Читать книгу Submarine Warfare, Past, Present, and Future - Herbert C. Fyfe - Страница 9

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“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.”