The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1877-06-22
TORPEDOES.
The Torpedo Boat an American Invention
Its Use I'm the Late Civil War.
Iron the New York Tribune.l
The fOrnedO boat Ia an American


Iron the New York Tribune.l
The torpedo boat is an American in
stitution. Capt David Bushnell, an
engineer in the Revolutionary army,
made the first practical application of a
submarine mine to ordinary warfare. He
constructed submarine boat that would
carry torpedo charged with $50 pounds
of powder. The mechanism was very
clumsy the torpedo was to be attached
by wooden screw to the bottom of an
enemy's vessel, and fred by clockwork
fuse. The first trial of this invention
was made in New York harbor in 1776,
when the boat, under the guidance of
Sergeant Ezra Lee, was set under the
bottom of the Eagle, a British ship of
war, carrying the flag of Lord Howe.
The wooden screw would not work, and
the sergeant had to cut the torpedo
adrift. During the following year Capt
Bushnell directed a percussion torpedo
against the frigate Cerberus, lying off
New London, but it drifted out of its
course, and, striking schooner moored
alongside, sent her to the bottom
Twenty years afterward Robert Fulton
constructed an improved torpedo-he in
vented the name as well as the weapon
and undertook to introduce it abroad.
In 1905 he made an unsuccessful attempt
to destroy the French feet at Boulogne,
but subsequently blew up brig in Deal
harbor by means of two drifting torpe
does. The British Government rejected
his system, and he returned to America
to make further experiments in New
York harbor. Another American, Col.
Samuel Colt, was the first to apply cleo
tricity to the ignition of torpedoes. After
blowing up several vessels at anchor, he
destroyed, in 1843, a brig under full
sail ON the Potomac, operating by cleo
tricity from a station five miles distant
During the Crimean war contact-mines
and electrical apparatus were introduced
ON the Black sea, and explosions oc-
CURED under two vessels, but no serious
damage was done. The French en-
gineers, however, destroyed the docks at
Sebastopol through the agency of sub
marine explosions.
During the civil war in America tor
Southern ports. The Confederate Con-
gress organized torpedo service in Oc-
tober, 1862, and bureau of engineers
was established at Richmond. Two
months afterward Federal ironclad, the
Cairo. was blown up on Yazoo river by a
torpedo, and during the remainder of
the war seven ironclads, eleven wooden
vessels, and six transports were destroyed
in similar way. The Confederates lost
the Albemarle, two steamers in Charles
ton harbor, and fag-of-truce boat in
the same way. The Russian engineers
who recently fastened torpedo under a
Turkish ironclad did no more than Lieut..
Gushing had done in the waters of the
Roanoke. There were several officers in
the. Confederate service who lost their
lives in attempting to do what Gushing
accomplished. A submarine torpedo
boat, requiring crew of nine men, was
launched in Charleston harbor for use
against the blockading fleet. Three
crews went to the bottom in this boat
before she was directed against the
enemy. Finally fourth crew, led by
Lieut.. Dixon, volunteered to take her
out, and attack the Housatonic. The
Lieutenant steered his boat well she
struck the Housatonic fairly and blew
her stern to atoms the conclusion sent
Dixon and. his men to the bottom, and
the torpedo-boat and the corvette sank
together.