Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1877 — The Early Use of Torpedoes. [ARTICLE]

The Early Use of Torpedoes.

There is a very generally-received hut erroneous notion that the torpedo is quite a recent invention, and that during the present hostilities in the East it has been for the first time employed in actual warfare. That of late years torpedoes have been greatly improved is undoubtedly a fact, but none the less is it true that the advantages to be gained by a judicious employment of submarine weapons of war have long been fully recognized, and, further, that these latter have been already largely used, and that with great effect, both for the defense of harbors, rivers, roadsteads, etc., and also for more actively offensive operations. As long ago a 3 the 15th of August, 1777, a boat was blown to pieces and nearly all its crew killed by the accidental explosion of a torpedo which had been used in an attempt made by the Ameiicans against the English man-of-war Cerebus. In 1805 a brig which had been anchored oft' Deal for the purpose of experiment in submarine explosions was destroyed, in the presence of Mr. Pitt and a large concourse of speetators, by a torpedo containing 170 pounds of powder. Previously, in 1797, a machine lad been designed by which, tcu3ethe inventor’s own words, he proposed “ to impart to carcasses of gun powder a progressive motion under water to a given paint'and" there explode them,” and which, therefore, contained the germ of the present locomotive or fish torpedo. In 1807 another vessel was blown to pieces in New York harbor; and, finally, to come to the employment of torpedoes in actual warfare, we find that no fewer than seven iron-clad vessels and eleven wooden ships of war were totally destroyed duringthe American Civil War by submerged torpedoes. —Pall Mall Gazette.