|
The automobile torpedo of the Luppis-Whitehead type17 had been perfected several years before the construction of Holland's second boat, but means of launching it had been confined to tubes mounted on surface vessels. The pneumatic gun on the Fenian Ram was used to fire a projectile, or in more modern parlance, a missile containing a warhead charged with gunpowder. Holland's missiles were not, however, self-propelling. The Patterson inventor faced many difficulties in procurring the correct projectiles for use in the gun. His machinist was compelled to test the effectiveness of the firing mechanism by resorting to such ammunition as a nail keg, until someone at Delamater's described the submarine to Captain John Ericsson of Monitor fame. Ericsson's Destroyer was under construction at the yard that had just completed Holland's submarine. The captain sent a note to Professor Holland offering to supply him with several dummy projectiles of his own design. Holland recalled that day in Ashburton, Cork, twenty years earlier, when he had first read about the designer of the revolutionary Union ironclad. Now, here was a note from the famous Ericsson offering his assistance. It was that measure of recognition which genius needs to feed upon. Holland, in his firm and clearly legible handwriting, accepted Captain Ericsson's offer. The first Ericsson projectile was fired under a pressure of only three hundred pounds per square inch to avoid hitting a floating dry dock moored in the Basin. The Ram was submerged to a depth which put the bow cap of the pneumatic gun about three feet below the surface. The firing valve was released. The projectile cleared the muzzle by eight or ten feet. Then, it leaped out of the water and rose sixty to seventy feet in the air to plunge downward and bury itself irretrievably in the mud at the bottom of the Basin.
The career of the second Ericsson dummy projectile was even more eventful than the first. The bow of the Fenian Ram was deliberately dipped about five degrees below the horizontal and swung to port to keep the projectile clear of the moored dock. On this second shot the projectile doubled its course under water, again leaped into the air, passed over the breakwater on the far side of the Basin, and struck hard against a piling. From behind the breakwater came a frightened shout, "What's that!" The head of an unsuspecting fisherman poped up from behind a rock. Holland felt that he would have to improve on the design of Ericsson's dummy projectiles.
17. For the early history of the Whitehead torpedo, see C. Sleeman, Torpedoes and Torpedo Warfare (Portsmouth: Griffen and Co., 1889),pp. 171-203. |