come in against a spiral, thus acting as a buffer, and by firing a gun which would send a shaft, to which the torpedo was made fast by a cord several feet long, into the side of a ship. Thus, the torpedo would be left hanging; thence a cord or wire, some fifty or sixty feet long, with one end attached to the torpedo, the other to the boat, served to explode the charge as soon as the boat got out of the way, and brought it taut; the explosion being effected either by electricity or by the pulling of a trigger.
"The war ended before any of these boats were ready. They might answer very well against wooden ships. Another plan was prepared very early in the war, but was never tried. The torpedo was to be in the form of a fish, with its tail lashed to one side to serve as a rudder; it was to be towed astern by a long line in which were the conducting wires. Being thus towed by a swift steamer past the enemy, the effect was that the torpedo would be sheered off broad enough to strike, when it would be exploded by an electric discharge. I am not aware that any attempt was made to put this idea into practice.
"In July, 1861, the Federal fleet, then lying off Fortress Munroe, was attacked with floating torpedoes. They were in pairs, connected together by a span 500 feet long. The span was floated on the surface by corks; and the torpedo-barrels, containing 200 pounds of powder, also floated at the depth of twenty feet; empty barregas, painted lead-colour so as not readily to be seen, serving 'for the purpose. The span was connected with a trigger in the head of each barrel, so set and arranged that when the torpedo, being let go in a tideway under the bows and athwart the hawse had fouled, they would be drifted alongside, and in so drifting tauten the span and so set off the fuse, which was driven precisely as a 10" shot fuze, only it was calculated to burn 54", because it could not be known exactly in which part of the sweep along
