TORPEDOES IN THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. 151 



anchored to the bottom of the harbour, prevented any probability of the torpedo being 

 fired under the vessel. The Government had practically said to Fulton, " Do your best, 

 and we'll do our best to defeat you." The experiment was not one-sided, as are so 

 many. Fulton, far from complaining, thus wrote : " I will do justice to the talents of 

 Commodore Rodgers. The nets, booms, kentledge, and grapnels which he arranged around 

 the Argus made a formidable appearance against one torpedo-boat and eight bad oarsmen. I 

 was taken unawares. I had explained to the officers of the navy my means of attack; 

 they did not inform me of their means of defence. The nets were put down to the 

 ground, otherwise I should have sent the torpedoes under them. In this situation, the 

 means with which I was provided being imperfect, insignificant, and inadequate to the 

 effect to be produced, I might be compared to what the inventor of gunpowder would 

 have appeared had he lived in the time of Julius Caesar, and presented himself before 

 the gates of Rome with a four-pounder, and had endeavoured to convince the Roman people 

 that by means of such machines he could batter down their walls. They would have told 

 him that a few catapultas casting arrows and stones upon his men would cause them to 

 retreat ; that a shower of rain would destroy his ill-guarded powder ; and the Roman 

 centurions, who would have been unable to conceive the various modes in which gunpowder 

 has since been used to destroy the then art of war, would very naturally conclude that 

 it was a useless invention ; while the manufacturers of catapultas, bows, arrows, and shields 

 would be the most vehement against further experiments." 



Torpedoes were used extensively during the civil war in America, but almost entirely for 

 rivers or harbour defence. One of the most prominent examples was the following: The 

 ironclad ram Albemarle* had been carrying all before it, till Lieutenant Gushing, a brave 

 young officer, scarcely twenty-one years of age, took a steam-launch, equipped as a torpedor 

 boat, on the night of October, 1864, up the Roanoake River. He had with him thirteen 

 men. The launch was steered directly for the ironclad, which lay at one of the wharfs 

 of Plymouth, protected by a raft of logs extending thirty feet. The enemy's fire was at 

 once very severe, but the torpedo-boat went bravely on, and succeeded in pressing in the 

 logs a few feet. Gushing, in his despatch, says "The torpedo was exploded at the same 

 time that the Albemarle's gun was fired. A shot seemed to go crashing through my 

 boat, and a dense mass of water rushed in from the torpedo, filling and completely 

 disabling her. The enemy then continued to fire at fifteen feet range, and demanded our 

 surrender, which I twice refused." Gushing leaped into the water and, with one of his 

 party, made good his escape. The rest of the little crew were either captured, killed, 

 or wounded. The object of the attack was, however, successful, and the Albemarle was 

 found to be a complete wreck. Torpedoes were also employed with great effect by the 

 Paraguayans in their war against the Brazilians in 1866. 



Great are the varieties of torpedoes invented at various times in late years, and a 

 technical description of them, which would be wearying to the reader, would fill a large 

 volume. An ingenious kind, known as the " Lay " torpedo, after the name of its inventor, 



* Such a vessel as the Albemarle -would be scorned in England and America now-a-days, if regarded as an 

 ironclad. But she was, of course, infinitely stronger than the wooden ships with which she had to fight. * 



