748 



HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



It has also been suggested that ships of war should be fur- 

 nished with a sharp beak of steel, and with such powerful 

 engines as should secure for them great speed, and, without 

 trusting at all to the use of their guns, should be used as rams 

 to run into and crush their adversaries. This suggestion, 

 which is practically returning to the practice of the ancients 

 before the invention of either gunpowder or steam, has never 

 jet, however, been carried out in fact. So far, therefore, the 

 most serviceable modern ships of war are the monitors. The 

 largest and most expensive of these, the Dunderberg, was not 

 finished until after the war was over, and was sold, with the 

 consent of the government, by her builder, to Russia for $1,000,- 

 000, and crossed the Atlantic safely, a feat which showed hei 

 to be sea-worthy, and more worthy of confidence than any of 

 the armored vessels built by the English Government. 



In modern times attention has also been given to construct- 

 ing vessels which should be navigated under the water. Ful- 

 ton, whose name is so inseparably connected with the intro- 

 duction of the steamboat, made an attempt, the first on record, 

 in the harbor of Brest, on the west coast of France, in 1801, 

 under the order of Napoleon L, to blow up an English ship 

 with a torpedo, a weapon of warfare which is said to have been 

 first suggested by Franklin, who experimented with them in 

 the Revolution. Fulton used, in this attempt, a submarine boat 

 of his own invention, the model and construction of which 

 have never been made public. His attempt being unsuccessful 

 the project was abandoned, as Napoleon withdrew his support 

 from the scheme. 



During our late civil war, while the harbor of Charleston, 

 South Carolina, was blockaded by the ships of the national 

 aavy, and the bombardment of Fort Sumter continued, attempts 

 were made by the besieged to destroy the blockading ships by 

 torpedoes, which were to be fastened by a submarine eratt. 

 One of these boats, called a "cig^r boat," though both ends 



