s at Kinhurn in the Crimean War, the
effectiveness of the naval forces was due less to protective armor
than to volume of fire.

_Submarines and Torpedoes_

In the defense of Southern harbors, mines and torpedoes for the
first time came into general use, and the submarine scored its
first victim. Experiments with these devices had been going on
for centuries, but were first brought close to practical success
by David Bushnell, a Connecticut Yankee of the American Revolution.
His tiny submarine, resembling a mud-turtle standing on its tail,
embodied many features of modern underwater boats, including a
primitive conning tower, screw propulsion (by foot power), a vertical
screw to drive the craft down, and a detachable magazine with 150
pounds of gunpowder. The _Turtle_ paddled around and even under
British men-of-war off New York and New London, but could not drive
a spike through their copper bottoms to attach its mine.

Robert Fulton, probably the greatest genius in nautical invention,
carried the development of bath mines and submarines much further.
His _Nautilus_, so-called because its collapsible sail resembled
that of the familiar chambered nautilus, was surprisingly ahead of
its time; it had a fish-like shape, screw propulsion (by a two-man
hand winch), horizontal diving rudder, compressed air tank, water
tank filled or emptied by a pump, and a torpedo[1] consisting of
a detachable case of gunpowder. A lanyard ran from the torpedo
through an eye in a spike, to be driven in the enemy hull, and
thence to the submarine, which as it moved away brought the torpedo
up taut against the spike and caused its explosion. Fulton interested
Napoleon in his project, submerged frequently for an hour or more,
and blew up a hulk in Brest harbor. But the greybeards in the French
navy frowned on these novel methods, declaring them "immoral" and
"contrary to the laws of war."

[Footnote 1: This name, coined by Fulton, was from the _torpedo
electricus_, or cramp fish, which kills its victim by electric
shock.]

[Illustration: BUSHNELL'S TURTLE]

Later the British Government entered into negotiations with the
inventor, and in October, 1804, used his mines in an unsuccessful
attack an the French flotilla of invasion at Boulogne. Only one
pinnace was sunk. Fulton still maintained that he could "sweep
all military marines off the ocean."[2] But Trafalgar ended his
chances. As the old Admiral Earl St. Vincent remarked, "Pitt [the