ing it will ever arise. Modern naval battles will
probably be fought and decided, at the _minimum_ range of 2 miles, or
thereby.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

MODERN ENGINES OF WAR.

For many centuries after the invention of gunpowder, little change took
place in the weapons used in naval warfare, the chief developments being
in the way of better workmanship and material, and the production of
guns of larger size.

About the end of the eighteenth century, however, the period from which
so many of our modern improvements begin to date, inventors began to
plan new and improved methods of disposing of the enemy. About the year
1770, the American Bushnell conceived the idea of what his
fellow-countryman Fulton afterwards called the "torpedo." This weapon
consisted of a case of powder which was to be attached to the bottom of
the enemy's ship by the aid of a submarine boat, leaving it to explode
later on by means of a clock inside.

The submarine boat was actually made in 1775; it was egg-shaped in form,
and held one man. It was propelled through the water by means of a
screw propeller, worked by manual power; a similar screw, arranged
vertically, enabled the boat to rise or sink at will. With this boat,
during the War of Independence, he, or some other operator, succeeded in
getting under a British man-of-war lying at anchor near New York.
Without her crew having the slightest suspicion of his presence, he
attempted to screw his torpedo to her bottom, but his auger encountered
what appeared to be a bar of iron. When shifting to another position he
lost the ship altogether, and being unable to find her again was forced
to cast off the torpedo and make away, as the clock-work inside had been
arranged to explode soon afterwards. And about an hour later the crew
of the warship were first roused to their danger by the explosion of the
torpedo at no great distance from them, and they were the more alarmed
as they were wholly unable to account for it.

In the beginning of the nineteenth century another American, named
Fulton, having borrowed Bushnell's ideas, came over to Europe and
endeavoured to get the French government to take up his plans for
submarine warfare. After long delay he was at length given the sum of
10,000 francs, with which he successfully constructed a submarine boat.
In this boat he remained under water for more than four hours, and
having been required to blow up a small vessel had no difficulty in