Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

SUBMARINE WARFARE

PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

“DAVID AND GOLIATH.”
The Russian Battleship “Retvisan” (12,700 tons) and the U.S. Submarine “Holland” (75 tons).

SUBMARINE WARFARE
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

BY

HERBERT C. FYFE

(Sometime Librarian of the Royal Institution, London)

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ADMIRAL THE HON. SIR EDMUND ROBERT FREMANTLE, G.C.B., C.M.G.; AND A CHAPTER ON “THE PROBABLE FUTURE OF SUBMARINE BOAT CONSTRUCTION” BY SIR EDWARD J. REED, M.P. ✜ ✜ ✜ ✜ ✜

WITH FIFTY ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON

GRANT RICHARDS

48, LEICESTER SQUARE

1902

UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, PRINTERS, WOKING AND LONDON.

PREFACE

There exists no popular work in the English language on submarine warfare, and only one which deals exclusively with submarine boats. This was written fifteen years ago by Lieutenant G. W. Hovgaard of the Danish Navy. It is a little book of ninety-eight pages, and out of these forty only are given to the “History and Development of Submarine Boats.” The rest of the volume is taken up with a description of a vessel imagined by the author but never constructed. Lieutenant Sleeman’s “Torpedoes and Torpedo Warfare” takes no account of under-water craft, whilst Lieutenant G. E. Armstrong, in his little book, “Torpedoes and Torpedo-vessels” devotes only eighteen pages out of 306 to “Submarines and Submersibles.”

Having always taken a keen interest in submarine boats, the writer some two years ago commenced the compilation of the present work. His aim has been to produce a book which should be essentially of a popular character and should appeal to those who have neither the time nor the inclination to pursue the subject very deeply. It necessarily contains a certain amount of detailed description, but the aim has been to avoid technicalities as far as possible. That the book may appeal to the general public, and that it may also be found worthy of a place on the shelves of the student of naval history and naval warfare is the author’s wish, and he trusts that a volume will not be unacceptable that traces the story of under-water warfare from the earliest times to the present day, that endeavours to explain how a submarine boat is worked, and that attempts to arrive at some conclusions respecting a mode of fighting which may possibly figure largely in future battles on the seas.

Interest in the navy and in naval matters is fortunately greater than it used to be, but there is still a vast amount of ignorance existing in the minds of the public respecting our warships and our sailors. When an explosion occurred recently on the Royal Sovereign a man in the street remarked to his friend, “How lucky it didn’t happen when we went to Margate on her last summer!” The navy is certainly not so much in the public eye as is the army, still it should be the desire of every Briton to know even a little about the service for which he pays so much. Many people seem to imagine that torpedo-boats do their work below the waves, and have but very hazy notions respecting the working of the torpedo or the functions of the destroyer.

It was recently remarked to the writer by one who has had a large experience in catering for the mental needs of the British public that we were not a mechanical nation, and that while Americans would naturally be interested in such a subject as submarine warfare, Britons would only display an apathetic attitude towards it. Perhaps the general lack of interest in scientific matters is due to the fact that little trouble is taken to place them before readers in an attractive form. There is no doubt that the Germans, the French, and the Americans are far more alive to the importance of science, and are far more ready to discuss inventions, discoveries, and scientific topics than we are ourselves.

That his work will appeal to a very large class of readers the writer has little hope. He trusts, however, that those who do read it will be encouraged to pursue the subject a little more deeply, and that inventive minds may be induced to apply their ingenuity to the designing of weapons for under-water warfare.

When we decided to add submarines to our navy, we had to adopt the design of an American, Mr. Holland, because no other was then available. Similarly the system of wireless telegraphy used on our men-of-war is the invention of an Italian.

“We have started,” says a well-known English professor, “all the branches of engineering; we have invented nearly all the important things, but the great development of these things has gone out of the hands of the amateurs of our nation. It is because our statesmen are Gallios who ‘care for none of these things,’ because they know nothing of science.”

It was an Englishman who invented the Whitehead torpedo; it was in the brain of an Englishman that the idea of the torpedo-boat destroyer was evolved. Are there not those who will bring their inventive talent to bear on the perfecting of the diving torpedo-boat and of the many contrivances that are needed to make it an efficient weapon of offence and defence?

It may be said that the encouragement given to the inventor by the Admiralty is so scanty as to make him shy of offering them his ideas. Let us hope, now that Lord Selborne and Mr. Arnold Forster are at the Admiralty, that the bad old days when inventors were snubbed, and novel ideas ridiculed, have gone never to return. The submersible craft of to-day is no longer an ingenious toy; it is a practiced engine of warfare of no mean value. But there is vast room for improvement in its design. It must be endowed with more speed, its longitudinal stability must be improved, and its appliances for under-water vision perfected. Are there not Britons willing to devote their energies to the realisation of the ideal submarine?

The author has derived his information from a great many sources, some of which are mentioned in the brief Bibliography at the end of the book.

He desires to express his thanks to Messrs. Vickers Sons & Maxim, the Holland Torpedo-boat Company, Mr. P. W. D’Alton, Lieutenant A. T. Dawson, late R.N., Mr. Simon Lake and others, for information kindly given him respecting various boats and for photographs. To Mr. Alan H. Burgoyne his thanks are due for permission to use some of his original sketches.

Royal Societies’ Club,

St. James Street, S.W.

INTRODUCTION

BY

ADMIRAL THE HON. SIR E. R. FREMANTLE, G.C.B, C.M.G.

(Rear-Admiral of the United Kingdom.)

The natural attitude of the Naval mind towards submarines is the same now as that expressed by Lord St. Vincent when Fulton invented the notorious “catamaran” expedition.

Fulton had been trying some experiments before Pitt, who favoured the project, to which Lord St. Vincent, then First Lord of the Admiralty, was strongly opposed, and he bluntly stated that “Pitt was the greatest fool that ever existed to encourage a mode of war which those who commanded the seas did not want, and which, if successful, would deprive them of it.”

It was, our Admiralty recently held, “the weapon of the weaker power, and not our concern,” then we were to “watch and wait,” which sounded plausible but was evidently dangerous, and as the success of the French submarines became too evident we were forced to follow suit. As Lord Selborne reminded us when speaking about the boilers, we have too often ignored new inventions and resisted change till we were left well behind in the race, as we were with ironclads, breech-loading guns, and other improvements in naval warfare.

The fact is that every new invention has its infancy of weakness and failure, its adolescence of partial adoption, and doubtful success, and its manhood of completion and achievement. Unfortunately the natural conservatism of a profession and perhaps of human nature is apt to deride the early failures, and to prejudice the invention so as to delay its adoption. Every inventor can tell stories of the obstruction he has met with, and often of his ultimate triumph, like Mr. Whitworth and his steam hammer pile-driving competition, when he succeeded in driving piles with his steam hammer in as many minutes as it took hours under the method previously adopted, much to the astonishment of the old hands.

Certainly the submarine has had its period of failure and ridicule, for the attempt to use submarines dates from very ancient days, as Mr. Fyfe’s interesting historical résumé shows, yet it is only now arriving at the stage of development which forces us to reckon with it as a serious factor in naval warfare.

We need not follow Mr. Fyfe in his early history of the submarine, but leaving James I.’s somewhat apocryphal voyage under the waters of the Thames, the inventions of Bushnell, Fulton, Warner, and others, we may come to the Confederate diving boat during the war of secession. Here we have a real diving boat which, though it drowned three crews, did succeed in destroying the United States sloop Housatonic, one of the blockading fleet off Charleston, though she was herself sunk in the effort, drowning her fourth crew. It is interesting to compare this submarine boat with one of our modern Hollands.

The following is the description given by Captain Maury, the well-known hydrographer, then at the head of the Confederate torpedo bureau, of this unfortunate craft, or David as she was called. “It was built of boiler iron, about 35 feet long, and was manned by a crew of nine men, eight of whom worked the propeller by hand, the ninth steered the boat and regulated her movements below the surface of the water. She could be submerged at pleasure to any desired depth, or could be propelled on the surface. In smooth, still water she could be exactly controlled, and her speed was about 4 knots.”

It is further stated that she could remain submerged for half an hour “without inconvenience to her crew,” and in action she was to drag a torpedo under a ship’s bottom, which was intended to explode on striking.

Now contrast this rude and dangerous craft with the “Holland” boats now building for the British Government, and the advance which has been made in the last forty years is evident.

I need not describe the Holland here, but motive power, speed, radius of action, and torpedo are all essentially different; but above all it has been proved that a modern submersible boat like the French Gustave Zédé, or Narval, or our Holland can remain under water truly “without inconvenience to her crew” for periods of nine or ten hours, so that all the problems connected with submarine navigation may be said to have been solved, except that of seeing under water, for when submerged the submarine is in cimmerian darkness, and more helpless than an ordinary vessel in the densest of fogs. Nor is it likely that invention has said its last word in regard to the submarine now that it is acknowledged to be a weapon of practical value.

On this point it is convenient to call to mind the remarkable development of the Whitehead torpedo since it was first adopted in our Navy rather more than thirty years ago. It happens that I have been able to refer to an article on torpedoes which I wrote in Fraser’s Magazine just thirty years ago, in which I described the Whitehead of that day as having a speed of from 7 to 7½ knots, a range of 1,000 yards, and a charge of 67 lbs. of gun-cotton. Now, the speed of our modern Whiteheads is 30 knots, the range 2,000 yards, the charge 200 lbs. of gun-cotton, and, thanks to the gyroscope, it can be discharged with extraordinary accuracy.

Admitting, then, that the submarine is with us, and that it will remain, let us see what is likely to be its function in war. The submarine compares naturally with the torpedo destroyer or torpedo boat; like them it will attack by stealth, and it has neither their speed nor radius of action. But, whereas searchlights and quick-firing guns are effective weapons against the latter, they are of little use against the submarine, and as all these craft are to act by surprise, the advantage is strongly in favour of the submarine, which can approach with little danger of being discovered, with the cupola only showing, until close to her enemy, thus rendering a close blockade by large vessels impossible.

I have said that is naturally the weapon of the weaker power, but that it can be used and that it will be used by the stronger power acting on the offensive I see no reason to doubt. It can certainly be employed against ships at anchor unless they are suitably protected, and it can probably render good service in removing obstructions and clearing passages defended by torpedoes.

The question remains as to whether any antidote to the submarine is likely to be effective. It is possible that one may be discovered, but it is not easy to see in what direction we are to look for it, as the submarine differs from other craft in the fact that the possession of any number of similar vessels, by ourselves for instance, affords little or no protection against a few well-handled Gustave Zédé’s in the hands of our enemies. At the same time they would be of little or no value against torpedo boats or destroyers; and cruisers blockading, moving about at a speed of 10 knots or more, at some distance from a port known to harbour submarines, would have little to fear, as it could only be by a lucky chance that a submarine could approach near enough to them to have a fair shot. It is also worthy of remark that the navigation and pilotage of a submarine, even with her cupola above water, would be by no means easy in shallow water or thick weather, and of the value of the periscope I cannot but feel somewhat sceptical. The French are stated to have found that submarines can be easily discovered from balloons; but this must naturally apply only to daylight and fine weather, and their opportunity will naturally occur in thick weather or at night.

I have offered these remarks to show that though I consider the submarine to be an important weapon, it clearly has its limitations, and I suspect that when we have them fairly under trial we shall find that when these are fully appreciated and the position of the submarine in naval warfare is duly assigned, much of the terror and mystery now surrounding this novel weapon will be removed. Probably it will be found to be a more dangerous and effective torpedo boat, and will supplant it in great measure.

Mr. Fyfe has done good service in giving us this popular account of submarines, which is a valuable addition to the scanty literature of the subject in the English language.

THE PROBABLE FUTURE OF SUBMARINE BOAT CONSTRUCTION.

BY

SIR EDWARD J. REED, K.C.B., F.R.S., M.P.

(Chief Constructor of the Navy 1863–70.)

There is nothing in the nature of things that I know of to prevent submarine warfare being carried on in the future to a very large extent. This development will probably follow triple lines: (1) Vessels for the defence of ports and harbours, with sufficient means of proceeding outside to give the defence a certain limited power of attack in the approaches; (2) Vessels primarily designed for attack, and therefore capable of proceeding to sea for considerable distances; and (3) Smaller vessels to be taken to sea in ships, as part of their equipment, and capable of being lowered to take part in a battle, and raised again, and re-stowed on board when no longer needed in action. All these types of vessel will need to be endowed with the power of passing easily and quickly from the floating to the submerged condition, and back again to the surface when necessary; but the boats of the second class in the foregoing category will doubtless be developed to an extent as yet anticipated by very few of us, in respect alike of their ability to proceed for great distances below water, and of their ability to steam satisfactorily afloat when submergence is needless.

All who are acquainted with the structure of waves, so to speak, will be aware that wave disturbance diminishes very rapidly as we go down below the surface, and will consequently understand that when once we have succeeded in giving submarines a great range of under-water travel, we shall have endowed them with the capability of avoiding at pleasure in bad weather the tempestuous surface of the sea, with all the drawbacks to speed which stormy seas impose upon ships, and especially upon comparatively small vessels. In order to bring about this advantage, science has to effect, no doubt, immense improvements in the production of storage of air, or of its equivalent; but there is great reason to believe that the demand will bring the supply, as in so many other matters. Nor must it be forgotten that this is a branch of science for the development of which the ship proper, as we have hitherto known it, has offered few, if any, inducements. I do not know how the sight of an ordinary modern ship of war strikes the eyes of others, but for my part I never look at one, with its vast and monstrous assemblage of gaping mouths of funnels, pipes, and cowls, without thinking that our method of supplying breathing gas to men below in a ship is at present of a very elementary and unsatisfactory character. It is certainly the roughest and readiest method that could well be adopted. Nor is it without a sense of satisfaction that one knows that the submarine ship will at least sweep away these ugly and towering excrescences, and force us to resort much more than at present to the chemical and mechanical arts for the ventilation of vessels.

The development of the sea-going submarine will bring with it, doubtless, many improvements in the vessels which have been first mentioned, viz., vessels for the defence of ports and their approaches. It is not possible yet to say to what extent the “Holland” boats building at Barrow will prove fairly satisfactory, although my acquaintance with this class of vessel for several years past has given me a favourable impression of it—favourable, that is, as furnishing many elements of initial success. More than this could not be reasonably expected; nor can we doubt that with the skill of both the Admiralty designers and those of the great manufacturing establishment which has produced the first few vessels concentrated upon this class of boat, immense improvements may be confidently anticipated.

Of the third class of vessels before referred to the Goubet boat may be regarded as a commencing type. The principle of this boat appears to be that of carrying and launching torpedoes from external supports, the size and buoyancy of the vessels being very small by comparison with those of vessels which carry their torpedoes inside. M. Goubet appears to go beyond this principle, and to have other ideas, which are mentioned in the text of this work. Suffice it here to say that the idea of relieving the submarine boat from the necessity of carrying its torpedoes with it, goes a long way towards furthering the use of submarine torpedo craft carried on the decks, or at the davits of battleships and cruisers.

If one may contrast for a moment the present attempts at aerial navigation with the concurrent attempts at submarine navigation, one quickly sees how terribly the æronaut is handicapped as compared with the under-water sailor. The advantage of the dense medium which the sea offers to the submarine navigator is precisely the same as it has offered from the beginning of time to the surface navigator, and nothing new is needed to sustain the submarine ship, whereas the unhappy man who seeks to navigate the air has to obtain from a medium of extraordinary levity the support necessary for keeping him aloft. The difference between the specific gravity of air (of which ships are full) and of water is so great by comparison between the specific gravity of any gas available for filling aerial-ships and that of air, that the problem of the submarinist is easy indeed compared with the other. But it is in the face of this initial and enormous difficulty that the æronauts of to-day have apparently persuaded themselves that they can successfully float their balloon-ship in mid-air, and propel it not only against the rapid tides of the air in which it floats, but also drive it at a good additional speed. When men are to be found capable of committing their fortunes, and even their lives, to navigation of this kind, it is not surprising to find that the far easier problem of navigating the seas beneath the surface has won the attention and the effort of enterprising men. They certainly have chosen, if the humbler, also the more practical and promising field of operation. I doubt not that they have likewise chosen the more fruitful field.

It is worthy of remark that it is once again in connection with the arts of war that a great extension of human progress has been commenced. But for the temptation of gaining equality with, and even mastery over, our possible foes, the art of submarine navigation would certainly not have been attracting the attention of some of our best and most scientific men, who are once again eagerly developing—

“Those dire implements

Which sombre science with unpitying pains,

That love of neither man nor God restrains,

To warring foes presents.”

One can only be thankful that the world is so constituted and so ruled, that out of seeming evil often comes great good to men.

I have not been asked to say anything of the book with which these lines are associated. I may nevertheless remark that I have had an opportunity of hastily looking through the author’s proofsheets, and have formed the opinion that it is a most timely and highly instructive work, and one which gives to the non-technical world an extremely good review of all that has been done in the way of submarine war vessels, while the technical man into whose hands it may come will be compelled, by its great interest and by its clever record of facts, to read every page of it.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

PART I

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

“The submarine craft is a miracle of ingenuity though Nelson and his hearts of oak, fighting only on deck, in God’s free air, and with ‘the meteor flag of England’ fluttering overhead, would have loathed and scorned her burglarious, area-sneak dodges down below.”

In modern under-water warfare two weapons are employed, the Mine and the Torpedo. Both are explosive devices, but whilst mines are stationary, torpedoes are endowed with the power of locomotion in some form or another.

The modern submarine boat is in reality a diving torpedo-boat and like all other torpedo craft of the present day its function is to discharge automobile torpedoes.

The submarine boat is sometimes said to be the child of the torpedo-boat. As a matter of fact the earliest known torpedo vessel was designed to do its work under water.

In 1776 an attack was made on the English frigate H.M.S. Eagle, and in 1777 on the English man-of-war H.M.S. Cerberus by a submarine vessel invented by David Bushnell and provided with “torpedoes.” Although no injury was inflicted on these ships, three of the crew of a prize schooner astern of the Cerberus, in hauling one of Bushnell’s drifting torpedoes on board, were killed by its explosion.

A few years afterwards Robert Fulton occupied himself with torpedoes, and like Bushnell he came to the conclusion that a submarine boat was the best suited for the discharge of his weapons. In time of peace Fulton showed that his torpedoes could sink ships, but in actual warfare he failed to accomplish the destruction of any craft. For a while torpedo warfare received but scant attention, but on the outbreak of the American Civil War the mine and the torpedo “leapt at one bound from the condition of theory and experiment to become accepted once for all as practical and valuable factors for offence and defence.”

At this period also it is to be noted that the torpedoists considered the under-water vessel the most favourable method of utilising the spar-torpedo, the weapon of the day. Both Federals and Confederates paid much attention to submarine navigation, and success attended the efforts of the latter, for on February 17, 1864, the Federal frigate Housatonic was sunk off Charleston by a submarine boat manned by the Confederates and armed with a spar-torpedo. This is the sole occasion on which an under-water vessel has ever succeeded in sinking a hostile craft in actual warfare, and even then it was being navigated in the awash condition, and not completely submerged.

The introduction of the automobile or fish torpedo led to the building of above-water torpedo vessels by all the great Powers. The idea of discharging this weapon from a submarine boat occupied the attention of numerous inventors, amongst others of Mr. Nordenfelt, of machine-gun fame.

Greece and Turkey both bought Nordenfelt submarine boats, but although they achieved a certain amount of success and were certainly the best specimens of under-water fighting vessels extant, they failed to receive wider recognition owing to their serious disadvantages.

The possibility of utilising the electric accumulator revived the hopes of the advocates of submarine navigation, and towards the end of the eighties, France added the first under-water torpedo-boat to her navy: since then her interest in the subject has never abated, and although it would be unfair to attribute to all French naval men and officials the ideas as to the superiority of the torpedo vessel to the ironclad put forward by a certain class of writers, it cannot be denied that the question of under-water warfare has attracted more attention in France than in any other country. A few years after the launch of the first French submarine, the Gymnote, the U.S. Government purchased the Holland, and in the same year ordered six more Hollands of an improved type.

When Greece and Turkey purchased Nordenfelt boats there were not wanting those who declared that Great Britain should also add under-water vessels to her navy. The official view was however hostile to such craft. In the early part of 1900, Viscount Goschen said that while close attention had been given by the Admiralty to the subject of submarine boats, they considered that even if the practical difficulties attending their use could be overcome, they would seem to be weapons for “maritime Powers on the defensive.” It seemed to him that the reply to this weapon must be looked for in other ways than in building submarine boats ourselves, for it was clear that one submarine boat could not fight another. It would seem from this that the Admiralty had no very high opinion of the submarine as an offensive weapon. However this may be, an order was placed in the autumn of 1900 with Messrs. Vickers Sons and Maxim for five of the newest “Holland” boats, they being the agents in Europe for the Holland Torpedo-boat Company of New York, and this being the only type available. Not till the statement of the First Lord was published on March 1, 1901, was the fact of the ordering of these boats made public; the secret had indeed been well kept.

He would be a bold man who would prophesy how the question of submarine navigation will stand fifty years hence. Some declare that the under-water vessel will go the way of the dynamite gun, the circular battleship, the aerial torpedo and other inventions; others affirm that the warfare of the future will take place neither on land nor on the seas, but in the air and beneath the waves. We shall see what we shall see. At present we would prefer to go no further than the cautious statement of the First Lord. “What the future value of these boats may be in naval warfare can only be a matter of conjecture. The experiments with these boats will assist the Admiralty in assessing their true value. The question of their employment must be studied, and all developments in their mechanism carefully watched by this country.”

CHAPTER II
THE PLACE OF THE SUBMARINE IN WARFARE

“Drake would have understood Trafalgar. Neither Drake nor Nelson could understand a modern naval action.”

“Competent authorities hold that the submersible torpedo-boat is the vessel of the future rather than either the existing type, or the ‘Destroyer’” (Excubitor in the Fortnightly Review for August, 1901).

“It is not only the unstable opinions of experts, liable to sudden change, which makes the forecast of future naval war difficult; it is that the progress of invention may be, for all we know, undermining the whole position by disturbing the balance which creates existing warship design” (the late Vice-Admiral P. H. Colomb).

“Conservatism has thus far delayed the adoption of a most valuable offensive and defensive weapon, not because success was ever proved to be unattainable, but because some vessels built by inexperienced inventors happened to be failures” (Mr. J. P. Holland).

“In the dawn of the twentieth century there has entered into the history of the world’s navies a class of vessel which is probably destined to revolutionise, eventually, the whole system of maritime construction. The problem of submarine navigation, in a limited sense at least, has been solved” (Lieutenant G. E. Armstrong).

“Most torpedo destruction has been done with a bag of explosive tied to the end of a pole, and the submarine boat will permit you to get closer to the enemy with a bigger bag of explosive and with less damage to the pole. You have all the advantages of attack with almost absolute safety to the torpedo-boat itself.”

THE FIRST SUBMARINE TO FLY THE WHITE ENSIGN.
(By permission of the Admiralty and Messrs. Vickers, Sons, and Maxim.)

At the present time opinion is divided as to the part that the submarine boat is likely to play in the naval warfare of the future. Those who have expressed themselves on the subject may be roughly divided into three classes.

1. Those who have little or no faith in submarines.

2. Those who believe that submarines will revolutionise warfare, ocean locomotion, marine industries, &c., and that an epoch may come in which merchantmen will alone sail the ocean and all the warships will be submarines or submersibles.

3. Those who recognise that the submarine boat of to-day is a great improvement on the boats of twenty years ago; who believe that although at present it suffers from grave defects, its development will continue, and who are of opinion that it will find useful spheres of action in time of war.

Much of the adverse criticism which the “submarine boat” has had to encounter has been due to the popular belief that this type of craft was intended to do its work below the surface of the water. As it is impossible at present to see beneath the waves, many critics have declared the submarine to be a perfectly useless fighting vessel. It cannot be too often asserted, for the sake of overcoming prejudice, that the proper place of the submarine is at the surface, and that she only goes below for short intervals. This is now universally recognised by constructors of such craft, which it might be more correct to term “submersibles” or “diving torpedo-boats.” So far back as 1886 Mr. Nordenfelt remarked, “It is impossible to think of a submarine boat that actually manœuvres and does its work under water. I gave that up from the very commencement.”

By the term “submarine” we mean to imply a vessel capable of manœuvring on the surface like an ordinary torpedo boat, of running awash with her conning tower alone above water to enable her to be steered, and of totally immersing herself for short periods either to escape detection, avoid the fire of the enemy, or fire torpedoes.

The history of the submarine bears a curious resemblance to that of the torpedo and the torpedo vessel in many particulars. All three have been declared to be the weapons of the weaker power and of no possible value to a nation which must maintain the command of the seas. The first Whitehead torpedoes were certainly slow and erratic; now they are capable of running within a few inches of the required depth at a speed of over 37 miles an hour for a range up to 2,000 yards, and hitting the point aimed at with almost the same precision as a gun.

In spite of the sneers of fossilised officials, Great Britain adopted the torpedo-boat, and in the process of time evolved the destroyer, an offensive weapon of no mean value, and a type of craft which some have declared to be the fighting vessel of the future. She will soon be in the possession of nine under-water vessels, and it may be that the submarines of twenty years hence will bear the same resemblance to those of to-day, as the Albatross does to the Lightning of 1877.

The very first submarine to figure in actual warfare was the boat invented by David Bushnell. His attempt to blow up the British frigate Eagle failed, mainly owing to the incapacity of the operator, Sergeant Ezra Lee. Fulton, although he blew up several old hulks in time of peace, was afforded no opportunity of testing the capabilities of his vessel in actual warfare.

U.S. SUBMARINE “SHARK” ON THE STOCKS.

During the American Civil War there occurred the famous incident of the destruction of the Housatonic by the Confederate diving torpedo-boat David—the only occasion on which a submarine boat has succeeded in inflicting injury on a hostile vessel in a naval action. Though many lives were lost in the David, this would not have occurred had the most ordinary precautions been taken.

On February 5, 1886, Mr. Nordenfelt read a paper before the Royal United Service Institution on his Submarine Boats; in the discussion that followed many eminent naval authorities took part, and the following are extracts taken from their speeches on this occasion:—

“My opinion is that all torpedo-boats should be submarine boats” (Admiral Arthur).

“With the cupola above water the submarine boat would prove a very formidable means of attack” (Admiral Sir Astley Cooper Key).

“Mr. Nordenfelt has done much towards solving a problem which is likely to be of great importance in future naval operations” (Vice-Admiral H.R.H. Duke of Edinburgh).

“I think Mr. Nordenfelt is to be congratulated on having made an enormous step forward, and one which I am sure has a great future before it” (Admiral Selwyn).

“If you want to economically defend a port it is better to have a boat that does not show at all. The moral effect of this boat would be enormous, and I am perfectly certain that foreign war vessels would not lay off a port to intercept outward- and homeward-bound vessels if they knew that there was a submarine vessel inside that could come out without being seen” (Major-General Hardinge Stewart).

“As far as practicability for warfare is concerned this submarine boat (the Nordenfelt) is pretty well accepted by the profession.... Therefore as a craft not altogether wholly submerged, but just a boat awash for coast defence, and also for the attack of ships at sea, and especially in heavy weather, when the fast torpedo boats cannot act, I believe the vessel will be found of great practical and reliable service” (Major-General Sir Andrew Clarke).

The Nordenfelt boats, as will be seen in Chapter XV, failed to come up to the high expectations that had been formed of them, and the British Admiralty considered themselves relieved from the necessity of taking up the subject of submarine navigation.

In 1888 France added the first submarine (the Gymnote) to her navy, and proceeded to lay down a certain number of under-water craft yearly. In 1900 the United States Government bought the Holland, and in many quarters the opinion was held that the Admiralty should carefully investigate the whole question of submarine warfare.

The official mind thought otherwise, and expressed itself thus: “We know all about submarines: they are the weapons of the weaker power; they are very poor fighting machines, and can be of no possible use to the Mistress of the Seas. We are very grateful to the Governments of France and the United States for expending so much money in experimenting with these craft, and in allowing us to buy experience for nothing; if ever they produce a vessel which we consider satisfactory we shall begin to build, but not till then.” The official mind was inclined to apply to submarine warfare, the words used by Earl St. Vincent in reference to Fulton’s torpedo warfare—“A mode of war which we who command the seas do not want, and which, if successful, would deprive us of it.”

This council of sitting still and watching others experiment did not commend itself to many thinking people who saw that the French and the Americans were every year improving their vessels and converting them little by little from expensive toys into fighting machines with which we should have to reckon sooner or later. Even the Engineer, never enthusiastic about submarine boats, went so far as to remark that “the day for pooh-poohing them is past.”

The anti-submarine party replied that the French and Americans were suffering from hallucinations; that the submarine boat was of no value except for purposes of defence, as its range of action was very limited. The advent of the Holland and the Narval, each capable of making long journeys, proved the fallacy of this view.

Shifting their ground they said that the submarine would be of no use as a weapon of offence, because it was blind; that it would never be able to fire a torpedo at a moving vessel whilst itself in motion; that its speed was so small that big ships could always avoid it; that it would be unable to remain under water for long, as the effect of “potted air” on the crew would be disastrous; and that its lack of longitudinal stability was a fatal drawback to its employment in action.

The behaviour of the Gustave Zédé, the Narval, and the Holland in manœuvres, during the course of which they have all fired fish torpedoes whilst moving, which have hit targets, again showed that such arguments could not hold water.

Now whilst it is one thing to say that the submarine boat is a useless weapon to-day, it is quite another to prophecy that it will never be of any value to a navy whose ships are intended to act on the offensive.

The introduction of gunpowder; of steam; of the screw-propeller; of iron-built ships; of high-pressure engines; of rifled ordnance; of explosive shells; of armour plating; of twin-screws; of breech-loading guns; of steel-built ships; of the locomotive torpedo; of electricity on shipboard; of quick-firing and machine guns; of collapsible boats; of wireless telegraphy; of turbine vessels; of devices for coaling ships at sea; of magazine-rifles, &c., &c., have been successively ridiculed by those responsible for the condition of the British Navy.

Officialism is, and always has been, a foe to inventive progress, and the official mind still seems incapable of realising that invention is a plant of slow growth; that improvements or innovations when first mooted do not necessarily represent their final form, and that all the great advances and revolutions in the past in the world of science, invention, and discovery have sprung from small beginnings which have grown gradually and slowly until they forced upon themselves the recognition that was their due.

Faraday, when asked by “practical people” the use of any of his experimental researches, would reply, “What is the use of a baby?” An invention resembles a baby, in that it needs to be carefully watched, tended, and cared for in its initial stages if ever it is to be of any value in the world.

We all remember the gentleman who said that he would eat the first steamboat that crossed the Atlantic; the Quarterly Reviewer who wrote with reference to the proposal to build a line to Woolwich that “he should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off by one of Congreve’s ricochet rockets as trust themselves to the mercy of a high-pressure steam engine travelling at the awful speed of eighteen to twenty miles an hour”; and the wiseacres who pooh-poohed the electric telegraph and telephone, the electric light, the electric car, the pneumatic-tyred bicycle, and many other inventions which have come into general use.

Granting, as we do, that the submarine is at present in a very inefficient stage of its existence, the necessity for experiment in view of the march of science during the past century is obvious. What should we say of a professor who pleaded that his experiments were a waste of time and money, as he could arrive at his end quite as well by simply reading what other professors in foreign countries were doing?

One cannot too often insist on the fact that it is only by actual experiment that useful facts are arrived at, and that in the investigation of new devices more can, as a rule, be learnt from an experiment carefully arranged and personally carried out than from the reading of voluminous reports of the work of others.

LAUNCH OF U.S. SUBMARINE “SHARK.”

Rear-Admiral C. C. P. FitzGerald, in an article in the Empire Review for February, 1901, on “Our Naval Strength,” referring to submarines said:—“It seems a little risky to hold our hand altogether. We are said to be ‘watching,’ and no doubt it will be very convenient if we can allow others to spend their time and money on experiments and then just cut in at the right moment when the submarine boat has established itself as a practicable engine of warfare and build as many as we want with the unrivalled resources which we are so fond of talking about. But it should be remembered that secrets are better kept abroad than they are in England and that a new mechanical industry always takes some time to develop and to train the special workmen essential to its prosecution.”

Mr. Arnold Forster has himself said that an ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory, and it would be well if all officials thought as he does. There is far too little experimental work and practical trial of novel ideas both in the Army and the Navy. If we were never going to use our soldiers or our ships in actual warfare it would be both economical and prudent to wait until other nations had perfected inventions before adopting them ourselves. In this case we should never make any progress at all, for the reason that no improvement is final, and that the fleet of to-day is a totally different thing from the fleet of fifty years ago.

Si vis pacem para bellum. The essence of maritime war is, it has been well said, its suddenness, and a day gained in striking the first blow may make the difference between the fall of an empire and the annihilation of the enemy. To wait to consider to what use we can put submarine vessels and to postpone the question of discovering the most effective method of destroying the boats of the enemy until war breaks out is a suicidal policy, which, however, seemed for many years to appeal to a “Government of Amateurs.”

Had there been more experimental work before the outbreak of the Boer War our army would have probably finished its task sooner and with less loss of life. Questions such as the employment of heavy field ordnance, of telescopic sights, of shields for guns and rifles, of motors, of electricity, &c., will have to be considered when the war is over, but they should have received attention before hostilities commenced. If every nation would agree to maintain the status quo and to make no effort to keep its navy and its army abreast of the advances of modern scientific progress and invention, then the policy of our Admiralty and War Office would be excellently suited to our needs. As it is, however, Germany, France, the United States, Russia, and Japan are much more ready to improve their services than is Great Britain, whose officials, for the sake of peace and quiet, snub the inventor and smother their consciences by repeating that all is well in our army and navy. Only when great pressure is brought to bear on them will they stir themselves. Admiral Sir E. Fremantle recently suggested that there ought to be a committee on inventions always sitting, and Mr. Laird Clowes has appealed for readier official interest in certain recent inventions.

The experiments with the British submarines must be carefully watched in order that we may arrive at a well-reasoned opinion concerning their future. It may be that it will be decided that for our purposes a means of destroying the submarines of the enemy will be of more value than the boats themselves. On the other hand, the conclusion may be reached that for certain purposes this type of craft will be a useful adjunct to our fleet. Whatever the decision may be it is quite certain that the submarine boat will continue to receive improvements at the hands of inventors, and that as practical applications have been found for the Röntgen Rays and wireless telegraphy, so uses will be found for the submarine of the future which may be as great an improvement on the submarine of to-day as the Deutschland is over the Savannah, the first steam-packet that ever crossed the Atlantic.

Those who discuss submarine navigation as if it were quite a new development are apt to forget that the earliest use of the torpedo was in an under-water vessel. Bushnell and Fulton, no less than the Confederates of a later day, saw that their best chance of success lay in attacking by stealth, and though the modern Whitehead is a very different weapon to the cases of explosive used by Bushnell and Fulton, or the spar-torpedo employed by the Confederates in their Davids, there are still the same advantages to be gained by a submarine attack.

Whilst the torpedoists of the extreme school claim that torpedo vessels can attack with a very good chance of success in daylight, the more general opinion is that they will he utilised chiefly under cover of darkness, and that the destroyer and the smaller torpedo-boat would stand no chance in broad daylight against the tremendous artillery fire to which they would be subjected by the battleships singled out for attack. Even at night, however, the flare from her funnels might betray the destroyer.

A writer in the United Service Gazette a few years ago remarked that the development of quick-firing guns brought about by the increase in the offensive and defensive power of swift torpedo-boats threatened ere long to completely abolish the use of surface torpedo-boats in marine warfare unless the latter could be rendered proof against those terribly destructive weapons, the new rapid-firing guns of large calibre. To secure this invulnerability by the aid of armour would destroy the speed and hardiness of the torpedo-boats, and it had long been the opinion amongst naval officers, more especially on the Continent and in America, that if the torpedo is to be used for successful attack it would have to be discharged from a vessel which was rendered invulnerable by being totally submerged—that is to say, from a submarine torpedo-boat.

The submarine boat of the future will be a diving torpedo-boat capable of manœuvring (1) on the surface, (2) awash with conning tower only above the water, and (3) beneath the waves.

It will have two methods of propulsion, one for the surface, one for beneath the water, and its mode of operation will be to steam on the surface until it is within sighting range; to then take in enough water ballast to bring it to the “awash” condition, thus greatly reducing the chances of being hit; and, having approached within a certain distance of the enemy, to sink entirely beneath the waves, rising once probably for a second to take final bearings before firing its torpedo.

The nine vessels ordered for our navy are really diving torpedo-boats and are not intended for use under water except for very short intervals of time. The submarine of to-day bears a close resemblance to the torpedo-boat in the early stages of its development and appears to be of more value to a country that is desirous of defending its coasts than to one which must maintain the command of the seas.

There are signs, however, that in the process of its evolution the submarine will go through many of the same stages as did the torpedo vessel, and will develop into an offensive weapon which England will be unable any longer to despise.

That a Holland, a Narval, or a Gustave Zédé is as formidable an adversary as an Albatross or an Express few would claim, but the last word has not yet been said on submarine navigation, and the future may be expected to bring about many changes.

For purposes of coast defence the submarine may be said to have fairly established its value. The knowledge that such craft were “in being” would have a deterrent influence upon an admiral attacking a fort or contemplating a blockade, and in all probability the days of close blockade are over.

As a weapon of offence the utility of the submarine boat is not so clearly established. It is true that some of the French boats have operated at a considerable distance from their base, but its speed, its seaworthiness, and range of action must be improved before the submarine can be regarded as a useful adjunct to a fleet acting on the offensive. The radius of action at the surface of the newest Hollands is only 400 knots at 8 knots per hour, and submerged the speed is 7 knots for a four hours’ run.

THE “FULTON” RUNNING ON THE SURFACE.

Still even now there are uses to which a submarine boat might be put, such, for instance, as the attack of ships shut up in a blockaded harbour, or of vessels in port; the destruction of a mine field so that ships may enter in safety; the cutting and repairing of cables; the forcing an entrance through a boom, &c.

The late Captain Cairnes, in his book “The Coming Waterloo,” enunciated the theory that even if the British fleet destroyed the French fleet it would still be necessary for us to land an army on French soil in order to bring hostilities to a conclusion. In that case submarine boats would probably be employed, for some of the purposes above enumerated.

It has been suggested that small diving torpedo-boats might be carried on battleships, and it is said that the United States have been experimenting with vessels of this kind. The difficulties of hoisting such vessels in and out of a big ship are, however, considerable, and few naval officers favour this idea. Perhaps a special “submarine depot ship” somewhat similar to the Vulcan might be useful for conveying submarines to foreign waters.

In the opinion of many naval experts most of the naval actions of the future will be virtually decided quite outside the reach of any torpedo yet designed, and at ranges almost beyond the ken of unaided human vision, owing to the fact that with the breech-loading gun of to-day accurate practice can be made at very long range. The battle of Manila was fought and decided at a distance varying from 5,600 to 2,000 yards, and the battle of Santiago from 5,000 to 1,600. A naval battle of the future, according to a distinguished German admiral, if both adversaries are determined and energetic, will resemble a conflict between two stags, which in a moment of fury rush upon one another, entangling their antlers, and, in the end of ends, destroying one another. Or if the enemies are less determined, a naval battle will resemble a contest of athletes, the combatants moving backwards and forwards in serpentine lines; both will keep up fire from a great distance until neither has enough ammunition left to strike a decisive blow.

In the opinion of the late M. Jean de Bloch the warfare of the future will resemble the latter picture, but it will be remembered that this writer in his book, “Is War now Impossible?” laid it down that the bayonet would never be used, as troops would be unable to cross the terrible bullet-swept zone and thus come into personal contact with the enemy. The Boer War has proved on the contrary that the bayonet is still a valuable weapon, and that the bravery of the soldier, combined with artillery fire, will enable him to use it with good effect in spite of the modern rifle.

What the bayonet is in military, that the submarine is in naval warfare. The increasing range of rifle and cannon enable both combatants, if well entrenched, to blaze away at one another and do very little damage, and the necessity therefore arises, if a definite conclusion is to be reached, for some sharp and sudden blow to be delivered at close quarters that shall cause the enemy to evacuate his position and beat a hasty retreat. A bayonet charge is a desperate affair no doubt, but owing to the modern art of entrenchment, recourse must be had to it if the enemy is to be shifted.

In much the same way a submarine attack will be ordered when firing at long ranges has had no effect. There will be great risks, but the chances of a successful attack will be sufficient to warrant its being tried.

In conclusion the following extract from a recent article in the Engineer—a journal which has always regarded the submarine with suspicion—may be quoted: “We must not shut our eyes to the fact that the semi-submarine boat may be a very dangerous foe. Years have passed since we pointed this out. It seems to be admitted that a fast torpedo-boat can get within say a mile of an enemy without certainty of destruction. Indeed, up to that she is fairly safe. If now, that point reached, she descends say five feet below the surface, leaving a conning tower just level with the water, she can be steered, and the chances that she will be sunk by her enemies are very small. The five feet of water above her would deflect all projectiles from machine guns. She would have to get very close up to be hit hard even by heavier metal, and the little conning tower at the water level would be a very difficult matter to strike. A fast vessel operating thus a fleur d’eau would be no despicable enemy. And it is in this direction we think that submarine attacks will be developed with the best chance of success.”

CHAPTER III
THE MORALITY OF SUBMARINE WARFARE

“War’s a brain-spattering, wind-pipe slitting art. It is not to be ‘humanised,’ but only abolished one fine day when nations have cut their wisdom teeth.”

“Inter arma silent leges.”

“All’s fair in love and war.”

“The sea fights of the future, with improved ships, guns, and range-finders, may be fought at ranges almost beyond the ken of unaided human vision. It is to be hoped that before that time arrives the progress of civilisation, intellect, and humanity will have consigned all weapons of war to the museum of the antiquary, and that other methods than war may have been discovered for preserving the peace and virility of men and nations.”

In the early years of the nineteenth century the writer of an article in the Naval Chronicle, devoted to a consideration of Fulton’s schemes, stigmatised his torpedoes and submarine boats as “revolting to every noble principle,” their projector as a “crafty murderous ruffian,” and his patrons as “openly stooping from their lofty stations to superintend the construction of such detestable machines, that promised destruction to maritime establishments.” He went on to protest against the policy of encouraging inventions that tended to innovate on the triumphant system of naval warfare in which England excelled, and he concluded thus:

“Guy Fawkes is got afloat, battles in future may be fought under water; our invincible ships of the line may give place to horrible and unknown structures, our projects to catamarans, our pilots to divers, our hardy, dauntless tars to submarine assassins; coffers, rockets, catamarans, infernals, water-worms, and fire-devils! How honourable! how fascinating is such an enumeration! How glorious, how fortunate for Britain are discoveries like these! How worthy of being adopted by a people made wanton by naval victories, by a nation whose empire are the seas!”

It is quite evident that even in this “so-called Twentieth Century” there exist many Britons who in their heart of heart agree with this writer, and who cherish the idea, though they may not openly express it, that there is something mean and underhanded, something dishonourable and “un-English” in all methods of under-water warfare. The Englishman prides himself on being a lover of fair play, and so long as the odds are more or less equal, he is ready to enjoy any contest or sport. The average Englishman is neither a hot-headed Jingoist, nor a peace-at-any-price humanitarian; he regards wars as unfortunate necessities of modern civilisation, and he likes to see them waged fairly and squarely, each side observing the rules of the game. As regards warfare on land, it must be confessed that he has had to correct some of his ideas since the Boer war. He would have preferred the enemy to come out into the open and fight like men. Instead of this, they took every precaution to avoid being seen, and our army found that it had to face an invisible foe. From the Boers we have learnt the lesson of the value of cover and entrenchments, and now officers and men, however much they may dislike it, are forced to seek and utilise cover whenever possible, making it their aim to hit their opponents and to avoid being hit themselves.

“Let us admit it fairly as a business people should,

We have had no end of a lesson, it will do us no end of good.”

In naval warfare we have had no opportunity of learning our lesson in the light of actual experience, for we have had no big battle on the seas since Trafalgar, and our naval supremacy has not been seriously threatened since 1805; it is thus possible for men to hold different opinions as to the value of submarine fighting, and we consequently find that there are numerous people who, whilst they would not go so far as to declare mines, torpedoes, and submarine boats unlawful, yet consider them as methods better fitted to the requirements of other nations than to those of the Mistress of the Seas.

Modern submarine warfare was introduced by two Americans, David Bushnell and Robert Fulton, and forced itself into prominence during the American War of Independence. The spar-torpedo originated in America; the Whitehead torpedo was first adopted by the Austrian Government, and Norway, Sweden, Denmark, France, and Austria all began to build torpedo boats before Great Britain condescended to add them to her Navy.

As to submarine vessels Greece and Turkey purchased Nordenfelt boats in 1887. France built her first boat in 1888, and the United States purchased her first submarine, the Holland, in 1900. Great Britain, then, has followed instead of leading other nations in the matter of mines, torpedoes, and submarine boats, and has only been induced to adopt such methods of warfare because other nations forced her to do so.

Before the advent of the torpedo boat, Great Britain was secure in her position of Mistress of the Seas, so long as she possessed more line-of-battle ships than any other nation. The arrival of the torpedo-boat, the destroyer, and the submarine, all armed with the Whitehead torpedo, has given weaker nations the chance of attacking our ironclads with new weapons, and there are even those who affirm that the battleship is doomed, and must give way to a different type of craft.

The whole trend of modern invention has been to the advantage of weaker nations. Earl St. Vincent described under-water methods as “a mode of war which they, who commanded the seas, did not want, and which, if successful, would deprive them of it.” It is quite true that Great Britain would sooner trust to her guns and her line-of-battle ships than to her torpedoes and torpedo craft in actions on the high seas, but owing to other nations—admittedly weaker—having adopted the torpedo, she has no choice but to adopt it also in order to maintain her naval supremacy. So long as she provides herself not only with methods of submarine attack, but also with means of warding off the under-water attacks of the enemy, other nations are not likely to wrest the command of the seas from her.

It is idle to lament the advancement of Science. Man is an inventive animal, and is ever trying to inaugurate new devices and improve on old ones. For hundreds of years the sailing ship held the field, and guns and cannon underwent but little change. During the “Wonderful Century,” however, changes began in earnest. The wooden sailing ship disappeared, and the steam-driven ironclad took its place, whilst rifled ordnance, high explosive shells, and powerful propellants were introduced.

The fish torpedo made its appearance, and the swift torpedo vessel followed in its wake, and we are now threatened with submarine boats, turbine-driven men-of-war, and aerial machines for the launching of aerial torpedoes both on armies and on fleets.

What the future has in store none can foresee, and until the next great naval battle between first-class Powers comes to pass the value of modern engines of warfare will remain doubtful. All that is certain at present is that Great Britain cannot afford to dispense with mines, torpedoes, and submarine boats.

We may seem to have wandered a long way from the “morality of submarine warfare,” but our purpose has been to show that when certain people argue—as they do seriously in this year of grace—that torpedo warfare should be declared contrary to the laws and customs of war, they are, to a certain extent, influenced by the fact that the torpedo is a weapon which Great Britain could very well do without, provided it was tabooed by other nations.

No one, not even a member of the Peace Society, would urge the suppression of the Lee-Enfield, or the quick-firer, because Great Britain relies on these for the maintenance of her place in the front rank of the nations of the world, and the argument as to the “illegitimacy” of the torpedo depends largely on the fact that other nations gain and Great Britain loses by its adoption.

There have been persons who have argued in favour of giving no quarter to crews of torpedo boats and submarines that might fall into our hands, and have suggested that we could explain such action to the other Powers, to whose advantage it is to use such weapons, by saying that though we had been driven to employ such methods, we were forced to treat the practice with severity. Such a course of action would cut both ways, and we suspect our own torpedoists would be very much averse to it.

Strange engines of warfare and new modes of fighting are received by the bulk of a nation, whose instincts are conservative and whose minds are incapable of imagining a state of things other than that which prevails at the moment, in much the same way as are new inventions. They are first of all scouted as impossible; then, if possible, of no utility; and finally, when they have been universally adopted, they are declared to be no novelties at all. Just as many old ladies have been heard to declare that they will never travel by the Two-penny Tube, so nations have been known to disclaim all intention of using particular weapons. Yet after a time we find the old ladies in the Tube and the nations employing the weapons. Familiarity breeds contempt.

The earliest man—Homo sapiens—fought with his fists, his legs, and his teeth. Gradually he made for himself weapons, deriving his first instruction in their manufacture by observing the ways in which the animal creation fought one another. His earliest weapons were made of wood, bone, and stone, and in due course there was evolved the spear, the waddy, the boomerang, the hatchet, the tomahawk, the bow and arrow, the pike, the lance, the axe, the sword, and other implements.

It is exceedingly probable that the adoption of a new engine of warfare by a tribe would be condemned by another tribe—to whom it had not occurred to use it—as illegitimate, but it is equally probable that while sturdily protesting against the use of one weapon the tribe would be slily endeavouring to procure one more deadly still.

The first great revolution in the art of war was the introduction of gunpowder, both as a propelling agent and also as a charge for shells and bombs. Although the explosive nature of saltpetre when mixed with carbon and charcoal was doubtless known to the Chinese some centuries before the Christian era, our first knowledge of the use of gunpowder as a military agent dates from the seventh century, when it was used by the Byzantine emperors under the name of “Greek fire” in the defence of Constantinople against the Saracens.

“Greek fire,” the invention of which is commonly attributed to Callinichus in 668 A.D., consisted probably of pounded resin or bitumen, sulphur, naphtha, and nitre. There were three ways of employing it: it was poured out burning from ladles on besiegers, it was projected out of tubes to a distance, and it was shot from balistæ burning on tow, tied to arrows. Its effect was probably rather moral than material.

Geoffrey de Vinesauf, in an account of a naval battle in the time of Richard I., writes thus of Greek fire: “The fire, with a deadly stench and livid flames, consumes flint and iron; and unquenchable by water, can only be extinguished by sand or vinegar. What more direful than a naval conflict! What more fatal, when so various a fate envolves the combatants, for they are either burnt and writhe in the flames, shipwrecked and swallowed up by the waves, or wounded and perish by arms.”

Despite the lamentations of the humanitarians of the time, Greek fire and serpents (missiles resembling rockets charged with and impelled by the slow explosion of a certain mixture) continued to be used in the navy until the reign of Richard III.

Another favourite method of early naval warfare was the “fire-ship.” Falkiner, an old writer, tells us that fire-ships were used by the Rhodians in 190 B.C. They were certainly used by the Greeks; they were employed by ourselves against the Armada, and they first appeared in our Navy List in the year 1675; they were used in the Dutch and French wars at the close of that century, but probably fell into disuse in the eighteenth. It is quite clear that with the French, as well as with ourselves, the crews of fire-ships did not expect quarter. Admiral Gambier deprecated fire-ships as being a “horrible and anti-Christian mode of warfare,” while Lord Cochrane said that if any attempts were made upon the British squadron by fire-ships they would be “boarded by the numerous row-boats on guard, the crews murdered, and the fire-ships turned in a harmless direction.”

Lord Dunsany appeared to think that this apparently cruel rule of no quarter to the crews of fire-ships worked well for humanity in practice, and he seemed to be in favour of its being extended to the crews of torpedo-boats and submarines. His Lordship pointed out, in a lecture at the Royal United Service Institution, that the crews of fire-ships would not stick to their ships to the moment of explosion, but had after firing the fuse to make their escape in boats, which boats, as they passed through the enemy’s lines, would naturally become targets, and if meanwhile some ship clasped in the deadly embrace of the fire-ship had exploded, it was all the more likely that the fugitives would be the objects of unsparing vengeance.

“Probably then the vague but fatal epithet ‘un-English’ came to attach to men who used a deadly weapon, but withdrew themselves (sometimes too quickly) from the fray. I cannot produce evidence of the facts, but I believe that officers serving in fire-ships did not stand high with their brother officers. It is some confirmation of this creed that we do not find the Boscawens, Rodneys, Howes, Jervises, Nelsons serving in fire-ships.”

The first use of gunpowder as a propelling agent was in Spain in the twelfth century, at which period both the Moors and the Christians used artillery. It was first employed in warfare in England in 1327 by Edward III. in his war against the Scotch, the cannon from which the shot was fired being termed “Crakys of war.”

There is abundant evidence that the use of artillery in battle was at first thought to be improper. When cannon was employed at Chiaggia in the fourteenth century all Italy made complaint against this manifest contravention of fair warfare; the ruling classes, seeing their armour, lances, and knightly prowess rendered useless, vigorously opposed the newly-invented arms, declaring that they were calculated to extinguish personal bravery. Perhaps this sentiment may have had some weight with our navy, for it was not until towards the close of the sixteenth century that artillery finally assumed the position of the dominant arm in the service and that musketry fire altogether displaced the arrow and the bolt.

Shells appear to have been first used by the Sultan of Gujarat in 1480, and they were in general use about the middle of the seventeenth century.

There is no doubt whatever that shells and bombs were considered highly immoral by the side which did not employ them. To those accustomed only to fire solid shot there must have been something very terrifying in the hurling of shells fitted with explosives which when they burst slew those round about and set fire to dwellings and ships.

When the Bomb Ketch, a ship firing bombs and shells, was introduced into our navy in the seventeenth century, the French were particularly angered by the “inhumanity” of the English in firing “inflammable fire balls and shells.” Again in the eighteenth century we find the Marechal de Conflans issuing an order against the use of hollow shot or incendiary shell because they “were not generally used by polite nations, and the French ought to fight according to the laws of honour.”

At the battle of the Nile in 1798 the French flagship L’Orient took fire and blew up, and when the French sailors reproached the English for using incendiary missiles the latter repudiated the charge, and mentioned that they had found such unlawful weapons in one of the prizes they had taken; thus the hollowness of the French regard for humane warfare was neatly demonstrated.

Whilst Great Britain did not scruple to fire lyddite shells at the Boers, their wives, and their children at Paardeberg, she prided herself on her abstention from the use of explosive or expanding bullets, and much abuse was heaped on the Boers for their employment of such. It may, however, be doubted whether a bullet which kills you right off at once, or at any rate which disables you permanently for a long time, is not preferable to one which is of so mild a nature that you can be shot over and over again, alternating your appearances on the battlefield with visits to the hospital.

A lecture on “Explosive Bullets and their Application to Military Purposes” was delivered before the Royal United Service Institution in 1868 by Major G. V. Fosbery, the first officer to use these projectiles in the field, systematically and to any large extent, against some of the mountain tribes of the North-West frontier of India. The lecturer tells us that the natives considered them unfair on two grounds—firstly, because they exploded in an objectionable way; secondly, because there was nothing they could collect of them afterwards, as in the case of ordinary bullets. But more civilised people complained of the use of “rifle shell” on the ground of their Satanic nature, and to these Major Fosbery replies as follows:

“The arguments which condemn a warlike instrument simply on the grounds of its destructiveness to life, provided that it neither adds keen agony to wounds nor new terrors to death itself, are, if logically pursued, simply retrogressive, and even if not recommending by implication a return to the bow and arrow, at all events point to the old times of protracted wars and deaths from fatigue and disease far exceeding in number those caused by the weapons of an enemy. We can therefore afford to set these on one side, or rather we are bound to neglect them altogether and seriously consider any invention which under the conditions above laid down promises us a more certainly destructive fire than that attainable cæteris paribus by the arms at present included in our war material.”

In spite of opinions such as these the humanitarians have won the day, and explosive bullets are now tabooed by Great Britain. The great Duke of Wellington used to say that he should not like to see the bullet reduced in size, because it broke the bone, and the object of war was either to kill your man or else put him in hospital and keep him there. With the Mauser and the Lee-Enfield neither of these results is attained.

The prototypes of the modern submarine torpedo, although they were employed on the surface of the water and not below, were the “machine,” the “infernal,” the “catamaran,” the “powder-vessel,” &c.

“Machines” may be best described as fire-ships specially arranged so as to explode very destructively when alongside one of the enemy’s vessels. They are first found in the British Navy in the seventeenth century, but were soon discontinued, not we are afraid on humanitarian grounds, but because Bushnell and Fulton pointed the way to the more convenient explosive device known as the “torpedo.”

In the year 1650 Prince Rupert made an attempt to blow up the English Vice-admiral in the Leopard by a species of “infernal.” He sent a couple of negroes and one of his seamen in Portuguese dress alongside the Leopard in a shore boat. They carried with them what purported to be a barrel of oil, but the barrel really held an infernal machine to be fired by a pistol attachment, the trigger of which could be pulled by a string passing through the bung. The story goes that one of the crew of the boat, finding the lower deck ports closed, “uttered an exclamation” in English. This betrayed them, but Blake refused to take vengeance on them, though the trick was one he would himself have scorned to play on his adversary.

During the war between Great Britain and the United States in 1812 H.M.S. Ramilies of seventy-four tons, was so unfortunate as to be the object of attack both by a diving vessel carrying torpedoes and by a powder-ship. The Ramilies was lying off New London at anchor and maintaining the blockade. As she was known to be short of provisions the Americans fitted out a schooner and filled the hold with powder, covering it over in the hatchways with barrels of flour. By means of an ingenious piece of clockwork attached to a gunlock and a train leading to the powder its explosion was ensured at the intended time. The Ramilies suspecting nothing, but thanking Heaven for the gift, captured the vessel and the crew escaped to land. By some extraordinary chance (or was it destiny?) the schooner was ordered to anchor near another prize some distance from the Ramilies, so that when the clockwork reached the fatal hour, 2.30, the charge exploded and blew up, not the Ramilies with her captain, Sir Thomas Hardy, and crew of six hundred men, but only the prize crew who were in the schooner.

The naval historian James could not trust himself to comment upon “this most atrocious proceeding,” whilst a naval officer wrote: “A quantity of arsenic in the flour would have been so perfectly compatible with the rest of the contrivance that we wonder it was not resorted to. Should actions like this receive the sanction of Governments, the science of war and the laws of nations will degenerate into the barbarity of the Algerians, and pillage will take the place of kindness and humanity to our enemies.”

During the American Civil War a species of weapon known as a “coal torpedo” was employed. This consisted of a hollow lump of iron, fitted with a charge of dynamite. It was rubbed over with coal tar and dust, and exactly resembled a large lump of coal. Lord Dunsany thought that this certainly seemed to be on the verge of lawful, if not beyond it.

At the close of the eighteenth century David Bushnell inaugurated the era of submarine warfare by devising cases fitted with explosives, arranged to go off at a set time by clockwork. To enable these cases to be affixed to the sides of vessels, Bushnell invented the first boat capable of diving beneath the waves of which we have any definite details. His attempts to blow up the Eagle in 1776 by a case fastened on her bottom, and the Cerberus in 1777 by means of a towing torpedo, failed, owing more to the lack of skill on the part of the operator, Sergt. Ezra Lee, than to any defect in the apparatus employed. Nor was Bushnell successful in his effort to destroy vessels in the Delaware by the aid of a number of kegs filled with powder and set adrift.

The introduction of gunpowder, of Greek fire, of fire-ships, of artillery, of shells, of bombs, of machines, of infernals, of catamarans, of powder vessels having, as has been shown, been at one time or another denounced as immoral by certain “humanitarians,” it was but natural that a secret contrivance for bringing about a terrific explosion beneath an unsuspecting ship’s crew should have been believed to be an invention of the Evil One, and history affords proof that the novel modes of fighting introduced by Bushnell and Fulton were regarded with great disfavour by naval men, who considered the innovators as men “who would discredit the glorious traditions of our navy, and substitute a set of catamarans for the noble frigates that had carried our flag to victory and were the pride of the nation”; by humanitarians, who regarded the torpedoes as a “dishonest and cowardly system of warfare”; and by the public generally, who denounced the nations who attempted to compass the destruction of British ships of the line by dastardly tricks which England would never stoop to employ.

In a work written by James Kelly, and published in 1818, the author comments with great severity on “some infamous and insidious attempts to destroy British men-of-war upon the coasts of America by torpedoes and other explosive machinery.” This refers to the attacks on H.M.S. Ramilies by one of Fulton’s boats, attacks which failed, but which caused Sir Thomas Hardy to notify the American Government that he had ordered on board from fifty to one hundred American prisoners of war, “who, in the event of the effort to destroy the ship by torpedoes or other infernal inventions being successful, would share the fate of himself and his crew.” So frightened were the relations and friends of prisoners of war by these threats that public meetings were held, and petitions were presented to the American executive against the further employment of torpedoes in the ordinary course of warfare.

Those who endeavoured to perfect a system of submarine mining for the defence of harbours and coasts were abused in the same way that Bushnell and Fulton had been. Samuel Colt, the inventor of the pistol which bore his name, and one of the first to experiment with mines fired from shore by means of an electric current, was roundly denounced by John Quincy Adams, who dubbed him “that Guy Fawkes afloat.”

At the time of the Crimean War the popular term “infernal machine” was applied to the submarine mines laid down by the Russians to defend the approaches to Cronstadt. In the seventies Lieut.-Col. Martin endeavoured to establish, on the grounds of humanity, an international anti-torpedo association, while even to-day there are people found to protest against the employment of certain forms of torpedoes, as witness the following letter recently published in the Engineer. The author, Mr. Reginald Bolton, declared that while no one could object to the defensive lay torpedo or the spar torpedo, the same could not be said of the “Whitehead,” “Brennan,” or “Edison.”

“Surely,” he urges, “our forefathers’ code of morality in warfare should not be in advance of our own. All civilised nations have debarred the brutal explosive bullet, and why not the equally mean submarine torpedo? If such a remedy as Commodore Hardy’s were to be applied by any nation, could its opponent complain, and is there anything in the practice of morality to prevent, say, a thousand prisoners’ lives being presented as a bar to the use of an implement which was acknowledged to be a disgrace to its employers not less than eighty years ago?”

The methods of warfare which have most aroused the ire of humanitarians and “blatant platform orators, with their vulgar party cries of eternal peace,” are those which depend for their success on secrecy or deceit. Powder vessels, coal torpedoes, et hoc genus omne, are condemned because they pretend to be what in reality they are not, and torpedoes and submarine boats because they advance in secrecy without giving the enemy any chance of firing at them or of protecting themselves against their insidious attacks beneath the water-line.

The arguments of the humanitarians, who are doubtless well meaning enough, are inconsistent, because, while they raise no protest against certain modes of conducting war, they unreservedly condemn other methods—mainly, it must be observed, because of their novelty. Such a class of person resembles the Quaker who found himself on a vessel engaged in a conflict with another vessel. He resolutely refused to assist in fighting the guns, but at last, when the enemy attempted to board, he collared the leader and pitched him into the sea, saying as he did so, “Friend, thou hast no business here.”

Major Fosbery, in a lecture on explosive bullets, asked whether any of the deaths due to fighting were, strictly speaking, humane, and if they were not, what was this humanity of which so much was made? “Have we not heard that in the dark ages humanity beat out men’s brains with a mace, whilst cruelty used the lance, the sword, and the arrow, and that bishops of the period rode into action with the mace so as to kill without shedding blood? A very nice distinction indeed, as you will admit. In later times, were not Congreve and Shrapnel denounced as monsters for the initiation of inventions in whose perfection we rejoice to-day?”

Inconsistency indeed is the particular failing of Peace propagandists. They not only condemn the use of certain weapons while raising no protest against others equally as destructive of life, but they also pretend to be horrified at deeds committed by the enemy which they themselves would not scruple to do should opportunity offer. Particularly is this the case in savage warfare. Captain Herbert has mentioned a striking instance during the Zulu War. One day the boys were calling in the streets, “Shocking murder of a whole British regiment” (it was at Isandlewana), and a few weeks afterwards the same boys were shouting, “Great slaughter of the Zulus.” This is akin to the practice of those orators who refer to the “expansion” of England, but to the “encroachment” of Russia.

As to the “inhumanity” of the submarine vessel, Mr. Nordenfelt, it may be noted, would not admit that there was anything especially cruel or horrible in the idea of a diving torpedo boat. War altogether was cruel and horrible, and caused an enormous amount of pain and suffering, but any invention which tended to shorten a war or to protect common or private property during war would really diminish this suffering on the whole. Humanitarians had urged that there was something especially cruel in the secrecy of the submarine boat, but the whole tendency of war had, he pointed out, moved in this direction ever since the days of old, when Hector and Achilles advanced in front of their respective followers and spent half an hour in abusing their adversary’s parents and ancestors before they commenced to fight.

EMERGING TO TAKE BEARINGS.

The whole object of modern warfare is to keep the enemy ignorant of your whereabouts and your actions, and to mislead him whenever possible, and for this reason smokeless powder, torpedoes, disappearing guns, &c., have come into use, false attacks are considered admissible, and every advantage is taken of cover and entrenchments. The only “cover” possible in naval warfare is beneath the waves, and it is difficult to see any greater inhumanity in submarine than in military mining, which certainly dates from very early times. If it is lawful to sap and mine before a fortified town, and to blow up an army as it marches unsuspectingly over “mined” ground, it is surely permissible to send ships sky-high by mines and to sink them by torpedoes.

Mr. A. F. Yarrow has remarked that it seemed strange that an artilleryman behind ten or twenty feet of earthwork, hurling explosive shells at an almost unseen foe, should be held as fighting fairly, while in the case of the torpedoist, who has the pluck to accompany his missile to within a short distance of his enemy, it should be considered an unfair mode of attack.

Yet so it is, and we find in a recent number of the Engineer[^[1]] that submarine warfare is placed on a par with guerilla warfare and train-wrecking. “The torpedoing of a single German ironclad by a submarine would almost certainly be followed by a refusal to recognise submarines as belligerents.”

[1]. Engineer, October 1, 1901.

The question of the laws and usages of civilised warfare has been the subject of many books and articles, and conferences have been called to endeavour to arrive at some understanding on the subject. An International Conference on the “Usages of War,” held at Brussels in 1874 at the instance of Alexander II., considered among other things, “the means of injuring an enemy,” and suggested the prohibition of the use of poison and poisoned weapons, murder by treachery, and murder of a disarmed enemy, projectiles causing unnecessary suffering, and prohibited by the declaration of St. Petersburg in 1818; “ruses de guerre” were, however, declared permissible.

In connection with the Boer War it is interesting to note that differences arose at this Conference between the representatives of the large States possessing great standing armies, and of the minor States with small armies. The former thought that war should be the business of professional trained soldiers, that they, and as a rule they alone, should fight, that war should follow a regular course, and that the worthlessness, from a military point of view, of the sporadic efforts of partisan warfare should be recognised, and that when a battle was won and the seat of Government was in the possession of an invader the inhabitants should respect the conquerors as the de facto and de jure Government. If they interrupted communications and cut off isolated bodies of troops they were to be dealt with not as honourable combatants, but as assassins and marauders.

The “Geneva Convention” met at Geneva on August 8, 1864, and on the 22nd of the same month an International Code was adopted by all civilised powers, except the United States. The code mainly concerned itself with the succour of the wounded in time of war, and certain cruel methods of warfare, such as the use of explosive bullets, were condemned, Great Britain agreeing not to use such weapons in war against civilised nations.

The Peace Conference at the Hague was opened on May 18, 1899. Of the eight proposals submitted for discussion, the second was the prohibition of the use of new arms and explosives, the third the restriction of the use of existing explosives and the prohibition of projectiles and explosives from balloons, and the fourth the prohibition of submarine torpedo boats, and the agreement not to construct boats with rams in the future.

The final act embodying the results of the Conference contained three declarations. 1. Prohibition of the throwing of projectiles and explosives from balloons or any other analogous means. This prohibition to be in force for five years. 2. Prohibition of projectiles intended solely to diffuse asphyxiating or deleterious gases. 3. Prohibition of the use of bullets which expand easily in the human body.

It may be noted that Great Britain did not bind herself to accept any of these three declarations.

“The laws of war,” wrote Montague Bernard, “are nothing at all but the usages according to which warfare by land and sea is carried on, and the collection of the whole body of usages represents what we call the laws of war.... The student of history is apt to be a little puzzled by frequent reference to ‘laws’ with which he is tacitly assumed to be familiar. What are these laws? Where are they written? What authority do they command? They are a body of usages, for the most part conditional, which have arisen principally from motives of convenience and the extension of commerce.”

It is of course recognised that the only force which supports international law is the appeal to the conscience of the nation, for there is no international tribunal to punish countries for deeds committed in time of war. While it is unlikely that the rough game of war ever will be played (it certainly never has been in the past) in exact conformity with the rules of the jurists, there are certain methods of waging war which England would not employ, and certain acts which she would not commit in the event of hostilities breaking out between herself and a civilised country.

She would not use explosive bullets. She would not fire on undefended towns, and would endeavour to avoid the destruction of non-combatants and their property. She would not poison wells, she would not endeavour to accomplish the assassination of a commander-in-chief, she would not abuse a flag of truce, she would not murder prisoners who behaved themselves, and put to death those who surrendered.

On the other hand, she would consider herself at perfect liberty to employ submarine boats, torpedoes, and mines, both military and naval; to discharge shells filled with high explosives, whether lyddite, melinite, or other substance, from aerial machines; to intercept the enemy’s messages and to mislead him by sending false ones; to commence hostilities without issuing a declaration of war;[^[2]] to fire on, and if necessary sink, the merchant ships of the enemy; to starve a garrisoned town; to erect wire entanglements and similar obstructions; to offer wrecking lights as navigation lights; and to employ any “stratagem” or “ruse de guerre” which might serve some useful end. With regard to stratagems, it appears to be quite proper to disguise ships and men, and to use false signals, false colours, and neutral flags, though a British naval officer would probably not fire into his enemy before hauling down his neutral or false colours.

[2]. The Romans considered that no war could be just unless it was preceded by a formal declaration.

Vice-Admiral Rodney M. Lloyd pointed out in a recent letter to the Times that while in naval warfare all stratagems were admitted, expected, and provided against, in military operations, on the contrary, some acts of a similar kind appeared to be objected to. The Boers, for instance, frequently disguised themselves in British khaki uniforms, and endeavoured to delude sentries and guards.

Some writers refer to this as “the abuse of the khaki uniform” and “the treacherous use of the khaki uniform,” but if such things are permitted in naval operations it is difficult to see why they should be considered immoral if practised on land.

Apropos it may be mentioned that during some Russian naval manœuvres the admiral’s ship was destroyed by the following trick. A party of volunteers from other squadrons came alongside the cruiser Africa, the flagship, in a Finnish coasting smack, and one of the volunteers, dressed as a peasant, came on board with a telegram. Whilst the attention of the Africa’s crew was diverted the other volunteers fastened a small buoy with the inscription, “Frigate Prince Pojarsky,” under the stern of the flagship.

BENEATH THE WAVES.

Of course there is a very thin line which separates what is considered fair and what is considered unfair warfare among civilised communities. Lord Dunsany said that he was not perfectly sure that there could not be something said in favour of poisoning wells. “We have heard something about poisoning the air. The French some time ago had what they called bullets asphyxiants. These would have utterly poisoned a whole ship’s crew. If these missiles may be used, then it comes to this: that it is lawful to poison the air, but not lawful to poison the water.”

Lyddite shells seem rather to resemble these bullets asphyxiants, for their stench is reported to be terribly stupefying to those in the immediate neighbourhood when they burst. But whereas explosive shells fired from guns are considered “legitimate,” shells fired from rifles are regarded as “illegitimate.”

Respecting the question of poisoning wells, Colonel Lonsdale Hale has remarked that so long as this was done openly, and the fact notified in some way to those who would use them, there seemed to be nothing more to be said against this forbidden practice than against the permitted practice of depriving the enemy of good water supply by filling in wells and by cutting off the good water, as the Germans did at Metz and Paris, and reducing their enemy’s water supply to the sewage-receiving Moselle and Seine. If it was permissible to starve one’s enemy by denying him solid food, it seemed to him equally permissible to starve him by denying him liquid food.

Wolff and Bynkerhoeck, two of the originators of international law, thought the use of poison in warfare perfectly legitimate. Vattel considered the practice interdicted by the law of nature which did not allow of the multiplying the evils of war beyond all bounds. To get the better of the enemy he must be struck, and if once disabled, what necessity, he asked, was there that he should eventually die of wounds.

Opinion also differs as to the morality of attacking undefended towns and injuring the property of non-combatants during a war.

The late Admiral Aube, when he was head of the French Admiralty, said the proper way of bringing this country to order was to burn Brighton and Scarborough and a few other places; and Admiral Sir J. C. Dalrymple Hay, Bart., has remarked that he could not say he thought that he was wrong. According to the latter, the object of each side is to do the greatest possible destruction to the enemy, and also to make him cave in; the whole of the country is engaged in war, they pay taxes for the war, they encourage their soldiers and sailors to fight courageously, they suffer for the war in various ways and they urge it on; and they must expect to suffer accordingly.

Humanitarians affirm that in actual war soldiers and sailors of the Dalrymple Hay school would be too human to act up to their expressed opinions; the probability is that England would only resort to such measures if the enemy were determined to employ them. Vice-Admiral Bourgois, in his book “Les Torpilleurs,” made a strong protest against the doctrines of those who advocated the bombardment of undefended towns and the sinking without warning of defenceless merchant ships. He urged that the nationality of the vessel should first be verified, and then provision made for the crew and passengers.

Apart from the “Hague enthusiasts” who are for prohibiting the employment of high explosives, aerial torpedoes, and submarine torpedo boats, there is another class of humanitarians who urge the adoption of all new and deadly engines of warfare, apparently with the idea that if war is made sufficiently terrible no nation would dare fight another. “The more terrible the anticipation of naval war,” says a writer, “as fashion and science continue the contest, the less likely will be its realisation.”

The late M. Bloch, as we know, considered war to be tactically, strategically, economically, and morally impossible, but as he assured us also in his book, “Is War Impossible?” that bayonets were quite out of date, one may be forgiven for not paying much heed to his lucubrations.

Admiral Porter, of the U.S. Navy, considered that if war was made so dangerous that every combatant would to a certainty be killed, then there would be an end of the business and the Peace Society could put up their shutters.

The newspapers, especially the halfpenny ones, are constantly informing us of the discovery of new engines of warfare of terrible potency. Mr. Tesla is going to wipe out the British Fleet by simply touching a button on his waistcoat or elsewhere. Mr. Hudson Maxim has devised a method of throwing aerial torpedoes carrying each of them one ton of high explosive which is so efficacious that one cruiser lying just out of range of our guns would destroy all our battleships with the greatest ease. Dr. Barton is building an airship which will throw explosives on the enemy below, who will be powerless to retaliate, and so on.

The wars of the future, so the halfpenny journalists inform us, will be either waged under the seas or above the clouds, and we seem to be approaching the time imagined by Lord Tennyson, whose swain (in “Locksley Hall”)—

“Heard the heavens filled with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew

From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue.”

If wars ever die out, it will certainly not be owing to the destructive capabilities of the weapons employed. In the eyes of old Geoffrey de Vinesauf the naval conflicts of his time were as terrible as he could well imagine them to be, but a hundred years hence a Conference will doubtless be held at Tokyo to consider what restrictions should be placed on the use of submarine boats and aerial machines in time of war.

Those who are in favour of utilising the latest resources of science for the purpose of warfare are in reality more humane in the truest sense of the word than those who seek to limit nations in their choice of weapons. Vice-Admiral Sir John Fisher, who was one of those chosen to represent Great Britain at the Hague Conference, expressed himself strongly on the cruelty of making war on “humane” or moderate principles, and it is an undoubted fact that in spite of the deadly nature of modern arms, wars, on land at least, are not so destructive of life nor do they cause so much misery and suffering as they did formerly.

We can speak with more certainty with regard to warfare on land than we can to warfare on sea, but though the next great naval fight between two nations will certainly entail terrible suffering on the combatants (especially on those whose stations are below), it may be said that on the whole they will neither cause such wholesale misery nor be so protracted as the naval battles of old.

“Every war,” said Captain Herbert in a recent lecture at the Royal United Service Institution on “The Ethics of Warfare,” “marks a step. In 1885 the Servians, when they invaded Bulgaria, paid conscientiously in good coin for every fowl or pig seized in farmhouses, for every glass of brandy drunk in village inns; and when the tables were turned, and the Bulgarians invaded Servia, the Bulgarian soldiers and the Servian traders fraternised most cordially in the alehouses of Pirot. To come to the latest European war—that between Turkey and Greece in 1897—we have the testimony of the war correspondents that the behaviour of the Ottoman soldiery was quite exemplary. If things continue in this wise we shall perchance hear in the next century of every rifle discharge being preceded by a conciliatory caution and every bursted shell being followed by a humble apology.”

Dr. J. Macdonell, in a recent lecture, has touched on this subject. “It must be owned,” he says, “that the progress in mitigating the evils of war have been immense—that acts of useless violence which were once habitual are now exceptional, and are punished or condemned by military opinion. Ask those who say, ‘Things are much as they were: the grim realities of war no better than before,’ to note the matter-of-fact way Comines de Hoissard relates cruelties as the necessary accompaniments of warfare; then compare with such passages some of the many handbooks published by European Governments for the use of their troops. It has been truly said that the difference between the methods of the Thirty Years’ War and of the War of the Spanish Succession is the difference between darkness and twilight; the difference between warfare as understood by Tilly and Pappenheim and that described in modern official Manuals is the difference between light and darkness. Everywhere is recognised that only effective injuries are justifiable. The modern soldier strikes hard, he doesn’t mutilate or destroy for the love of destruction.”

The Rev. Edmund Warre has drawn a vivid picture of the wretched plight of the slaves labouring at the oars, who suffered intense discomfort and were in continual danger.

“In a hot climate, with but very little ventilation, it must have been exceedingly trying to take part in a laborious mechanical toil with perhaps some hundred or two of human beings stark naked and packed so closely that there was not room, as Cicero says, for even one man more. The heat, the smells, the toil must have been terrible to any one undergoing it against his will—so terrible as to suggest that even death itself were better than such drudgery. A dull dead feeling of despair must have crept over man and crew in such a case, and though the lash might keep them going under ordinary circumstances, such spirits could not be relied upon in times of emergency, Besides the question of discomfort, the actual danger was very great. The crews were liable at any moment to be drowned or burnt, or, in the case of defeat, butchered by the victors—perhaps, as at Sybota, deliberately in cold blood. Conceive the moment of conflict and its horrors, when the sharp-pointed beak came crashing through the timbers, smashing them right and left along with the helpless mass of human beings, while the water followed swift upon the blow, perhaps just giving time to the Thranites (the rowers on the topmost of the three benches in the Trireme, who had the most work and the longest oars) to swarm up upon the deck, while the helpless Thalamites (the rowers on the lowest bench) were drowned at once.”

Science, although she is continually placing man in possession of weapons more terrible and more destructive than those of the previous generation, really acts for the good of humanity at large, who owe a debt of gratitude to the mechanical geniuses who have evolved modes of warfare which enable war to be waged with as little unpleasantness as possible to the peaceful populations that have no concern with it.

In one respect at least modern warfare is certainly more humane than that of olden times, and this is in the treatment of the wounded and the captured. In ancient warfare the fate of the captive was death or slavery, and in early battles no quarter was given, except to personages of great distinction, and the object of both sides was to slay as many of their opponents as possible, and as surrender only made the prisoner the perquisite of his captor, the fighting was both bloody and fierce. Even as late as 1780 a prisoner was still viewed as the property of the victor, and there was a regular scale or tariff of payments.

One instance culled from an account of a battle between Christians and Turks, written by Geoffrey de Vinesauf, must suffice.

“Drawing the hostile galley with them to the shore the victors exposed it to be destroyed by our people of both sexes who met it on land. Then our women seized and dragged the Turks by the hair, beheading them and treating them with every indignity and savagely stabbing them, and the weaker their hands so much the more protracted were the pains of death to the vanquished, for they cut off their heads not with swords but with knives.”

Dr. Macdonell has pointed out that the only notable survival of barbarism in respect to captives was the rule—abrogated apparently in some countries but retained by us for reasons never satisfactorily explained—that the crews of pirate vessels captured at sea were treated as prisoners of war.

In the next great fight on the seas, if a submarine boat should be hit by the quick-firing guns of a battleship she is endeavouring to destroy, her crew, provided they are not sunk like rats in a trap, will be picked up by the ironclad’s boats and kept as prisoners of war till hostilities are at an end.

We are reminded of some lines in Mr. Kipling’s poem, “Kitchener’s School”—

“They terribly carpet the earth with dead, and before their cannon cool

They walk unarmed by twos and threes and call the living to school.”

Those who argue in favour of the suppression of under-water warfare have pointed out that whereas the battleship can save the crew of the torpedo vessel, the latter owing to her small size can only steam away, sending the big ship to the bottom, and leave the unfortunate crew to drown or save themselves as best they can, which, with shell and shot flying about, would not be easy. A way out of the difficulty has not been found yet.

What then is the conclusion of the whole matter? It is this. Since the object of war is peace, make war as deadly as possible; since your goal is complete conquest, use all efforts to get it over as quickly as possible. We cannot do better than quote the following remarks made by a speaker during the discussion on Lord Dunsany’s lecture, above referred to.

“In conclusion I would say, save us from the cruel mercies of the weak. War—that splendid mistress for whose favours we have all longed since we reached man’s estate—must be given her full attributes and painted in her most deadly colours in order that the misery, which undoubtedly she brings to the majority of the population, may extend over as short a period as possible. Let us make her as deadly as we can, in the name of humanity and of every good feeling.”

CHAPTER IV
THE MECHANISM OF THE SUBMARINE, AND SUBMARINES OF THE FUTURE

Mr. H. G. Wells, in his “Anticipations,” confesses that his imagination, in spite even of spurring, refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocate its crew and founder at sea. “It must involve physical inconvenience of the most demoralising sort simply to be in one for any length of time.... You may of course throw out a torpedo or so with as much chance of hitting vitally as you would have if you were blindfolded, turned round three times and told to fire revolver-shots at a charging elephant.... Given a derelict ironclad on a still night within sight of land, a carefully handled submarine might succeed in groping its way to it and destroying it; but then it would be much better to attack such a vessel and capture it boldly with a few desperate men on a tug. At the utmost, the submarine will be used in narrow waters, in rivers, or to fluster or destroy ships in harbour, or with poor-spirited crews—that is to say, it will simply be an added power in the hands of the nation that is predominant at sea. And even then, it can be merely destructive, while a sane and high-spirited fighter will always be dissatisfied if, with an undisputable superiority of force, he fails to take.”

INTERIOR OF THE FIRST BRITISH SUBMARINES (NOS. I.–V.).

We are afraid that Mr. Wells has not taken the trouble to keep himself in touch with the latest developments of submarine navigation. As we write, news comes from America of a party who spent fifteen hours under water in the Fulton without suffering any inconvenience. This does not look much like the “suffocation” Mr. Wells anticipates. As to torpedo-firing, French and American boats whilst under way have made excellent practice, both at stationary and at moving targets; while in making the assertion that the submarine will be used in narrow waters, in rivers or in harbours, it is evident that Mr. Wells is unaware of the lengthy voyages made by some of the newest boats.

The David represented the best type of under-water vessel in the sixties; that she is infinitely inferior to the newest Holland type or some of the French vessels of to-day goes without saying, and it will not be surprising if the submarine of thirty years hence bears the same resemblance to the Holland, as the Holland does to the David.

The ideal submarine boat has a speed as great as that of the fastest torpedo-boat, a very wide radius of action, excellent sea-keeping powers, unlimited quantities of air for power and for respiration by the crew; a means of directing its course by vision upon a moving object whilst itself remaining invisible beneath the surface, and is very habitable and comfortable for long periods of time.

The submarine of to-day lacks most of these attributes. It has a slow rate of speed, whether on the surface or submerged, a narrow radius of action, poor sea-keeping powers, a strictly limited quantity of compressed air, and is absolutely blind when beneath the waves. Thus it differs greatly from the ideal boat as sketched above, but its gradual improvement may be safely predicted.

We propose in this chapter to describe, in simple language, the working of a vessel intended for under-water navigation, and to consider what improvements are likely to take place.

Every submarine boat worked by a crew must of necessity be capable of floating on the surface of the water. This is a self-evident proposition, for the crew must have means of ingress and egress, and the only practical way of entering and leaving the boat is by an opening in the hull when she is on the surface.

We have no doubt that the files of the Patent Office would show that many inventors had designed boats which would sink to a certain depth directly they were placed in the water. While in such a system no time is lost in submersion, there would undeniably be difficulties in the way of coming to the surface, &c.

The first problem, then, which confronts the designer of a submarine boat is to find the most suitable method of sinking it to the depth at which it is intended to navigate.

The most fundamental law of hydrostatics, which applies to all floating bodies, and is equally true of wholly submerged vessels floating at any depth, as of ships of ordinary form, floating on the surface, having only a portion of their volume immersed, is that a ship floating freely and at rest in still water must displace a volume of water having a weight equal to her own weight.

The “displacement” of a vessel is defined as the weight of water displaced, which is equal to the weight of the vessel and that of her lading. A ship floating on the surface “displaces” a certain weight of water; in order to force her beneath the surface two methods are open.

In the first place, her weight is increased by the introduction of water ballast; thus her “displacement” is altered and she sinks until her weight is again equal to the volume of water displaced.

In the second, the weight of the boat remains constant, but the displacement is altered by the drawing in of “cylinders” or “drums;” thus she sinks until her displacement again equals her weight.

The first inventor to employ the latter method was André Constantin, who built a vessel during the siege of Paris, which was furnished with pistons working in two cylinders; on these being drawn in from the interior the boat sank to the required depth. The actual trials were, however, not satisfactory. The Nautilus, of Messrs. Campbell & Ash, which underwent some trials in Tilbury Docks in 1888, depended also on the pulling in of cylinders (ten were employed, five on each side of the vessel), for her submersion; the results were equally discouraging, and some eminent men nearly lost their lives owing to the erratic behaviour of this craft.

THE SUBMARINE OF ANDRÉ CONSTANTIN.
(1874.)

No serious ship-constructor would nowadays think of adopting this method of submersion, and we may therefore pass on to consider those which are brought to the submerged condition by the admission of water into special reservoirs or tanks.

Submarine boats so far as their immersion is concerned may be divided into two classes.

1. Those which when submerged possess no floatability.

2. Those which in the same condition possess a small reserve buoyancy or floatability.

Modern submarines almost without exception belong to the second division, as this class has been found to possess great advantages over the first.

1. Submarines with no Floatability when Submerged.

“GOUBET II.”

Boats belonging to this division possess when submerged a total weight equal to the weight of water displaced. During immersion it has been found necessary to make the weight of the vessel and its contents slightly exceed the weight of water displaced by the total volume of the vessel; this excess of weight causes a downward motion which rapidly accelerates unless checked, and care must be taken to regulate, either automatically or otherwise, the depth, lest the vessel sink to a depth where the pressure is greater than she can withstand.

M. GOUBET ABOUT TO GO UNDER WATER IN HIS BOAT.

Although M. Goubet is a believer in the “no-floatability” idea, it has, for some time past, been regarded with disfavour. Theoretically it is possible to navigate a submarine whose total weight equals the weight of water displaced so that she keeps at a given level without rising or sinking, but the system will not work satisfactorily when put to severe and prolonged tests. It is found to be impossible to obtain perfect equality between the two weights: submarine currents, variations of atmospheric pressure and temperature, and movements inside the boat all tending to disturb its equilibrium.