The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1898-03-27
EFFECTIVENESS OF T0RPED0ES
Many of the Best Informed Assert That Ten Gears Hence
All Naval Conflicts Will Be Fought With Them.

The most ingenious and, indeed, the
most destructive engine OF modern
warfare, is the torpedo. People do not
commonly realize that this instrument
or humiliation was already in use in
1885. In that ear an Italian engineer,
Zambelli. constructed vessels carrying
heavily charged magazines. ignited by
clockwork, which ioated down the
Scheldt river at Antwerp and destroyed
the bridge. A certain Van Drebbe
. experimental i'm England. in 1924, with
a diving boat which, laden with explo-
silves. was so directed as to strike a
ship below the water line. But the
first genuine submarine torpedo was in
vented i'm 1880 by a Frenchman,
D~esaguliers. This rocket torpedo, as IL
was called, destroyed several boats.
The first craft actually sunk by a
submarine mine was one attacked by a
device Of Robert Fulton, of steamboat
renown. in 1901. charged with 20 pounds
of gunpowder. Four years later the
brig Dorothea was completely demol-
shed at Dover. England, by two
torpedoes fired by clockwork. Yet /,
was hot until our civil war that the
torpedo became a successful. SYSTEM
attic agent of destruction. On Dec. L.,
i0V-s IA oIittu SUITES 1TOTcldu S3lfD
was destroyed in the Yazoo river by
two torpedoes which exploded directly
beneath her. She was so shattered she
sank in IL minutes Again i'm the fol-
lowing year we lost the ironclad Baron
de kalb in the same fashion
From this time on torpedoes of
diversified types "a " been i'm pretty
general use. On May 6, 1864, an electric
torpedo charged with 1850 pounds of
g~unpowder completely demolished the
Commodore Jones. Directly after this
event two federal transports and the
monitor Tecumseh were sunk almost
instantly on collision with submarine
mines. In the succeeding year the
monitor Patapsco was destroyed at
Charleston with so men. The confeder-
ates, during the war, suffered only the
loss of the ironclad Albenarle, which
was blown up by a so-called barrel
torpedo.
plications of the effectiveness of torpe-
does have been in South American
waters. A Peruvian guardboat was the
first craft to be sunk by a ''automo-
bile torpedo. Still fresh in our men,
DRY is the collapse of the Brazilian
A~quidaban from he same cause. A
torpedo was fired from a gunboat
broadside at the Aquidaban, striking
her 20 feet from the bow and 10 feet
below the water line and making a hole
IA feet by IL on one side and a three
foot hole on the other. Quite as illus
trative of the eruptive force of the tor
pedo was the destruction of the Hua-
scar by Paul Boynton, who placed a
torpedo under her bow and DISCHARGED
ii from a safe distance by means of an
electric cable. Curiously enough the
wrecking of the cruiser, BlanCo Eucla-
da, in the harbor of Valparaiso was
much like that of the battleship Maine
in Havana harbor recently. A careful
examination of both wrecks conclusive
ly proved that the explosives the yes
sells contained remained practically in
tact.
Turning from historic illustration, we
shall have to confront an elaborate
classification to define the various
kinds of torpedoes. There are three
chief divisions, consisting of buoyant
mines, subaqueous mines and locomo-
tive torpedoes. The first class of tor
as well as the second, is purely
for purposes of coast defense. Although
the authorities on the subject enter
tain pretty diverse views, it is gener-
ally held hat these contact mines are
for use only in rather shall
water. Their use involves many
conditions, such as the
and wearing of the cables and
moorings, the depression due to cur
rents, the danger of sympathetic ex-
the leaking of the cases. So