if introduced into practice, it could not fail to annihilate all military marines. It would not be extraordinary if Mr. Pitt, entertaining this opinion, should, as the minister of a nation which had then the largest navy in the world, have felt cordially disposed to encourage an invention that might deprive her of the mighty superiority she derived from her fleets. This was certainly the view that some of her statesmen had on the subject. When Mr. Fulton had an interview with the Earl St. Vincent, he exhibited to him a torpedo, and described to him the effects it had produced, the noble earl, in the strong language of his profession, rather than in a style comporting with his new dignity, exclaimed against Mr. Pitt for encouraging a mode of warfare which, he said, with great reason, they who commanded the seas did not want, and which, if successful, would wrest the trident from those who then claimed to bear it as the sceptre of supremacy on the ocean. In June, the British Ministry appointed a commission to examine Mr. Fulton's projects. The commissioners were Sir Joseph Banks, Mr. Cavendish, Sir Home Popham, Major Congreve, and Mr. John Rennie. Many weeks passed before Mr. Fulton could prevail on them to do anything; and finally, when they met, they reported against the submarine boat, as being impracticable. At about this time, an expedition was fitted out against the French flotilla in the roads of Boulogne. In the night, torpedoes were thrown, by boats from a British squadron, across the bows of two of the French gun-brigs. The Frenchmen, when the torpedo-boats were discovered, exclaimed, with horror, that the infernal machines were coming! They had in their minds, no doubt, the effects of some vague reports as to Mr. Fulton's engines; and were terrified by knowing what had been the tremendous consequences of the explosion, in the streets of Paris, a short time previously, of a machine intended to destroy the life of Bonaparte. The torpedoes exploded alongside of the French vessels, without doing them any injury. Mr. Fulton imputed this failure to a mistake, arising from want of experience, in what was apparently a slight matter. The torpedo had been so placed as that it hung perpendicularly by the side of the vessel, whereas it should have been so arranged as that the current would have swept it under her bottom. This, he was convinced, might be accomplished by the simple contrivance of attaching a bridle to the torpedo in such a manner as that it should lay in the water at an angle with the line of direction of the current. This, when the torpedo was stopped by a line connected with it meeting the hawser or bow of the vessel, would give it a sheer which would carry it towards the keel of the vessel to be destroyed. Mr. Fulton's subsequent experiments proved that his theory on this subject was perfectly correct. On the 15th of October, 1805, he blew up a strong-built Danish brig, of the burden of 200 tons, which had been provided for the experiment, and which was anchored in Walmar roads, near Deal, within a mile of Walmer castle, the residence of Mr. Pitt at that time. He has given an interesting account of this experiment in a pamphlet which he published in this country, under the title of "Torpedo War." In a letter to Lord Castlereagh, of the 16th of October, 1805, he says: "Yesterday, about four o'clock, I made the intended experiment on the brig, with a carcass of one hundred and seventy pounds of powder; and I have the pleasure to inform you that it succeeded beyond my most sanguine expectations. Exactly in fifteen minutes from the time of drawing the peg and throwing the carcass in the water, the explosion took place. It lifted the brig almost bodily, and broke her completely in two. The ends sunk immediately, and in one minute nothing was to be seen of her but floating fragments: her mainmast and pumps were thrown into the sea, her foremast was broken in three pieces, her beams and knees were thrown from her deck and sides, and her deck planks were rent in fibres. In |