Fulton's Sketch of the Dorothea
Floating Torpedo (mine)
On Monday the 14 October 1805 a large crowd of people gathered on the beach below Walmer Castle near Deal in Kent. They were watching the DORETHEA, a Danish brig of about 200 tons moored half a mile off shore, and the small boats that were working around her. In spite of rumours nothing exciting happened and the crowd dispersed in the evening.
The following afternoon the beach was almost deserted when Lady Hester Stanhope, niece and housekeeper to Prime Minister Pitt who lived in the castle, strolled down to chat with a man standing by the water's edge. After a short conversation he tied a handkerchief to his walking stick and waved it at the brig, remarking to her as he looked at his watch, "Fifteen minutes is her time." Two boats then rowed past the brig and something was thrown into the water from each of them.
A quarter of an hour later there was an explosion which lifted the brig out of the water and broke her in two. Although the noise was little more than that made by a 4-pounder gun she was a complete wreck within a few seconds, the ends sinking immediately and leaving the sea covered with splintered planks.
The
man on the beach was Robert Fulton, a 40 year old American who was known in
England under the pseudonym 'Mr Francis'. Urgent business had called Mr Pitt
away to London, but Admiral Holloway and many commanding officers of the fleet
in the Downs were present. Twenty minutes before the explosion one of them,
Capt. Kingston, had declared that if one of the devices had been placed under
his cabin when he was at dinner, he should feel no concern for the consequence.
Unfortunately for Fulton the successful demonstration of his explosive devices,
variously known as 'carcasses' or 'coffers' and by him as `torpedoes`, came too
late because three months later, on 26 January 1806, his sponsor William Pitt
was dead and the new administration, a coalition of Pitt`s enemies, paid him
off in September 1806 with 1653 pounds 18 shillings and 8 pence. (Pitt had
promised him 100,000 pounds not to divulge his plans to the enemy) They were
influenced by Lord St. Vincent who remarked to Fulton that "Pitt was the
greatest fool that ever existed to encourage a mode of war which they who
command the sea do not want, and which, if successful, would deprive them of
it." He was not the last man to believe that something could be
uninvented.
A
year earlier things had looked more hopeful. On 1 October 1804, with the weather
favourable, Admiral Lord Keith, responsible for defending Britain against
Napoleon's invasion attempts, resolved to attack the flotilla of 150 vessels
moored off Boulogne with the devices Fulton had been preparing at New Romney
during the first two weeks of September. The largest of these, five of which
were built, was an oblong vessel, 21 feet long, with wedge shaped ends. It was
caulked, run with pitch and covered in canvas. The charge consisted of 40
barrels of gunpowder covered with flint chippings and tightly packed. Pulling
out a pin allowed a clockwork mechanism, made by Cutler & Co. (who later
received 1533 pounds 13 shillings and 7 pence for their work) to rotate for a
predetermined time and fire an ordinary gunlock with a two inch barrel containing
a musket charge of powder. The total weight was about 2 tons and the ballast
was arranged so that the top floated level with the surface of the water.
A line with a buoyed grappling hook was trailed astern. He also prepared five
smaller ones and ten using hogshead barrels.
The
French were naturally alarmed when the 74-gun MONARCH, with frigates,
sloops and numerous other small vessels arrived off their coast on the evening
of Tuesday the 2 October and they mustered troops and field guns along the shore
and stationed gunboats around their flotilla.
At a quarter past nine the boats and explosion vessels from the British
squadron carrying Fulton's devices, and other boats, known as catamarans, which
floated low in the water towing the larger carcasses, rowed down on the French
vessels. The men pulled out the pins and released their charges to drift on the
tide and entangle with the enemy's anchor cables. The attack finished at four
o'clock the following morning by which time all the charges had been exploded.
In spite of a continuous heavy fire of round shot and musketry there were no
British casualties and, in the confusion of the night, hopes were high that a
great deal of damage had been done to the enemy. In fact no great damage was
done. The explosions alongside the enemy vessels merely gave them a violent
shock and canted them sideways.
The
opposition newspapers immediately attacked the use of the new devices, but Lord
Melville wrote to Keith that anything which could be used against the enemy
should be embraced.
An attack with small carcasses on Fort Rouge, a pile fort off Calais, on the 8
December using the Susannah explosion vessel and two carcasses, was more
successful and part of the breastwork was knocked down.
Fulton was not the only inventor with ideas to attack the
French invasion forces. On 11 November 1803 a Charles Rogier had written to
Lord Keith with plans for a gas balloon, 32 feet in diameter, which would carry
nearly 900 lb of `spiked rockets`, shells, etc., and use a clockwork mechanism
to drop them on the enemy, particularly at night. Nothing more was heard of
this early idea for aerial bombardment.
In
October 1805 Congreve`s rockets were used to bombard Boulogne from the sea.
Meanwhile Fulton, puzzled by the failure of his devices, was doing more
experiments. His new torpedoes consisted of a copper cylinder containing about
100lb of powder suspended beneath a cork float. They were intended to float
right underneath the hull of an enemy but, when they were used in attack on the
French in Boulogne on the 30 September 18O5, the enemy vessels were showered
with water but otherwise undamaged. The only French casualties were from shots
fired from Capt. Secombe's galley as he dropped his torpedoes alongside a
gunboat and from a salvaged torpedo which blew up as it was being taken ashore.
Two weeks later Fulton had the answer; the two torpedoes which blew up the DORETHEA
were suspended 15 feet under water and linked by a rope 80 feet long. They
drifted on either side of the brig until the connecting line touched the anchor
cable and the tide drove them under her bottom.
Fulton
returned to America where, on the third attempt, he blew up a brig in New York
Harbour in August 1807. This explosion was witnessed by more than 1000
onlookers. He also proposed an anchored torpedo, in effect a moored mine, which
would float at a predetermined depth and be detonated by a ship striking a
lever on the top. He considered that 200 or more, moored in a channel, would
protect a port and be unsweepable by enemy boats.
Another of his proposals, if adopted, would have been a big improvement on the
spar torpedo so popular later in the century. He used a harpoon gun to fire a
line attached to the cable linking two of the Dorethea type torpedoes at
a ship. According to his experiments the harpoon point would drive through
three inches of wood at a range of thirty to fifty feet and, firing at a target
six feet square twenty or thirty times he never missed.
Fulton`s Harpoon Gun
The
next occasion the Royal Navy became involved with "infernal machines"
was on the 9 June 1855 when two submarine explosions occurred under the paddle
vessel MERLIN off Cronstadt in the Gulf of Finland during the war with
Russia. They were closely followed by another under her companion the gunboat FIREFLY.
On the 2O June one exploded under the paddle frigate VULTURE. No damage
was caused and the following day boats from the squadron fished up thirty-three
of the mines.
Those that were brought on board the ships were treated very carelessly. The
first one brought on board the Duke of Wellington was deprived of its
fuse, swung at a boom and fired at with a rifle to see whether it would explode
by mere concussion, but without result. It was then taken down to the poop for
dissection. Meanwhile Admiral Seymour on board Exmouth was manipulating
an intact machine which exploded, injuring his eyes and face, as well as some
of the onlookers. This was followed by a loud report from Admiral Dundas`s
cabin in the Duke, but this was only the bursting of a fuse and no harm
was done.
The mines consisted of cones of zinc 20 inches long with a diameter of 14
inches. With about 8 lb of gunpowder in the apex, an air chamber ensured that
it floated at anchor, base up, a foot or two under the surface. The fuse used a
glass tube of sulphuric acid resting on a pad saturated with potassium
chlorate. If any of a number of wire rods around the base was moved it struck a
copper tube which broke the glass causing a flame which ignited the powder.
The mines had been designed by Professor Jacobi of St. Petersburg and as used
were capable of doing little more than break glass and crockery. It is not
known why more powerful versions were not deployed. The same fuses were used in
Russian Anarchist bombs at the end of the century.
Torpedoes
were also used, particularly by the Confederate States, for defensive purposes
during the American Civil War. In 1863 the narrow river channel leading past
the forts into Mobile Bay was lined with torpedoes, some made out of beer kegs
filled with powder, the sides studded with little tubes containing fulminate
which exploded on contact, the rest were metal cones with detonating caps.
Torpedoes detonated electrically from the shore were used by the Confederates
in the James River in 1863. The gunboat Commodore Jones was blown up by
one on 6 May. The banks of the river were searched and the torpedo operators
captured. One of the prisoners was placed in a gunboat sweeping the river and
gave a great deal of information about the location of the torpedoes.
Commander William Cushing, USN, used a spar torpedo invented by Engineer Lay of
the navy to destroy the Confederate States ironclad Albemarle at Plymouth on
the Roanoke River in October 1864. An earlier attempt to use a torpedo carried
in the Miami during a battle on 5 May failed.
©
1996 Michael Phillips
