Prime Minister] would be 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." So Fulton took
L15,000 and dropped his schemes.

[Footnote 2: Letter to Pitt, Jan. 6, 1806.]

[Illustration: FULTON'S NAUTILUS]

Much cruder than the _Nautilus_, owing to their hurried construction,
were the Confederate "Davids" of the Civil War. One of these launches,
which ran only semi-submerged, drove a spar torpedo against the
U. S. S. _New Ironsides_ off Charleston, but it exploded on the
rebound, too far away. The C. S. S. _Hunley_ was a real submarine,
and went down readily, but on five occasions it failed to emerge
properly, and drowned in these experiments about 35 men. In August,
1864, running on the surface, it sank by torpedo the U. S. Corvette
_Housatonic_ off Charleston, but went down in the suction of the
larger vessel, carrying to death its last heroic crew.

By the end of the century, chiefly owing to the genius and patient
efforts of two American inventors, John P. Holland and Simon Lake,
the submarine was passing from the experimental to the practical
stage. Its possibilities were increased by the Whitehead torpedo
(named after its inventor, a British engineer established in Fiume,
Austria), which came out in 1868 and was soon adopted in European
navies. With gyroscopic stabilizing devices and a "warmer" for the
compressed air of its engine, the torpedo attained before 1900
a speed of 28 knots and a possible range of 1000 yards. Its first
victim was the Chilean warship _Blanco_, sunk in 1891 at 50 yards
after two misses. Thornycroft in England first achieved speed for
small vessels, and in 1873 began turning out torpedo boats. Destroyers
came in twenty years later, and by the end of the century were
making over 30 knots.

Long before this time the lessons of the Civil War had hastened the
adoption of armor, the new ships ranging from high-sided vessels
with guns in broadside, as in the past, to low freeboard craft
influenced by the _Monitor_ design, with a few large guns protected
by revolving turrets or fixed barbettes, and with better provision
for all-around fire. Ordnance improved in penetrating power, until
the old wrought-iron armor had to be 20 inches thick and confined
to waterline and batteries. Steel "facing" and the later plates of
Krupp or Harveyized steel made it possible again to lighten and
spread