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A Serious Question, When Considering That a Tiny Torpedo Boat II 07Iid Destroy the Greatest Uarsjiip in a Moment

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A Serious Question, When Considering That a Tiny Torpedo Boat II 07Iid Destroy the Greatest Uarsjiip in a Moment Is the Battleship Doomed A Serious Question, When Considering That a Tiny Torpedo Boat II 07iId Destroy the Greatest UarsJiip in a Moment By WILLIAM G. FITZ-GERALD ffiSSSmmt'' firing a shot the eighteen thou¬ decker of a hundred and sand-ton British monster Dreadnought one guns. There are WITHOUThas made all the navies of the world courses seven different practically obsolete and sent them scurrying to for commissioned offi¬ copy her monstrous lines and five tremendous cers, four for warrant towers, each mounting a pair of twelve-inch rifles. officers, nine for artifi¬ Money is being poured out like water; yet there are cers, four for petty not a few authoritative voices raised in protest, and officers, and two for these call attention to the latest pattern of torpedo seamen France, in the discharged from submarine or torpedo boat. Im¬ person of her great tor¬ agine a missile shot from a tube, like a shell from a pedo expert Messimy, twelve-inch gun, only launched iti the sea, instead of suggests that a port directly through the air, at an enemy's ship, and shall be set aside ex¬ aimed with all of the big gun's precision. clusively for the con¬ It is a cigar shaped monster of shining steel, per¬ struction and repair of haps twenty feet long, weighing nearly a ton, alive torpedo boats. with the mechanism of one hundred and thirty As to ourselves, every horses comprised within the space of a woman's midshipman at Annap¬ 37 handbag.surely the uttermost limit of human in¬ olis is taught the details Jt About to Discharge a Torpedo. genuity. A sinister and destructive Dens ex ma- of these smooth death china, dealing death and havoc and disappearing in dealers; and at the Government torpedo station at her raking funnels. From stem to stern she quivers its own ruin like some demon of fire. Newport, as well as on the old Vesuvius, men skilled with suppressed energy. Standing over stokehold The might of nations to-day is represented in in torpedo work are imparting knowledge to the rising and engine room, you feel the throbs and pants of battleships. These back up stern dicta and en¬ generation of sea fighters. These are thereby ren¬ seven thousand horse power confined in the space force demands, prevent unjust claims, command dered so handy in electrical work generally that of a decent sized living room. respect. And they are amazingly costly, as every they would readily find employment in civil life A bell tinkles, and the quick churning water runs newspaper reader knows. A Dreadnought costs Come with us on board a torpedo boat of to-day. faster. Little shudders run along the frail deck, nine million dollars, and only Dreadnoughts count These strange craft have been specially designed to and the leaping waters hiss swiftly past the black to-day. Worst of all, they may go out of fashion unleash dogs of war that travel far and fast, and smooth sides. Later, low growls run through the before the year is out, leaving us the task of begin¬ whose bark and bite may damage empires. Great fabric, and there is a roar of boiling water astern. ning all over again. But that is a phase with which Britain has nearly one hundred and fifty first class Men pull caps over their eyes, and button up slickers, we have no concern here. The object is to destroy torpedo boats, and almost as many more of the for half a gale is blowing, as the sharp bow races the floating fortress, the embodiment of a hostile second class. Even retrograde China has over forty; through the sea, cutting a great smooth green swath. country's material might. If you Another bell, and the dizzy screws can sink a nine million-dollar respond with a short roar. Smoke Dreadnought with two or three no longer rises, but streams at seven million dollar Connecticuts right angles, and the sea races be¬ or New Hampshires, well and good; like a raging mill race. Another but if you can rip the bottom out bell. The craft shakes herself and of her with a six thousand-dollar fairly leaps. Boiling foam springs Whitehead or Bliss-Leavitt tor¬ in long curling jets from her flat pedo, vastly better still. bottomed stern; the screws are It takes a whole army of tor¬ doing four hundred revolutions pedoes to equal in cash value even a minute now. Below, in an in- an old ram like the Katahdin. But J conceivable little hell, half naked can it be done? It can. The stokers are working as though for torpedo has been used with awful their lives. Panting and throb¬ effect from the days of our own bing are the racing engines, though Civil War, when crude specimens they work as smoothly as my were exploded by impact at the lady's sewing machine.each equal end of long spars against an ene¬ to the strength of three thousand my's side. From that era until horses. A cataract of soot and the mighty Petropavlovsk keeled cinders pours upon the deck, and over and was swallowed by the the oval funnels roar with flame sea's gulfs, with her Admiral and A Torpedo Leaving the Boat. that shoots out in the dusk in hundreds of men, is a long four solid pillars. stretch in these modern days; but it is safe to predict while the coasts of France are fairly buzzing with She is doing her best now, with steam in the boilers that the turbine torpedo of future warfare on the these mosquitoes of the sea. Such terror do they at nearly two hundred and twenty pounds to the sea, infallibly directed and controlled this way and and the thev instil into inch. We are half ourselves in the that of strange weapon discharge square burying by rays light, will make naval constructors battleship crews, that Great Britain designed a new sea with clouds of spray, and engines growling and call a halt for breath and consultation before laying type of destroyer, more powerful, faster, and better roaring like wild things. Every plate and rivet, down any more enormous battleships. armed than the torpedo boat, and intended solelv to every tube and rod and wheel and crank and pin, Truly nothing is new under the sun; and though give her chase and sink her before she can accom¬ is being strained unto the last ounce. One mile in a thousands of years yawn between our dav and Aris¬ her dread mission. boat and minute and seconds. It makes one to his Bell plish Torpedo destroyer forty giddy totle's, "Diving Bomb" is surely realized alike may fairly be called the light weights of naval see green water swirling and boiling up under her in the latest mechanical wonder of destructive warfare. Their object is to dart in at the monsters, counters. She is literally burrowing into hills of science. strike one blow fairly home, which must infallibly be foam, that burst into spray and come hissing and Every country attaches great importance to the fatal, and get away before the heavy weight can hit stinging along like small shot. torpedo. Thus Great Britain has a regular floating back. There is no comfort here for man or beast; one torpedo school in the Vernon, an ancient three- The risks run by the torpedo boat on her mission marvels where the people sleep. It is like trying to are truly desperate, ller uttermost make a house out of a dry goods box. The wear range is only four thousand yards, and tear on the nerves, with watchers often foodless at which distance the Dreadnought's and sleepless in all weathers, must be terrific. Think wire wound guns could blow her clear of that when next you see a torpedo boat sticking out of the water. She is therefore her bows into the green swells, with solid green a peculiar little creature, with the water washing her low deck. engines of an Atlantic liner crammed Come below and watch the fellows lay a White¬ into a frail steel shell, that rolls and head torpedo in its tube, much as a shell is fired ricochets through green sea walls at from a warship's big gun. For we are going to have more than forty miles an hour. a little practice.it may be at Xoyack Bay, near She has no double skins, no massive Sag Harbor, Long Island. And our work may be teak backing, no heavy plating,. done under the critical eyes of the naval torpedo nothing but a single steel shell vary¬ board, comprising men like Commander A. Cleaves, ing from three-sixteenths to one-six¬ Lieutenant Commander F. G. Davison, and Lieu¬ teenth of an inch; yet this must be tenant 1). W. Knox, of the torpedo station at New¬ tough enough to form a stable engine port. bed. and stand being driven at rail¬ The long steel fish glides into its shoot, and thence road speed ahead and astern.not is pushed forward into the tube. In big ships it is over but clear through towering seas. ejected by air; but we shall send it plunging into the These craft re])resent the naval water with a small charge of powder The tube's engineer's last word; and to get the end is shut ; the gunner gets astride it, takes a sight, next knot out of them means another pulls a lever shaqjly back, making electrical contact thousand horse power.
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