Torpedoes

Tlie torpedo bont is au American institution. Capt. David Bushnell, ui engineer in the Revolutionary iirmy, made tl ie first practical application ot' a submarino mine to ordinary warfare. H(! constrncted a aubmarine boat that would carry a torpedo charged witli 150 pounds of powder. The nieehanism was vory clumsy ; the torpedo was to bo att-ached by a wooden screw to the bottom of an enemy's vessel, and fired by a clockwork fuse. The first trial of this invention was made in New York harbor in 1776, when the boat, under tlie guidance of Sergeant Ezra Lee, was set under the bottom of the Eagle, a British ship of war, carrying the flag of Lord Howe. The wooden screw would not work, and the sergeant had to out the torpedo adrift. During the following year Capt. Bushnell directed a percussion torpedo against the frigate Cerberus, lying ofl' New London, but it drifted out of its course, and, striking a schooner moored alongside, sent her to the bottom. Twenty years afterward Bobert Fulton constructed an improved torpedo - he invented the name as well as the weapon - and undertook to introduce it abroad. In 1805 he made an unsuccessful attemt to destroy the French fleet at Boulogne, but subsequently blew up a brig in Deal harbor by means of two drifting torpe does. The British Government rejected his system, and he retumed to America to make further experiments in New York harbor. Another American, Col. Samuel Colt, was the first to apply electricity to the ignition of torpedoes. After blowing up several vessels at anchor, he destroyed, in 1843, a brig under full sail on the Potomac, operating by electricity from a station live miles distant. During the Climean wnr contact-mineB and electrical apparatus were introduced on the Black sea, and explosiona occurred under two vessels, but no serious damage was done. The French engiueers, however, destroyed the docks at Sebastopol through the agency of submarine explosiona. During the civil wnr in America torpedoes were used in the defense of Southern porta. The Confedérate Congress organized a torpedo service in October, 1863, and a bureau of engineers was estabÚshed at Kichmond. Two months afterward a Federal irónclad, the Cairo, was blown up on Yazoo river by a torpedo, and during the remainder of the war seven ironclads, eleven wooden vessels, and sixtransportswere destroyed in a similar way. The Confederates lost the Albemarie, two steamers in Charleston harbor, and a flag-of-truce boat in the same way. The Eussian engineers who recently fastened a torpedo under a Turkish ironclad did no more than Lieut. Cushing had done in the waters of the Roanoke. There were several officers in theConfederate service who lost their lires in attempting to do what Cushing accomplished. A submarine torpedoboat, requiring a crew of nine men, was launched in Charleston harbor for use against the blockading fleet. Three crews went to the bottom in this boat before she was directed against the enemy. Fnally a fourth crew, led by Lieut. Dixon, volunteered to take her out, and attack the Housatonic. The Lieutenant steered his boat well ; she struck the Housatonic fairly aud blow her stern to atoms ; the concussion sent Dixon and his men to the bottom, and the torpedo-boat and the corvette snnk together.