Decembee 11, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



825 



body across the shoulders at the rearward 

 end, being narrowed down forward, and a 

 conning-tower large enough for a man to 

 stand in erect. 



The front end of the superstructure will 

 be sharp, and water will be thrown to right 

 and left and will not obscure the forward 

 view of the occupant of the conning-tower. 

 The superstructure will be subdivided into 

 small compartments, filled with cellulose. 

 The partitions between the compartments 

 will be thin sheet metal. 



The whole superstructure, except the 

 conning-tower, will be very light and en- 

 tirely dispensable, and can be shot away 

 without actual damage to the boat itself. 

 The superstructure wiU be for flotation 

 purposes only, serving to tie the boat to 

 the surface of the water, while the boat 

 itself will be actually submarine. The 

 superstructure will project above the sur- 

 face of the water about a foot. 



The conning-tower will be protected by 

 thin armorplate thick enough to resist the 

 projectiles of small quick-firing guns, and 

 there will be no danger of being hit by guns 

 of a larger caliber. 



It will be extremely difficult to hit either 

 the superstructure or the conning-tower, 

 even with small quick-firing guns, for the 

 conning-tower will not be more than two 

 feet above the surface of the water, and 

 will not exceed three feet in diameter, and 

 will be moving forward at the rate of from 

 forty to sixty miles an hour. 



Of course, it will require stupendous 

 energy to propel a submarine boat through 

 the water at so high a rate of speed, and 

 there is nothing available known to me 

 except motorite which can supply the re- 

 quired energy. With motorite, however, 

 we have easily all the energy that may be 

 required for any desired rate of speed until 

 the motorite be entirely consumed. 



Enough motorite can easily be carried 



to drive such a submarine boat at a speed 

 of sixty miles an hour for a distance of 

 thirty miles. This will be sufficient to over- 

 take and sink any battleship that might be 

 sighted. Of course, a speed of forty-five 

 miles an hour can be maintained for a much 

 longer time, probably for an hour and a 

 half, with the same quantity of motorite. 



The Whitehead torpedo is in reality a 

 sort of submarine torpedo-boat and what is 

 true of it also holds true of the torpedo- 

 boat I propose. Of course, the keel and 

 superstructure in the boat I propose would 

 offer additional resistance, but, on account 

 of the larger size of the boat and its greater 

 length and the enormous quantity of mo- 

 torite that may be carried, we shall have 

 available more than enough energy to make 

 up for the increased resistance. 



The boat will carry, say, a couple of tor- 

 pedoes in the prow and launch them when 

 getting within close range of a warship. 

 These torpedoes should each carry at least 

 five hundred pounds of high explosive. It 

 would be better if they carried half a ton 

 each in the warhead. 



The cost of the torpedo-boat will be slight 

 compared with the destruction it can work. 

 Besides, there need be only two men on 

 board and the lives of but two men will be 

 endangered anyway, and notwithstanding 

 the danger to the men making such an at- 

 tack, even though the chance of being killed 

 were to be one in two, or even more, there 

 will be no lack of volunteers for the job. 



A portion of what I have just said about 

 my system of propulsion of torpedoes and 

 torpedo-boats appeared in the September 

 number of the Metropolitan Magazine; but 

 I have several inventions relating to the 

 construction of torpedo-boats that have 

 never yet been published, and one of these 

 is a method for taking on and discharging 

 water with very great rapidity for the sub- 

 mergence and emergence of a semi-sub- 



