re 
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NATURE 
| April 28, 1870 
THE SCIENCE OF EXPLOSIVES AS APPLIED 
TO WARLIKE PURPOSES 
I.—EARLY STUDY AND APPLICATION OF 
EXPLOSIVES 
HE protracted and disastrous war between the 
Northern and Southern States of America was fruit- 
ful in the development of expedients to serve as auxilia- 
ries to the hitherto well-recognised materials of defence | I 
| appears to have been since then altogether abandoned, 
and attack. No subject connected with the details of 
that war has, however, received more general attention 
on the part of European Powers, great and small, than 
the extensive and successful applications of a somewhat 
ancient class of war-engine, the value of which up to that 
time had received no practical demonstration, but which 
is now on every hand regarded as destined to play a most 
important part in future wars. 
The idea of employing floating or submerged charges 
of gunpowder as agents for the destruction of ships and 
other marine structures, has been occasionally put into | 
practice from a somewhat early date, although with but 
few instances of success. The earliest form of marine- 
mine was the so-called Laplosion Ship, which the Dutch 
appear to have been the first to employ. When Antwerp 
was besieged by Alessandro de Farnese, Duke of Parma, 
| the operations in Rochelle, in 1628. 
seem to have fallen into disuse, there being no instance 
of their employment on record until 1809, when Lord 
Cochrane destroyed a boom in the Basque Roads by 
exploding in contact with it a vessel laden with very 
closely packed gunpowder. Some unsuccessful attempts 
at the destruction of English ships by means of explosion- 
vessels were also made by the Americans during the War 
of Independence ; but this very wasteful and uncertain 
mode of applying gunpowder in marine operations 
until the late American War, when Admiral Porter, of 
the United States Navy, added one more to the list of un- 
successful operations of this kind, by endeavouring to 
destroy or disable Fort Fisher by the above means. 
The earliest form of submerged self-acting mine was 
the so-called floating petard used by the English during 
These implements of 
warfare consisted of small cases of sheet-iron filled with 
powder and fitted with a spring which was released as 
soon as the drifting machine came into collision with a 
ship, or other obstruction, and thus determined the 
explosion of the powder by means of a match-lock. They 
appear to have been too small to inflict any serious injury 
upon ordinary vessels, and many of them were captured 
by the French. Similar contrivances were constructed 
‘ 
THE FIRST SO-CALLED “* TORPEDO 
in 1585, a boom or boat-bridge was constructed across 
the Scheldt by the besiegers, and this, an Italian engineer, 
Jambelli, undertook to destroy for the Dutch. Four 
large flat-bottomed vessels were each of them loaded 
with several thousand pounds of powder, over which 
were placed fireworks and large masses of stone; two of 
the boats were provided with slow matches, the burning 
of which had been timed, and the others fitted with clock- 
work contrivances by whose agency the powder was to be 
exploded at a pre-determined period. The vessels, thus 
equipped, together with a number of fire-ships, were 
allowed to drift towards the boom, and, on its centre being 
reached, one of them immediately exploded with such 
violence as to destroy several of the ships composing the 
structure, and likewise to kill 800 men and wound many 
more, among whom was the Prince Farnese himself. 
Vessels of this kind were repeatedly used by the 
English in the seventeenth century ; thus an attempt was 
made in 1693 to destroy St. Malo by the explosion of a 
vessel of 300 tons laden with a large quantity of gun- 
powder, besides various other combustibles ; and similar 
attacks were likewise directed with little or no success 
two years later against St. Malo, Dieppe, and Dunkirk. 
For some time after these operations explosion-vessels 
» 
HARPOON 
PROPOSED BY FULTON IN 1800 
by an American, Mr. Bushnell, in 1777, who endeavoured 
to apply them to the destruction of the English fleet 
anchored near Philadelphia in that year; but the 
machines were started at too great a distance from the 
ships, and drifted away in wrong directions, the damage 
inflicted by them being limited to the destruction of a 
ship’s boat and her crew, who were engaged in capturing 
one of the dangerous shoal. In 1800 another American, 
Robert Fulton, submitted to the French Government 
several projects for the destruction of ships by means of 
submarine mines, or as they were called at the time, in- 
fernal machines. This gentleman appears to have spent 
three or four years in perfecting his system of warfare, 
but received such scant assistance and encouragement 
from his own Government, that in 1805 he determined to 
offer his invention to the English, who about that time 
had been creating a considerable panic in the French fleet 
off Boulogne, by sending among the vessels a number of 
fire-ships and small drifting mines of a self-acting nature, 
termed catamorons. 
The first of Fulton’s torpedoes, of which trial was made 
by the English naval authorities, consisted of a metal 
vessel holding about 1oolb. of gunpowder, and fitted with 
a clockwork instrument which could be regulated to 
