Robert Fulton’s "Torpedo System" in the War of 1812

In 1807 the tension between the United States and England over the British “right of search and impressment,” as well as her interference with American commerce, had not quite reached the breaking point. But war was in the offing and Robert Fulton tried to interest Congress in a new and powerful weapon-—the torpedo, with which he had been experimenting ever since 1797. Fulton invented the torpedo while in Paris, and had done so in the belief that its extensive use would bring about the complete freedom of the seas by “rendering the European fleets useless.”

He repeatedly offered his torpedo, his submarine, and his mine to the French Republic. The submarine and torpedo were accepted, but, after being used for a short time, they, as well as the mine, were rejected. His plan to attack the British with a squadron of mine-laying submarines was never given proper consideration. In 1804, when Fulton realized at last that Liberté under Napoleon Bonaparte was but the mask of tyranny, he crossed over to England, entered the service of George III, and directed several torpedo raids on the French invasion flotilla at Boulogne. His proposal to blockade France with a minefield in the English Channel was dismissed as impracticable.

In a few years, now that he had come home—Fulton arrived in New York, via Falmouth and Halifax, on December 13, 1806—-he was to turn his torpedo against England in the fight to uphold the dignity of the United States as a nation. Throughout the War of 1812 Fulton’s was the guiding hand behind almost all of the torpedo attacks on the British blockading fleet. These raids were made with Congressional approval, but practically without government aid. Their curious and forgotten story begins in January, 1807, when Fulton’s stanch friend Joel Barlow invited Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, then Secretary of State, and the Secretary of the Navy, Robert Smith, to his estate, Kalorama, on the outskirts of Washington. There Fulton showed the party models and drawings of his torpedo, described his system of attack and defense, and conducted one or two experiments on the waters of Rock Creek. He made a few converts-—Jefferson, who had been interested in submarine warfare ever since the days of Bushnell’s Turtle, a one-man submarine which had been used against the British in the Revolution, was one of them-—yet Fulton could not obtain the necessary Congressional appropriation for an official test of his torpedoes and mines. He was, however, given permission to blow up a small vessel at New York in order to prove his contention that he could make it impossible for a hostile fleet to blockade any American harbor.

He returned to New York and, anxious to impress his countrymen with the importance of his project, invited a number of influential New Yorkers to Fort Jay, on Governor’s Island, where he had stored some newly constructed torpedoes. As he described the mechanism of the device, his audience crowded round him. “Gentlemen,” he said, “this is a charged torpedo with which, precisely in its present state, I mean to blow up a vessel; it contains 170 pounds of gunpowder, and, if I were to suffer the clockwork¹ to run fifteen minutes,”—he had, in the meantime, drawn out the arming pin—“I have no doubt but that it would blow this fortification to atoms.”

All but a doughty few of the portly, dignified Knickerbocker aldermen and merchants hurriedly scuttled to safety outside the stout walls of Fort Jay and refused to return until the infernal machine had been lodged behind the heavy masonry of the powder magazine. Ostensibly Fulton was merely demonstrating the ease and safety with which his torpedoes could be handled, but I suspect him of taking an impish delight in terrifying these broad-beamed knights of the bench and counting house.

In July, 1807, it seemed as if there might be a real need for Fulton’s torpedoes. On June 23 the Chesapeake limped into Hampton Roads after her encounter with the Leopard. Nine days later Jefferson issued a proclamation barring British vessels of war from American ports. It mattered little to the President that the United States was not prepared to fight and could not possibly enforce the order-—the proclamation was intended chiefly for home consumption.

On July 7 Jefferson requested Henry Dearborn, the Secretary of War, to witness a demonstration of the torpedo and decide whether or not it could be employed in the defense of New York.

If we must come to blows, said the Secretary, we may as well let Fulton use his torpedoes against the British squadron off Norfolk. “If he could blow up even one of their largest Ships, I doubt whether any other would trouble us again. . ."

On July 20, Fulton, although extremely busy with the construction of his first steamboat, left his work at Browne’s shipyard to exhibit his torpedo. The Navy provided him with $500 for expenses, and the hulk of a 200-ton brig, which was anchored in the harbor. Two torpedoes, connected together by a line 80 feet long, were floated against her from a rowboat. The line caught against her anchor cable, but the detonators missed fire. Unfortunately on the second attempt the torpedoes missed the cable and exploded about 100 feet beyond the brig. Fulton tried again, and this time, in the presence of about 2,000 spectators, including Commodore John Rodgers, commanding the gunboats at New York, the hulk was knocked into flinders. Since this could hardly be called an impressive display, Fulton addressed a circular letter to the Governor of New York, the Mayor, and members of the Corporation of New York City, in which he declared that inasmuch as the inherent power of the torpedo had been demonstrated it was easy to see that with practice the weapon could be used more and more effectually. Gunpowder, he said, had within the past 300 years totally changed the art of war; this new application of its explosive force would in a few years put an end to war at sea and prevent foreign interference with American commerce and independence. The torpedo was so inexpensive, he continued in his letter, could be used with so little risk, and gave promise of being of such great value that it deserved another trial.

On Saturday, August 14, Fulton found himself lampooned, and none too gently, in the thirteenth issue of Washington Irving’s Salmagundi:

... an excellent plan of defense ... no need of batteries, forts, frigates and gunboats: observe, sir, all that’s necessary is that the ship must come to anchor in a convenient place—watch must be asleep, or so complacent as not to disturb any boats paddling around them—fair wind and no tide—no moonlight—machines well directed— mustn’t flash in the pan—bang’s the word, and the vessel’s blown up in a moment!

Meanwhile a flood of diplomatic correspondence concerning the Chesapeake affair poured back and forth across the Atlantic. As the months went by, public indignation gradually died down. The threat of war was no longer imminent, and even with Jefferson’s help Fulton could not convince the Navy Department that the torpedo system was of any value. Mr. Fulton greatly desires, Jefferson wrote to the Secretary on August 12, 1808, to arrange a decisive test of the torpedo in Washington for the benefit of Congress. Crowninshield declined to have anything to do with the invention. However, it seems likely that he might have taken greater interest had it not been for Fulton’s extravagant claim that the torpedo system was a substitute for a navy. Jefferson had tried, wisely, and very gently, to disabuse Fulton of that idea: he wrote that he did not go so far as Mr. Fulton in believing that the torpedo alone would keep the enemy out of American ports. He considered it very valuable for harbor defense and had no doubt that it would be extensively used. No matter how sanguine expectations might be, those entrusted with the affairs of a nation could never be justified in relying solely upon an invention that had not yet been sufficiently tried and against which it was not as yet known what countermeasures might be devised. Indeed, it would be quite easy to take preventive action against the torpedo, which in its present form merely drifted against a ship. “I have ever looked to the submarine boat as most to be depended upon for attaching them, and ... I am in hopes that it is not abandoned as impracticable.” Jefferson said that he would speak to Crowninshield about the possibility of establishing submarines as part of the regular naval forces. Fulton, however, had completely given up the submarine and now, seeing that the Navy had no use for the torpedo, he tried to bring it directly to the attention of Congress. Failing in that, he went round on another tack and tried to have his friend Joel Barlow—a Jeffersonian Democrat, a poet whose literary reputation, great though it was in his lifetime, has completely perished, a good businessman and economist, an excellent diplomatist and statesman, but a man utterly ignorant of naval affairs—appointed Secretary of the Navy so that Barlow, with Fulton’s help, could scrap the fleet. What then would be the nation’s first line of defense? The torpedo system! It is not surprising that the Navy’s higher brass wanted no part of Mr. Fulton and his “submarine explosions.”

The War Department continued to take a quiet interest in the torpedo even though the Navy had dropped it. Torpedo detonators were made for Fulton at Harpers Ferry by War Department artisans in March, 1809, as were harpoon guns in the autumn of 1810, and more detonators during the War of 1812.

In January, 1810, during the Presidency of James Madison, Fulton again brought forward his invention. Madison, Jefferson, and a number of senators and representatives were invited to Kalorama to witness some new experiments. The extremely favorable impression made upon this small group induced Fulton to write a pamphlet, “Torpedo War and Submarine Explosions,” copies of which he presented to all the members of Congress.

Fulton estimated, in this outline of his system of torpedo warfare—which is somewhat confused, due to his haste in getting it into print—that the most important and vulnerable ports on the Eastern Seaboard could be defended by the following force:

	Torpedo Boats	Mines	Torpedoes
Boston	150	300	300
New York	150	300	300
In the Delaware	50	200	100
In the Chesapeake	100	200	200
Charleston	100	200	200
New Orleans	100	200	200

 

The six-oared torpedo boats were to carry, as anti-personnel weapons, 4 swivel mounted blunderbusses, each firing a lethal charge of 12 half-ounce balls. The method of attack was theoretically a great improvement upon that demonstrated at New York in 1807. A harpoon gun was to be mounted in the stern of each boat. The torpedo was to be attached to the harpoon by a light line and thrown overboard at the moment of firing. As soon as the enemy came within range the harpoon was to be shot into her bows so that if the ship were under way she would pull the torpedo under her; if at anchor the tide would drive it beneath her where the clockwork detonator would explode it.

The torpedo raids were to be made at night, and each enemy ship was to be attacked by no less than a dozen torpedo vessels which by closing in from all directions would spread and divide the man-o’-war’s fire to the point where it became relatively ineffectual. Fulton presented elaborate calculations on the accuracy of naval gunfire proving that only a few of the raiders would be killed and that the number of casualties would be insignificant compared to the loss suffered in an engagement between two ships of equal force.

To defend a port like New York, for example, a hundred mines should be anchored in the Narrows. If the enemy’s small boats attempted to sweep the minefield—in itself a difficult and dangerous undertaking—the torpedo craft could dash out and rake them with blunderbusses. And if by some chance the enemy succeeded in forcing his way through the minefield he would still have to brave the fire of the land batteries and withstand determined torpedo attacks. Thus, Fulton maintained, it would be almost impossible for an enemy fleet to enter a harbor protected by mines and torpedoes.

The actual cost of the torpedo-boat flotillas would come to not more than $400,000. And what, Fulton asked, is that amount from a national point of view? Hardly enough to fit out two 30-gun ships. He hoped that no one would, for a moment, hesitate in deciding that 2,700 torpedoes and mines, employed by 650 torpedo boats manned by a well-trained marine militia, would be better protection for six seaports than a pair of 30-gun vessels.

Fulton requested the members of Congress to

reflect whether an enemy would not be inclined to respect a force so active and tremendous in its consequences; a force which, under the cover of night, could follow them into every position within our waters and pursue them for some leagues from our own shore into the open sea. ...

He pointed out that Admiral the Earl of St. Vincent and several members of the British cabinet, as well as a host of officers in the Royal Navy, were familiar with the torpedo. From his knowledge of their opinion of the invention Fulton predicted that “they would feel much disposed to respect the rights, nor enter the waters of a nation who should use such engines with energy and effect.”

While on his way to Washington early in February, 1810, Fulton met Commodore John Rodgers. From what he had seen of Fulton’s demonstration in New York Harbor in the summer of 1807, Rodgers had formed rather a low opinion of the torpedo. When he learned the purpose of Fulton’s trip to Washington—to lobby for the torpedo system in Congress-—Rodgers flew into a cold rage. He bought a copy of Fulton’s Torpedo War and studied it thoroughly. There was not a sound idea or a word of truth in it, he decided. “Oh that mine enemy would write a book!” he exclaimed, embarking on a virulent letter-writing campaign against Fulton. Rodgers attacked him as a lunatic, a visionary, the tool of designing demagogues whose only desire was to prevent the expansion of the U. S. Navy, and as a foreign agent working to undermine American defenses. Rodgers offered to demonstrate to Congress, by actual experiment, that Fulton’s theories were false, but declined to refute them by argument, “not being willing to risk my opinion, on such a subject, on my bare capacity of reasoning on projectiles; when opposed to the superior Rhetoric of Mr. Fulton.”

Commissioned a lieutenant by President Adams in March, 1798, Rodgers had worn the epaulettes of a captain since 1799, a promotion given him in recognition of his services as executive officer of the Constellation when she captured the Insurgente. He emerged from the war with Tripoli, in which he played an important part, with the title of commodore. He was ranking naval officer on active service during the War of 1812, became senior officer of the Navy in 1821, and from 1815 until a year before his death in 1838 he served as President of the Board of Naval Commissioners—an office second only to that of Secretary of the Navy.

While Rodgers’ services were not so brilliant as those of his contemporaries who had the opportunity to distinguish themselves in spectacular single ship actions that appealed to the public imagination, they were equally if not more valuable. Of all the galaxy of great sea commanders in a heroic era, Rodgers is the one whom Mahan selected as having had the best understanding of the principles of naval strategy.

At this time, March, 1810, Commodore Rodgers held the most important post in the U. S. Navy, commander of the New York Flotilla and Naval Station. Needless to say, his opinions carried tremendous weight in legislative circles as well as in the Navy Department. It is a tribute to the persuasiveness of Fulton’s arguments and the strength of his political backing that all of Rodgers’ efforts to discredit him were in vain. On February 9 a motion was made in Congress to investigate the merits of the torpedo system, and on March 30, after much debate —the Republicans were for the measure, the Federalists against it—the sum of $5,000 was appropriated to defray the expense of a series of experiments to be made under the direction of the Secretary of the Navy, Paul Hamilton, “for the purpose of ascertaining with precision how far the torpedo or submarine explosions may be usefully employed as engines of war.”

The Secretary allowed Fulton himself to select the commission which was to decide on the merits of the torpedo system. Of course Fulton chose men of integrity who rendered a fair and unbiased report.

In September, 1810, the last of Fulton’s equipment, the harpoon guns, which he had ordered in April or earlier, was ready and Hamilton directed Commodore Rodgers to superintend the experiments at the New York Navy Yard. Rodgers had requested the assignment and was delighted at having a chance to refute Fulton’s theories. The Commission met for the first time on September 21 at the City Hotel in Manhattan and decided that Fulton should begin by simulating an attack on the United States brig Argus commanded by Lieutenant James Lawrence. Rodgers was instructed to organize whatever defense a warship could exert “without having recourse to her guns, or the employment of active force.”

The Argus was anchored in the East River, between Corlear’s Hook and the Navy Yard. When Fulton came to attack her with a spar torpedo he found that Rodgers, Commodore Chauncey, and Lieutenant Lawrence had so skillfully made use of a splinter net, a few extra spars, and other equipment usually carried in a vessel of war, that it was impossible for the torpedo to come in contact with her. Although this “floating chevaux-de-frise” (sic) as Rodgers called it, could be rigged and unrigged in 15 minutes, it very nearly immobilized the brig, which led one of the Commissioners, C. D. Colden, to remark that if the dread of torpedoes forced the enemy to go to the same extremes in protecting his ships, that alone would justify the use of torpedoes.

Fulton complained that he had been taken unawares. The naval officers had been in
formed of his means of attack, but he did not learn of their stratagems until the very last moment. Having had time to consider the problem, on October 30 Fulton showed the Commission a model of a ship of several hundred tons, with cannon-proof sides and musket-proof decks, that carried its torpedoes on 96-foot spars against which improvised nets would be no defense. Rodgers was furious.

I leave the reader to . . . judge whether such torpid, unwieldy, six-feel-sided, fifteen-sixteenth- sunk-water dungeons are calculated to supersede the necessity of a navy, particularly when the men who manage them are . . . confined to the limits of their holds . . . and in as perfect darkness as if shut up in the black-hole of Calcutta.

Whenever the weather permitted, the Commissioners were rowed across to the Navy Yard to examine Fulton’s inventions and witness further experiments, which continued until November 1. They saw him demonstrate, with poor success, his harpoon gun. Fulton also showed them his mine, “without,” Rodgers asserted, “ . . . proving anything of its effect as an engine of war. . .” Fulton, with tongue in cheek, suggested that doubters could “put their confidence to the proof by sailing over it.”

On January 22, 1811, a majority of the Commission, Messrs. Wolcott, Kemp, Colden, Garnett, and Williams, reported to the Secretary of the Navy that it was to be admitted that torpedoes could sink ships, but Mr. Fulton’s invention had not yet been brought to the stage where it was completely to be relied upon. They sincerely hoped, however, that this adverse decision would not discourage further investigation and experiment.

General Lewis and Chancellor Livingston tendered separate reports. Lewis observed that the experiments were limited by bad weather, but restricted as they were they indicated that the torpedo would in future rank as one of the best and cheapest of harbor defenses. “I trust that it will not be deserted while even a distant prospect of its becoming permanently useful shall remain.”

Livingston expressed himself far more forcefully. He considered the torpedo one of the most important military discoveries in centuries and one which would be extremely valuable in harbor defense. He earnestly recommended that further experiments upon a larger scale be made, and thought that “trifling miscarriages, arising from a want of practice and nautical skill, should not stifle in its birth a discovery that may lead to consequences, the extent and importance of which it is impossible at this moment to see.”

Fulton admitted to Hamilton that all of his experiments at New York had been badly executed. That, however, was due to the fact that his men were inexperienced and he himself was not sufficiently familiar with actual attack. Yet, under all these disadvantages, he had discovered much of the strength and resources of his opponents and was confident that he could defeat all of Rodger’s anti-torpedo devices. “But, sir, to do this,” he pleaded, “it is indispensible that I should have twenty or thirty men under my command, to be practised in the use of my engines in my own way . . . [during] . . . the ensuing summer. . .

Rodgers, too, had something to say to the Secretary of the Navy. The experiments, Rodgers said, have proved the utter worthlessness of Fulton’s torpedo system and that it was most certainly not “calculated to supersede the necessity of a Navy.”

When such officers as Admiral of the Fleet Lord St. Vincent on one side of the Atlantic and Commodore Stephen Decatur on the other recognized the value of the torpedo, it is impossible to believe that Rodgers was blind to its usefulness as an adjunct to existing means of harbor defense. The truth, as I see it, seems to be that he feared that the offensive, blue-water strategy of the Navy might be hampered under Madison as it had been under Jefferson, leaving the sovereignty of the United States to be defended only in her own ports. In Rodgers’ opinion, to quote Professor Paullin, “the navy was in danger of being inflicted with a torpedo heresy that would prove as disastrous to it as Jefferson’s gunboat heresy.”

The Secretary of the Navy transmitted a comprehensive report to Congress on February 14, 1811, in which he explained that only $1,500 of the appropriation had been expended, and since Mr. Fulton had made important improvements and was very confident of success it was intended that further experiments be authorized. Unluckily, Commodore Rodgers’ views prevailed over those of the Commissioners, and after being read in both houses of Congress the report was tabled.

Fulton had hoped that the torpedo would prevent war, but he had endured ere this too many bitter disappointments to be greatly disheartened by a Congressional congé. He probably consoled himself with the thought that if war came, his torpedoes would make a blockade of the American coast impossible. When needed, he would be ready; meanwhile, in partnership with Robert R. Livingston, he continued to build and operate a growing fleet of steamboats.

Believing as he did that the mere existence of a torpedo corps would compel respect for the flag of the United States, Fulton never concealed the fact that the torpedo system was aimed directly at England. To make certain that this was forcibly brought to the attention of Parliament, he sent a copy of Torpedo War to the Earl of Stanhope—who, six years before, had persuaded the British government to use Fulton’s torpedoes against the French invasion flotilla. On June 5, 1810, before the torpedo commission assembled in New- York, Stanhope arose in the House of Lords to discuss the danger to the Royal Navy from Mr. Fulton’s “mischievous and horrid mode of destroying vessels,” and demanded an accounting by the Ministry of the measures taken to protect His Majesty’s Ships against torpedo attacks. His motion was defeated by a thumping majority. However, Lord Stanhope really had no cause to worry about the safety of the British Navy. In September, 1807, Commodore Sir Edward Owen, who had taken a prominent part in the torpedo expeditions against the French, ran across a newspaper account of Fulton’s preliminary experiments in New York Harbor. Commodore Owen knew almost as much about the torpedo as Fulton himself and, unlike some British officers, he believed that the power of the weapon was beyond dispute. He wrote to the Admiralty pointing out that torpedoes would undoubtedly be used by the Americans if war broke out, and gave a short, accurate description of the raids on the Boulogne Flotilla in 1804, to which he attached drawings of suggested anti-torpedo devices. Copies of this letter were dispatched to Admiral Berkeley, Commander in Chief of His Majesty’s Ships on the North American Station, and, passing into the hands of his successor, Sir John Borlase Warren, helped to circumvent more than one torpedo attack during the War of 1812.

War was declared on June 18, 1812; and as we learn from two of his letters to the Secretary of War, Fulton, after several months of delay, prepared to attack the British flotillas on the Great Lakes. He writes on October 24, 1812, that he had received 5 detonators from the arsenal at Harpers Ferry. “I will have the torpedoes finished as soon as possible; an active corps must be selected from the seamen on the lakes to apply them, and the result I have no doubt will be satisfactory.” On the 28th he writes again to say that 3 more locks have arrived, and that he now has a dozen. “This is sufficient if 12 well directed] attacks do not prove the Value of Torpedoes I shall be willing to give them up as bad in principle.”

The attacks were never made. For what reason I cannot say—what we know about torpedo operations in the War of 1812 must be pieced together from scraps and fragments.

On March 3, 1813, Congress passed an act that offered a bounty of one half the estimated value of the sunken ship to anyone who destroyed by “torpedoes, submarine instruments or any other destructive machine whatsoever,” a British ship of war. Several obscure private citizens thereupon proposed to the government that submarines, mines, and torpedoes be employed against the British, but none of these suggestions was acted upon. John Foster, Jr., who is described as a merchant of New York, thought up an ingenious but discreditable way of collecting the prize money. Hearing that Commodore Hardy’s ship Ramillies, which, with two other 74’s, four frigates, and three sloops, was closely blockading Decatur’s little squadron —the United States, Macedonian, and Hornet —in New London, had run short of provisions and naval stores, Foster loaded the schooner Eagle with flour and turpentine. Underneath this innocent lading he stowed a cask of gun powder fitted with detonators, the trip cords of which were attached to the flour barrels. Foster sailed the schooner into Long Island Sound and abandoned her, on June 25, near the British squadron. He hoped that the British would unload her directly into the Ramillies, destroying both vessels. The Eagle, however, was berthed some distance from the flagship and inflicted only a few casualties when she blew up.

The people of New England opposed what they called “Mr. Madison’s war,” and were generally “well inclined towards British interests,” but this affair “exasperated the officers of the blockading squadron, and embittered their subsequent intercourse with the people of the coast, although the latter had no agency in the offensive act.” It also had the beneficial result, from the American standpoint, of causing a temporary suspension of the treasonable trade between the New Englanders and the British, for Commodore Hardy informed the commanding general of the militia at New London that he could no longer permit vessels of any kind, except those under flags of truce, to come anywhere near the British squadron.

Hardy—Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy, a lieutenant in Nelson’s ship Minerve at Cape St. Vincent, captain of the Vanguard at the Battle of the Nile, flag-captain of the Victory at Trafalgar, and eventually First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, but perhaps best remembered simply as “Nelson’s Hardy”—was even more exasperated by a Yankee named Plowden Halsey, who constructed a small diving boat that could be propelled under water at the rate of 3 knots. In July, 1813, while the Ramillies was lying at anchor off New London, Halsey made several attempts to blow her up by attaching a clockwork torpedo to her bottom. He did not succeed. Indeed, he was hoist by his own petard, for on his last attempt he and his one-man submarine disappeared, destroyed, it is said, by the accidental explosion of the torpedo.

Despite official rebuffs, Fulton’s interest in the torpedo was as keen as ever, but he was a husband, a father, and the active head of a steamboat monopoly that had to be nurtured and protected by one lawsuit after another. He superintended the passive mine defense of New York. In July, 1813, mines were held in readiness to be anchored in the Narrows at a moment’s notice in the event that the British succeeded in forcing a passage by Forts Richmond and Hudson. On June 21, 1814, a minefield was actually laid in the Narrows. A month later one of the mines was taken up and examined. It was found to be in good order, “an interesting proof that . . . [mines] . . . can be preserved under water for months.” It is also reported that mines were laid at the entrance to the harbor of Portland, Maine. But Fulton delegated the actual raiding to others.

Elijah Mix, Sailing Master, U. S. Navy, conducted several torpedo attacks on the British squadron blockading Chesapeake Bay. Mix wrote to President Madison on April 8, 1813, that he had resolved to sink a British 74 which was then lying off New- point, and asked that he be given several torpedoes, a couple of boats, and $1,200 or $1,500 for expenses. Madison seems to have referred Mix to Fulton who gave him $150 on a note of hand payable in 12 months, and 2 torpedoes that were fired at a distance by means of a lanyard. In return Mix probably agreed, like the pilots of other torpedo boats, to share his prize money with Fulton. On May 7 William Jones, Secretary of the Navy, directed Captain Charles Gordon, the commanding naval officer at Baltimore, to furnish Mix with 500 pounds of powder, boats and 6 men-—if 6 volunteers could be found— to carry “into effect his plans for the destruction of the enemy’s Ships now off the Patapsco....” If the expedition is to be successful, the Secretary cautioned, the greatest secrecy must be observed.

Captain Gordon expected Mix to act in concert with him in attacking the British. But Mix, responsible only to the Secretary of the Navy, disregarded Gordon’s suggestions—to the chagrin of that officer, and to the detriment of any tactical advantages that might have been seized by Gordon’s squadron during a torpedo raid.

We know nothing of Mix’s first attack— directed against H.M.S. Victorious in June—- except that it failed. The connecting line broke and the torpedo was carried harmlessly out to sea.

On July 18, after three months of preparation, Mix set off from Norfolk in a small boat called the Chesapeake's Revenge, accompanied by James Bowman, a merchant captain of Salem, and Midshipman James McGowan, U. S. Navy, to torpedo H.M.S. Plantagenet. Mix approached to within 40 yards of her as she lay at anchor in Lynnhaven Bay, abreast of Cape Henry Lighthouse, and dropped the torpedo into the water. At that instant he was discovered by a British guard boat; Mix calmly pulled the torpedo back on board and rowed away without being caught. On the next night he slipped right under the Plantagenet's jib boom—then something went wrong with the torpedo and he had to work over it for 15 minutes. When the watch hailed “Boat ahoy!” he pulled away without answering. Naturally, he was fired upon and this solitary musket shot was followed by a rattle of small arms. Discharges of grape and canister sought out the little boat caught in the flashing glare of rockets and blue lights. The Plantagenet slipped her cables, hoisted a few rags of sail and got under way while her launches were sent in pursuit. “The daring intruders, however, escaped unhurt.” For three successive nights Mix stalked his quarry, but the Plantagenet was on the alert and changed her anchorage after dark. On the 24th Mix sighted her and stealthily approached to within 100 yards. The tide swept the torpedo against her bows and the ship might have been destroyed if Mix had not jerked the lanyard too soon. “The scene was awfully sublime!” said the Norfolk Herald.

It was like the concussion of an earthquake attended with a sound louder and more terrific than the heaviest peal of thunder. A pyramid of water 50 feet in circumference, was thrown up 30 or 40 feet, its appearance was a vivid red tinged at the sides with a beautiful purple. On ascending to its greatest height, it burst at the top with a tremendous explosion and fell in torrents on the deck of the ship....

The crew took to the boats in panic, but morning revealed that no damage had been done that could not be repaired in a few hours by the ship’s carpenter.

For some strange reason H.M.S. Victorious, 74, two frigates, and several tenders joined the Plantagenet in Lynnhaven Bay—hardly the place for a rendezvous. However, the simple and effective anti-torpedo measures devised by Commodore Owen in 1807 were put into operation: buoys were moored ahead of each vessel to deflect the floating torpedoes, and guard boats were especially on the watch for torpedo craft. Mix attempted, in vain, to use his remaining torpedo. While trying to float it under one of the warships he was chased by one of the picket boats and had to drop the lanyard. The torpedo—a 300-pounder—was picked up by the British. A full description of it appeared shortly afterwards in the London Naval Chronicle.

On August 25 the Secretary rebuked Mr. Mix for abandoning “the chance of success against the Enemy’s Vessels in the upper part of the Chesapeake,” to go into the Sound, “where there is no chance whatever,” and for sending in an exaggerated report of the effect of the attack on the Plantagenet. In the latter part of November, 1813, Sailing Master Mix demonstrated the torpedo at Norfolk by blowing up an old 400-ton ship that lay stranded in 2 fathoms on the Portsmouth shore, but no further attacks were made on the British. Thus ended the torpedo campaign in the Chesapeake.

On July 18, 1814, Fulton wrote to Captain David Porter asking his opinion of a plan to equip the 6 or 8 fireships then at the New York Navy Yard with spar torpedoes and send them up to New London to sally out in an engagement or to drive Sir Thomas Hardy’s squadron away from the blockade of that port so that Decatur could make a dash for the open sea.

This is the first indication of an organized attempt to relieve the blockade of New London by means of torpedoes. The previous attacks in Long Island Sound had been sporadic and merely an annoyance to the British. Foster’s despicable attempt to sink the Ramillies and Plowden Halsey’s ineffectual raids have already been described. Nothing seems to have been accomplished— or even attempted—by the torpedo boats under the command of Midshipman Augustus Swartwout at New London in April, 1813. On July 28, 1813, Fulton agreed to furnish James Welden at some future time with a “plunging boat,” torpedoes, and apparatus to attack Hardy’s squadron, and to pay Welden $5 a day while he “cruised” against the British. Welden bound himself to do his utmost to destroy British vessels of war, to return to Fulton the boat and all equipment not destroyed in an actual attack, and to give Fulton one half of the prize money on torpedoed vessels. On August 9 Commodore Decatur wrote to Fulton of a Major Frink and a Mr. Richard who were fitting out a torpedo expedition at New London, but of them nothing more is known. In the same letter Decatur speaks of Welden, who was then at New London awaiting an opportunity to launch torpedoes from a whaleboat. “The moon [unless overcast] will prevent any immediate attempt,” Decatur says, “any aid in my power I will Give him, he appears to be prudent and persevering.” Unfavorable weather conditions made an attack impossible and the enterprise was temporarily abandoned. Joshua Penny, Welden’s pilot, returned to his home at Three-Mile-Harbor, Easthampton, Long Island. He was dragged out of his house a few days later by some of Commodore Hardy’s people, confined in irons aboard the Ramillies, and later imprisoned at Halifax for nine months.

The incident is remarkable only as an indication of the extent of the information gratuitously supplied the British by American traitors on shore. In July, 1813, Hardy is said to have known the names of all those concerned in a torpedo expedition being fitted out at New London. According to Renwick, Fulton’s activities were regularly reported to the British commander in Long Island Sound, and on one occasion Fulton narrowly escaped capture when a party of bluejackets from Hardy’s squadron surrounded the house in which he was supposed to be sleeping— purely by accident he had been prevented from reaching his quarters that night.

In addition to employing the usual antitorpedo devices (buoys and guard boats), Commodore Hardy is said to have changed the position of his ship every four or five hours and swept her bottom every two hours. In retaliation for the torpedo attacks he bombarded, on August 11,1813—after allowing the populace to withdraw—the little town of Stonington, Connecticut. Stoning- ton, he charged, had been conspicuous in fitting out torpedo expeditions. Hardy then tried to safeguard his squadron by retaining American prisoners of war aboard the vessels. Shortly afterward he issued an ultimatum to the people of the coastal towns of Long Island: if any torpedo boats were allowed to remain at any point along the shore he would burn every house in that neighborhood.

The British poured out the phials of wrath on the subject of torpedoes. One of the few Englishmen who took a rational view of torpedo warfare was Henry Edward Napier, a lieutenant in H.M.S. Nymphe, who wrote in his Journal on April 30, 1814, that the British abused the Americans “like pickpockets without considering that they have only followed our own plans against the French; and indeed employed the same person who invented the catamaran we used at Boulogne.”

Hardy’s active countermeasures had the desired effect. His vessels were not troubled again until April, 1814, when an unknown hand launched a torpedo that exploded harmlessly under the bows of H.M.S. La Hogue. In the summer of that year a semisubmarine sailed from New York to attack the blockading squadron off New London. This vessel—evidently the plunging boat Fulton had promised Welden in July, 1813— was 23 feet long, 10 wide, made of extremely heavy timbers and armored with iron plates half an inch thick. Her draft was 6 feet; only 1 foot of her arched deck projected above the surface and this was painted a dingy white so that she would be difficult to see at night. Her armament consisted of 5 torpedoes of the same type as those used by Elijah Mix. How they were carried is not clear, but one torpedo was towed on a long line astern and fired, when it came in contact with a hostile ship, by means of a lanyard. According to a contemporary American newspaper report the turtle boat also mounted a spar torpedo on her bow. The vessel was entered through an armor plated scuttle—which was left open except when danger threatened. The pilot conned the vessel by standing with his head out of the hatch. Two air holes abaft the scuttle and one forward of it supplied fresh air when the hatch was battened down. The boat carried a crew of 12, and her 2 propellers, driven by a manually operated winch, gave her a speed of about 4 miles an hour.

The torpedo boat left New York on Monday, June 20, and on Thursday while on her way down the Sound she was wrecked by a northwest gale. Captain George Burdett, of H.M.S. Maidstone, was informed two days later that she had been driven ashore, with the loss of one of her crew, on Long Island, about 12 miles from Plum Gut. The Maidstone weighed anchor at dawn Sunday and left her station off New London in company with H.M.S. Sylph. They found the torpedo boat at 2.30 PM., lying like a stranded whale in a small sandy bay, surrounded by the local inhabitants and a body of militia. The militia retreated behind the banks to the right and left of the boat to defend her. The Maidstone and her consort dropped anchor and cannonaded the beach at point-blank range. A party of bluejackets and marines landed. The militia was soon driven off. John Bowen, first lieutenant of the Maidstone, made a sketch of the boat and then blew her up.

The turtle boat had a short, inglorious career. Captain Burnett admitted in his dispatch to the Admiralty that shot could not damage her and there was no way of grappling her. In other words, there was absolutely no defense against her except flight. Had she not been beached by the storm and left easy prey to the British she might have been successful and justified Fulton’s theories. In the winter of 1814 Fulton was working on an improved turtle boat called the Mute, a large, armored, manually powered craft armed with torpedoes and guns that could be fired under water. But hostilities ceased before she was finished.

The loss of the turtle boat brought to a close the torpedo campaign on the eastern seaboard. It continued, somewhat feebly, on Lake Ontario.

The British squadron on Lake Ontario in the summer of 1814 was inferior to the American. The British commander, Commodore Sir James Yeo, prudently refused to give battle until the odds were in his favor. His hope of success lay in H.M.S. St. Lawrence, a 2,305-ton, 112-gun two-decker under construction at Kingston. Information, obtained in September from intercepted British dispatches, that Yeo intended to launch a combined land and sea assault on the American base at Sacketts Harbor as soon as the St. Lawrence had been rigged, caused Isaac Chauncey some anxiety. The presence of the St. Lawrence—a far more powerful ship than any Commodore Chauncey could bring against her—heavily weighted the scales in favor of the British. The idea of redressing the balance by blowing up the warship while she was still on the stocks had occurred to Chauncey early in the summer. He had requested the Navy Agent at New York to send him a pair of Fulton’s torpedo detonators, “but they never was sent.” Eventually Midshipman McGowan-—the same McGowan who had rowed out in the dead of night to attack the Plantagenet— turned up at Sacketts Harbor. And he brought a torpedo with him.

On November 12 Chauncey sent McGowan off in an eight-oared gig piloted by William Johnson, an American spy, with orders to go around the foot of Long Island, approach Kingston from below, and torpedo the St. Lawrence. McGowan ran into a pair of British guard boats which he was forced to capture. Being encumbered with prisoners he had to return to Sacketts Harbor. Before he could make another raid the lake had frozen over, putting a stop to all naval operations.

While in New York in December, 1814, Chauncey was shown a model of Fulton’s semi-submarine, the Mute. Chauncey was quite favorably impressed and requested the Navy Department to allow him to build two or three semi-submarines at Sacketts Harbor. Even had the boats been constructed—and Chauncey’s papers do not indicate that they were—they could not have been used; the Treaty of Peace was signed at Ghent on Christmas Eve, 1814. Official copies of the documents reached Chauncey two months later, long before the spring thaw.

Shortly after the actual conclusion of the war an end came to the energetic life of Robert Fulton. He had been in ill health for some time, and although suffering from a bad cold insisted upon leaving his house at No. 2 Marketfield Street-—a once fashionable district, now known as Battery Place—to see how the construction of his latest project, the steam warship Demologos, was progressing in the yards at Paulus Hook, New Jersey. The long trip and the raw weather aggravated his condition and he succumbed to “inflammation of the lungs” on the morning of February 23,1815.

Fulton’s life is an example of the success story in the best American tradition. He was a brilliant man of innate ability who raised himself by sheer tenacity and indomitable will from the position of a nonentity-—a farm boy in a semi-industrial section of Pennsylvania—to that of a great personage, a moving force in the world.

He regarded the steamboat as one of his lesser inventions—not “half so important as the torpedo system of defence and attack; for out of this will grow the liberty of the seas; an object of infinite importance to the welfare of America and every civilized country.”

Fulton had a burning desire to put his country on an equal footing with the dominant naval power of the world-—England— by means of the torpedo system. His torpedoes were not a spectacular success, but they did hamper British coastwise movements and decreased, if only slightly, the effectiveness of the blockade. There is no doubt that the British feared and heartily detested them. Had Fulton been able to use his inventions on a large scale he might have revolutionized naval warfare. But that is a very great if. Fulton’s reach exceeded his grasp—the technology of the time was not really equal to the task of carrying his ideas into the sphere of reality. Of course, the strategy behind his tireless prosecution of the torpedo system, his belief that the torpedo would make naval warfare impossible, is obviously so false, so untenable, so naive, that it requires no discussion. Fulton shared, with scientists and inventors of all ages, idealists ignorant of the nature of war and the innate character of mankind, the delusion that war can be abolished. However, Fulton’s basic theories on the tactical employment of torpedoes and mines, theories which he so strenuously and so fruitlessly advocated, have long since been re-evolved by a process of trial and error extending over a period of more than a century. The intensely interesting story of Fulton’s torpedoes serves to illustrate the growth of an idea, the burgeoning of a set of tactical principles, and proves quite conclusively that, while the form changes, the essential substance remains the same.