TOEPEDOES. 
171 
way ; they succeeded in sinking many of the Federal ships ; and 
at Charleston, though the guns of the blockading fleets again 
and again silenced the land batteries, the ships were kept out of 
the harbour by the lines of torpedoes moored at its mouth. It 
was during this conflict, too, that the first great step was taken 
towards making torpedoes at once safe and effective, by using 
electricity as a means of ignition, thus keeping those terrible 
weapons completely under the control of the defenders, so that 
by merely disconnecting the electric battery from the wires 
they can be rendered perfectly harmless, and by renewing the 
connection they can be in a moment again made ready for action. 
In this way friendly vessels can be allowed to get into a harbour 
in safety, while an attacking squadron is held at bay ; but with 
the old plan of firing the torpedoes mechanically, when once they 
were laid down neither friend nor foe could enter the port ; and, 
moreover, to remove them when the war was over would be an 
undertaking of such frightful peril that it would be hard to get 
anyone to attempt it, as an incautious touch would be enough 
to explode the mine and blow the working party into the air. 
By adopting electricity as the igniting agent all those disad- 
vantages are obviated. 
Again, in the “ Seven Weeks’ War” of 1866 we see torpedoes 
once more employed, and now still further improved. In that 
year the Austrian engineers arranged and executed a complete 
system of torpedo defence for Venice and the Adriatic coasts of 
the empire. It was not, however, put to the test of having to 
resist an attack of the Italian fleet, for Tegethoff, by his splendid 
victory at Lissa, crushed for the time the naval power of Italy. 
This is, nevertheless, an important epoch in the history of this 
kind of warfare, as it was the first time that a regular system 
was adopted ; for in America all that had been done was to use 
such materials and such forms of apparatus as came readily to 
hand ; and almost every sort of contrivance was used at different 
times and places. At the great Paris Exhibition of 1867 the 
methods used in the defence of the Venetian coast were exhibited 
by the Austrian government, and the period between the wars 
of 1866 and 1870 was one of great activity in researches and 
experiments in this department. When war was declared by 
France, the Prussian government at once proceeded to put all 
their ports in a state of defence with the help of torpedoes. 
The most improved forms of apparatus were used, and there 
could not be a better example of the way in which an inferior 
naval power can now render itself secure from the attack of a 
much superior one. The Grermans tacitly acknowledged their 
inferiority on the sea, for their men-of-war never left the pro- 
tection of the forts of Kiel and Wilhelmshaven ; yet the French 
fleet, from which so much had been expected, effected absolutely 
