40 degrees the range of the gun will be not far from 15 miles.”

In such a ship, deep down within the fortress is the massive and complicated machinery, steam and electric, upon which the life and activity of the whole structure depend. The power is generated in four enormous boilers, seventeen feet in diameter and twenty in length, their steel shells one and a half inches thick, built to carry a working-pressure of 160 pounds to the square inch. Each pair of these boilers, placed fore and aft and side by side, is installed in a separate compartment, with fire-rooms at the ends. Every boiler has four furnaces in each end, which give eight to each fire-room, or a total of thirty-two. The two boiler compartments are separated by a water-tight bulkhead, and by a deep, broad coal-bunker. At the sides of the ship are also coal-bunkers, which supplement the heavy armor-belt by the protection of a mass of coal twelve feet in thickness—in itself a not inconsiderable earthwork, which might arrest the fragments of a bursting shell that had succeeded in piercing the armor. No casualty of naval combat can be worse than the penetration of high-pressure boilers by heavy shells. Their complete protection is an imperative condition, quite as important as the protection of the magazines.

Such is a modern battle-ship—a “wonderful and complex instrument of warfare,” as Lieutenant Staunton has expressed it.

She is filled [he tells us] with powerful agencies, all obedient to the control of man—the creatures of his brain and the servants of his will. Steam in its simple application drives her main engines and many auxiliaries. Steam transformed into hydraulic power moves her steering-gear and turns her turrets. Steam converted into electrical energy produces her incandescent and search-lights, works small motors in remote places, and fires her guns when desired. Every application of energy, every device of mechanism, finds its office somewhere in that vast hull, and the source of all the varied forms of power lies in the great boilers, far down below danger of shot and shell, under which grimy stokers are always shoveling coal. Decades of thought and study, experiment and failure, trial again with partial success, and repeated trials with complete success, have assigned to each agency its appropriate function, and perfected the mechanism through which its work is performed.

These modern developments have added one entirely novel and tremendous adjunct to the fleet, in the torpedo-boat and its terrible weapon. These take the place to some extent of the fire-ship of a century ago, which was designed to injure the enemy not by silencing his guns or overcoming his gunners, but by insidiously destroying his ship itself.

The torpedo is, in its simplest form, simply some arrangement of a powerful explosive to be set off beneath or against the bottom of a ship, and shatter or sink it. The idea is as old as gunpowder, but it is only in recent times that it has been made effective,—how effective we do not yet know.

Torpedoes are used in two ways: one is by fixing the torpedo beneath the water, either to be exploded by means of a percussion-cap when the ship runs against it, or from the shore by means of electricity. Such arrangements as this, called submarine mines, are regarded as a most important means of defending harbors against hostile attack. During our Civil War they were extensively used by the Confederates, and were sometimes successful, as when one destroyed the monitor _Tecumseh_ in Mobile harbor, during Farragut’s famous attack there in 1864.

The former class, for which the word _torpedoes_ is now reserved, includes explosive agents which are to be placed or sent against a ship’s bottom at sea and exploded there. Various devices of that kind, also, have been used for a long time in naval warfare. The Confederates tried hard to destroy several Northern vessels in the blockading squadron by devising very small, half-submerged boats, towing torpedoes astern, or else projecting on a long spar from their bows; and now and then they succeeded, as when one of the latter kind was made to sink the _Housatonic_ off Charleston.

Then there have been invented, during the past fifty years, several cigar-shaped machines, which, by means of a chemical or compressed-air engine or clockwork, or some other application of power that might keep motive machinery within them going long enough, could be launched from shore or from another vessel and sent under water against a hostile ship. At first these were made to glide along just beneath the surface, carrying little flags that could be seen, and trailing two electric wires, enabling a person, by means of electric currents, to direct their flight; but latterly ingenuity has devised such an arrangement of rudders and self-acting balances within the torpedo’s mechanism that it will continue perfectly straight upon the course it is aimed for, swerving neither right nor left, up nor down, and will explode the instant it touches an object hard enough to jar the delicate cap of fulminate in its snout. This latter kind, called the automobile (self-moving) torpedo, is now almost exclusively used, and some modification of the Whitehead is most popular. It is cigar-shaped, and about twelve feet in length; the forward third is filled with gun-cotton—in quantity sufficiently powerful, if accurately applied, to ruin almost instantly the greatest battle-ship afloat.

All large war-ships are now fitted with tubes, opening near the water-line in various parts of the hull, which form gun-like exits for these terrible weapons, which are set in motion by a puff of gunpowder; but in addition to this every maritime government now has a number (Great Britain has more than 250) of small, swift steamers designed wholly for this purpose and called torpedo-boats. Most of them are a hundred feet or so in length, and intended to accompany the fleet wherever it goes and in all weathers; but some are so small that they may be carried on the deck of a big cruiser.

All are made long, low, and narrow, and the speed of many of them exceeds thirty miles an hour. There is almost nothing to catch the wind or show above deck except a pair of short, flattened smoke-stacks, one behind the other; and the steersman stands, with only his head and shoulders visible, in a little box with windows that serves the purpose of a wheel-house. A mere wire railing saves the crew from sliding off the deck, and in action everybody stays below. No weight is carried that can be avoided, and the engines, taking steam from two boilers, are as powerful as can be packed into the space at command. Usually only coal enough for a few hours’ steaming is carried, and every bushel of it is carefully selected as to quality, and is so treated and intelligently fed to the furnaces as to make the hottest possible fire, although never a spark must escape from the smoke-stack to betray the vessel in the darkness.

Next to speed the most important quality is ability to turn quickly, upon which might often depend the safety of the audacious little craft.

Torpedo-boats, however, are designed for a wider service than simply to carry and discharge the frightful weapon from which they take their name. They are to the navy what scouts and skirmishers are to a land army. They form the cavalry of the sea, of which the cruisers are the infantry, and the battle-ships and monitors the artillery arm. They must spy out the position of the enemy’s fleet, hover about his flanks or haunt his anchorage to ascertain what he is about and what he means to do next. They must act as the pickets of their own fleet, patrolling the neighborhood, or waiting and watching, concealed among islands or in inlets and river-mouths, ready to hasten away to the admiral with warning of any movement of the adversary.

It is not their business to fight (except rarely, in the one particular way), but rather to pry and sneak and run, for the benefit of the fleet they serve.

But to insure all these fine results, both officers and men must be taught the art. Constant instruction and drilling are necessary, and in each navy a regular school of torpedo-practice is maintained, where the subject is studied in every way. In the United States such a school is kept at the Newport (R. I.) Torpedo Station, where the torpedoes themselves are fitted for use and supplied to the ships (the loaded war-heads are kept separately in the ship’s magazine), and where one or more torpedo-boats are reserved for drilling purposes.

But a worse and more insidious foe than even these sneaking, hiding, surface torpedo-boats threatens us in the submarine torpedo-boat, which inventors have been experimenting with since naval warfare first began. It is said that twenty-five hundred years ago divers were lowered into the water in a simply constructed air-box, to perforate the wooden bottom of an adversary’s war-galley and sink it. Again, in our Revolutionary War, a tiny walnut-shaped boat was made by an American, which was actually tried. It would hold one man, and air enough for him to breathe for half an hour. He would close the hatch, let in enough water to sink him a little way, and then scull himself along by means of a screw-bladed stern-oar until he got underneath the keel of an anchored vessel, to which, by ingenious means, he would attach a can of gunpowder to be fired by clockwork, giving him time to get away. It was actually tried and nearly succeeded. Robert Fulton, who made the first success of the steamboat, tried for years to contrive a submarine boat that would work, and succeeded so far as to scare British blockaders in 1812 very badly indeed; and the Confederates repeated the scare when the North was blockading their ports in the Civil War.

The great advantage of a submarine boat is, of course, its invisibility, and its safety from shot even if discovered; but the difficulties of progress and control as to depth and direction under water, and at the same time effective appliance of the explosive and safe retreat, are so many that they have as yet been only partly overcome. If the thing is ever accomplished, naval warfare will be demoralized until some adequate means be found to combat this unseen, destroying agency.

The principal agent in submarine attacks would probably be some form of dynamite, which, inhuman as its use seems, is slowly but surely taking its place among the weapons of war. The United States has one vessel primarily designed to employ dynamite by hurling it in the form of shells. This volcanic craft is suitably named _Vesuvius_, and is a small, swift vessel having long tubes slanting upward through her forward deck, as shown in the illustration.

These tubes are the muzzles of great air-guns, through which she sends darts loaded with dynamite to fall upon a hostile ship or fort. It would not be safe, to say the least, to fire such bombs with gunpowder; and therefore pumps and engines in her interior compress air until it has acquired an expansive force sufficient for the purpose. When one of the darts has been laid in the breech of the tube, down beneath the deck, and suitably closed in, a valve is opened, the compressed air acts like burning powder, and away goes the dart, in a graceful curve to its target. In this case, of course, it is the vessel rather than the immovable gun that is aimed, and good marksmanship depends upon accurate calculation of distance; but remarkable shooting has been done. This system has never yet been tried in actual warfare, and may prove valuable chiefly in clearing harbors of mines.