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More "Torpedo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Newbury, Mass., Deerfield, N.H., and particularly East Haddam, Conn., were the centers of seismic activity, which by inference might be used as an argument against our navy-yards at Portsmouth, N.H., and Charlestown, Mass., our torpedo station at Newport, or the fortifications at Willets Point. The earthquake which destroyed Lisbon in 1755 might with equal propriety be used as an argument against the building of the extensive docks and fortifications ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden
... blaze away at the biggest target—Government House. So far, the disturbances have caused little inconvenience. I date this 10 A.M., but I cannot tell you the exact time, as the clock-tower has just been carried away by a new kind of land torpedo. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... and girls deal with life aboard submarine torpedo boats, and with the adventures of the young crew, and possess, in addition to the author's surpassing knack of story-telling, a great educational ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... to this. I endeavoured to sustain myself by the sense of my integrity, but the voice of no man upon earth echoed to the voice of my conscience. "I called aloud; but there was none to answer; there was none that regarded." To me the whole world was unhearing as the tempest, and as cold as the torpedo. Sympathy, the magnetic virtue, the hidden essence of our life, was extinct. Nor was this the sum of my misery. This food, so essential to an intelligent existence, seemed perpetually renewing before me in its ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... "Specialized in torpedo work," he said, in answer to a question. "That is the way of the British navy: to learn one thing well before you go on with another. If in the course of it you learn how to command, larger responsibilities await ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... From the little we know of the structure of the human understanding, we must be convinced that an overpowering conviction of this kind, instead of tending to the improvement and moral amelioration of man, would act like the touch of a torpedo on all intellectual exertion and would almost put an end to the existence of virtue. If the scriptural denunciations of eternal punishment were brought home with the same certainty to every man's mind as that the night will follow the day, this one vast ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... Mr. Jeff Davis was constantly writing him to take command of a corps in the confederate army, but Col. Sellers said, no, his duty was at home. And he was by no means idle. He was the inventor of the famous air torpedo, which came very near destroying the Union armies in Missouri, and the city ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... "Whoever heard of such a thing?" but she ran out to see what it was, and at that moment the cabbage bounded right in front of the pen, hit a big stone, burst open with a noise like a torpedo, and out rolled Buddy Pigg, over and over, just like a pumpkin. But, believe me, he wasn't hurt the least mite, but he ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis
... lookout came a warning; came the cry all sailors fear, A torpedo was approaching, and the vessel's doom was near; Ingram saw the streak of danger, but he saw a little more, A greater menace faced them than that missile had in store; If those deep sea bombs beside him were not thrown beneath the wave, ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... "We don't know what we've got here, but it's not a natural body. Could be anything from a torpedo on up." ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... question, the designer must reduce the size. But now the City of Paris will no longer serve as a model, he must look elsewhere for a vessel of high speed, and smaller scale, and naturally he picks out a torpedo boat at the other end of the scale. A speed of 24 knots—and it is claimed even of 25, 26, and 27 knots—has been attained on the mile by a torpedo boat. But such a performance is useless for our mode of comparison, as sufficient ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... the water-pumps, the oxygen containers, air-purifiers and [v]distilling machinery, and the [v]hatchways were thoroughly examined; the gunners took their posts at the torpedo tubes. The order had been given to move about as little as possible, to keep in the berths when not on duty, and not to talk and laugh. Then the watchman left the [v]conning tower, and the ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... of 99.31416. As Mr. Wilson had requested that no fuss should be made over his visit, things was kept down as much as possible, so that, on leaving Calais, the President's boat was escorted by only ten torpedo-boat destroyers, a couple battle-ships, three cruisers, and eight-twelfths of a dozen assorted submarines. There was also a simple and informal escort of about fifty airy-oplanes, the six dirigible balloons having been cut out of the program in accordance from the President's wishes. However, ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... time that her attitude to International Law has always been one of approximate reverence. The shells with which she bombarded Rheims Cathedral were contingent shells, and the Lusitania was sunk by a relative torpedo. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various
... bar August 1, where all was expectancy and preparation for the coming fight, a fight which perhaps had more in it of dramatic interest than any other naval battle of the war. The wooden ships pushing into the bay through the torpedo-strewn channel and under the fierce storm of shot and shell from Fort Morgan, lashed together in pairs for mutual support in case of disaster; the sudden and tragic sinking of the Tecumseh by torpedo stroke, with the loss of the ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... morning, while Admiral Sampson was away at a conference with General Shafter, lookouts on the American battleships descried the Infanta Maria Teresa feeling her way out of the harbor, followed by the remainder of the Spanish fleet, three armored cruisers and two torpedo-boat destroyers. The Americans instantly closed in, directing their fire first against the Teresa and later against the rest of the fleet as they tried to follow their leader out to safety. Once out of the harbor the entire Spanish fleet dashed headlong toward the west, parallel ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... hand the German submarine exploits continued and found among their victims a British warship, along with the many merchantmen. On March 11, 1915, the British auxiliary cruiser Bayano, while on patrol duty became the victim of a German torpedo off the Scotch coast. She went down almost immediately, carrying with her the greater ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... the signal-torpedo over that cone. The entire set-up was under six feet tall, and the coolie-hat cones were no more than eighteen inches in ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... incident was duplicated in almost every particular on the Ballarat in April, 1917. This story was enacted in the waters of the English Channel, and there were no casualties, for the work of rescue by torpedo-boats was made easy as each man calmly waited his turn and enlivened the monotony meanwhile with ragtime, and again and again did the strains of "Australia Will Be There!" ring out over the waters. As they sang "So Long, Letty," many substituted other Christian names, ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... the Captain, "the torpedo, even of the most improved type, can only keep up this speed of twenty knots for a distance of five hundred yards, within which range the boat discharging it would have to approach before sending it off at the vessel attacked, which of course would be fool enough to let it come to such close quarters ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... wireless, that she brought herself into position to fire on the Wolf, and that preparations were being made to use her gun. If the Hitachi had manoeuvred at all, it was simply so that she should not[1] present her broadside as a target for a torpedo ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... with the dreadful habit of talking to himself quite rageing, was a horrible alternative. Mrs. Baerens at last directed her husband upon the General, trembling as though she watched for the operations of a fish torpedo; and other ladies shared her excessive anxiousness, for Mr. Baerens had the manner and the look of artillery, and on this occasion carried a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... last word in naval construction—a torpedo yacht. A small cruiser, with turbines up to date, oil-fuelled, and fully armed with the latest and most perfect weapons and explosives of all kinds. The fastest boat afloat to-day. Built by Thorneycroft, engined by Parsons, armoured by Armstrong, armed by Crupp. If she ever comes into action, ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... tide, and regarding him anxiously. That decided him. With a crashing bellow of rage and a sweep of his powerful tail he darted at the inoffensive head. But it vanished instantly, and a sudden tremendous turmoil, developing into a wake that lengthened out with the speed of a torpedo-boat, showed him the hopelessness of pursuit. Turning abruptly, he swam back to the shore and sulkily withdrew into the thickets to ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... there for three days, during which time I secured pictures of the steamer Dinorah, which limped into port after being torpedoed, of a sailing vessel which had struck a mine, and some interesting scenes on board French torpedo boat destroyers as they returned from patrolling ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... came a sudden, frightful, heart-stilling roar of destruction; a hideous crash followed, a terrible rending, breaking, smashing, concatenation of noises, succeeded by frightful detonations, as through the gaping hole torn in the great battleship by the deadly torpedo, the water rushed upon the heated boilers, the explosion of which in turn ignited the magazines. By that deadly underwater thrust of the enemy the battleship was reduced in a few moments to a disjointed, disorganized, sinking mass of ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... A large branching nerve-cell, or "soul-cell," from the brain of an electric fish (Torpedo), magnified 600 times. In the middle of the cell is the large transparent round nucleus, one nucleolus, and, within the latter again, a nucleolinus. The protoplasm of the cell is split into innumerable fine threads (or fibrils), which are embedded in intercellular matter, and are prolonged into ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... day, September 17th, Japan achieved an equally conspicuous success at sea. Fourteen Chinese warships and six torpedo-boats, steering homeward after convoying a fleet of transports to the mouth of the Yalu River, fell in with eleven Japanese war-vessels cruising in the Yellow Sea. The Chinese squadron was not seeking an encounter. Their commanding officer did not appear to appreciate ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... named "Haute Mere-Dieu"—is as vivid a sight as any scene of modern war can be. Rows of grey motor-lorries and omnibuses do not lend themselves to as happy groupings as a detachment of cavalry, and spitting and spurting motor-cycles and "torpedo" racers are no substitute for the glitter of helmets and the curvetting of chargers; but once the eye has adapted itself to the ugly lines and the neutral tints of the new warfare, the scene in that crowded clattering square becomes positively brilliant. It is a vision ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... it is executed. It is the same with coded communications to Foreign Powers. The movements of our fleet are known to foreign naval attaches even before the maneuvers are carried out. The whereabouts of the smallest torpedo boat and submarine is no secret—to any but ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... Gerald, she's a dandy," said Jim, after the boys had shaken hands and made a few formal inquiries about the interval which had elapsed since last they met. As Jim spoke, his eye roamed over the long torpedo body of the big ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... volunteers, including two of Krsto's own relatives, had gone to Russia's aid. Otherwise "Portartur" would never have fallen. Krsto's cousin was engineer on one of Rozhdjestvcnski's ships. Every one believed England had tried to Sink them by concealing Japanese torpedo boats among the fishing fleet. They, however, kindly absolved me from complicity in the affair, mainly because I had ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... thick. One gun in each turret and the guns could swing around on four-fifths of the circle, so that every gun could be brought to bear on an enemy either to port or starboard. No other guns were carried in time of war and no cruisers, torpedo boats, or torpedoes were used, for experience in war had shown that they were useless waste of men and money. The battleship was propelled by rotary engines developing fifty thousand horsepower, driving the ship at a sustained speed of thirty ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans
... custom to send the fleet each winter to the Caribbean Sea for manoeuvres, which lasted about four months. In December, 1907, the Atlantic fleet, comprising sixteen battle-ships and a flotilla of torpedo-boats, began a cruise around the world. President Roosevelt steadily adhered to the plan in the face of the most extravagant denunciation on the part of those who declared that it could be considered only as a menace toward Japan. Naval experts claimed, however, that ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... eight men whose duty it was to turn the crank of the propeller shaft by hand until the target had been reached. When this primitive craft was closed for diving there was only sufficient air to support life for half an hour. Since the torpedo was attached to the boat itself there was no chance of escape. The only hope was to reach and destroy the enemy vessel before the crew ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... its chief engineer. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, was the grandson of an Irishman; Henry O'Reilly built the first telegraph line in the United States; and John W. Mackey was the president of the Commercial Cable Company. John P. Holland, the inventor of the submarine torpedo boat, was a native of Co. Clare; and McCormick, the inventor of the reaping and mowing machine, was ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... an entirely new development, for the submarine is a vessel which can travel unseen beneath the water and, while still unseen, except for a possible momentary glimpse of a few inches of periscope, can launch a torpedo at long or short range and with deadly accuracy. In these circumstances it became imperative to organize the Admiralty administration to meet new needs, and to press into the service of the central administration a large number of officers charged with the sole duty of studying the new ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... directions for the ship's course, and the torpedo-boat steamed along on her port side ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... employed in the capture of fresh water fish,[16] but the most common is a torpedo-shaped trap of bamboo (Fig. 19). Stone conduits lead the water from streams into the open ends of these traps, thus carrying in fish and shrimps. The funnel-shaped opening has the sharpened ends set close together ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... Bramhall's find?" said they. "They've discovered a young torpedo in Ray. He's quite good and they'll probably get into the final. But we needn't be afraid. They've a weak string in Johnson, while we haven't a weakness anywhere. However, we'll take no risks." And so they started a savagely severe ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... all his weight and muscle on the left rein. The team and cart swerved that way and crashed like a torpedo into the pillar. The men on the cart went flying like skittles. The driver's strap burst, the pillar rang with the shock, and John Byrnes fell on the car track with a broken shoulder twenty feet away, while Erebus—beautiful, raven-black, best-loved ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... front of his door he found a long gray torpedo touring car throbbing with impatience, and at the wheel sat a plump young lady in a vivid green bonnet and driving coat. In the tonneau sat a more slender young lady all in gray, except for the brown of her eyes and the pink of her cheeks and ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... to Newport with me at five-thirty," were his first words. "Katy's all ready, and means to sit up till the boat gets in at two-thirty, keeping a little supper hot and hot for you. The Torpedo Station is in its glory just now, and there's going to be a great explosion on Thursday, which Amy ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... am to tired to wright ennything. i never had so much fun in my life. i only got burned 5 times. 1 snapcracker went off rite in my face and i coodent see ennything til mother washed my eyes out. Zee Smith fired a torpedo and a peace of it flew rite in the corner of my eye and made a blew spot there. i fired every one of my snapcrackers. ...
— The Real Diary of a Real Boy • Henry A. Shute
... and lunch and dinner. And they even insist upon trifling with the holies of your smoking times, trying to light up cigarettes themselves, and jabbering all the time, why then you seize on a civil offer to risk your neck in a racing car as a drowning man would catch at a torpedo if he found ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... iron top and cover constructed as shown by the drawing. Mr. W. H. Hedges, Bench and Street Grade Engineer, Department of Public Works, Chicago, Ill., gives the following data regarding quantities and cost. The materials required for each monument are: 1.78 cu. yd. crushed stone, 0.6 cu. yd. torpedo sand, 1 bbls. cement, 60 ft. B. M. lumber, one 24-in. copper rod, one top and cover. A gang consisting of 1 foreman, 4 laborers and 2 teams construct from one to three monuments per day, the average number being two per 8-hour day. In 1906 the average cost of the monuments was $24.12 each, ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... and by a strange paradox the swimmer [the ship] is made to remain immovable while the wave is hurried along by movements numberless. Or, to describe the nature of another kind of fish, perchance the sailors in the aforesaid ships have grown dull and torpid by the touch of the torpedo, by which such a deadly chill is struck into the right hand of him who attacks it, that even through the spear by which it is itself wounded, it gives a shock which causes the hand of the striker to remain, though still a living substance, senseless and immovable. I think some such misfortunes ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... Pope has taken rather too limited a view of the subject. Dulness has other avatars besides the literary. In the last and finest book, Pope attempts to complete his plan by exhibiting the influence of dulness upon theology and science. The huge torpedo benumbs every faculty of the human mind, and paralyses all the Muses, except 'mad Mathesis,' which, indeed, does not carry on so internecine a war with the general enemy. The design is commendable, and executed, so far as ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... that "a naval architect named DUNKIN claims to have constructed a new style of vessel, impervious to rams, shell, or shot." Now, then, where is our friend, Captain ERICSSON? The Captain has a torpedo which he is anxious to explode, near a strong vessel belonging to somebody else. He says it will blow up anything. DUNIN says nothing can blow up his vessel. A contest between these very positive inventors would be a positive luxury—to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... of appropriations for the purchase of subsistence stores without waiting for the beginning of the fiscal year for which the appropriation is made; for additional appropriations for the collection of torpedo material; for increased appropriations for the manufacture of arms; for relieving the various States from indebtedness for arms charged to them during the rebellion; for dropping officers from the rolls of the Army without trial for the offense of drawing pay more than once for the same period; ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... Berenice moving away up the Asia passage, so cautiously that between whiles she seemed to be drifting; but always moving, with the smoke blown level from her buff-coloured funnels, with clean white sides and clean white ensign, and here and there a sparkle of sunlight on rail or gun-breech or torpedo-tube. She was bound on a three-years' cruise; and Gilbart, who happened to know this and was besides something of a sentimentalist, detected pathos in this departure on a festival morning. It seemed ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... interferes with no other actor's role, comes upon the stage in fitting scenes, keeps to the text and the impersonations which right principle and pure taste assign him. His grimaces are not for the church. He may not sing his catches when penitent souls are listening to the "Miserere," drop his torpedo-puns when life's mystery and solemnity are pressed heavily upon the soul,—be irreverent, profane, or vulgar. He must know and keep his place. But he should have his place, and have it confessed; and that place is not quite at the end of the procession of the benefactors of the race. Punch, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... implies gun-power and torpedo lines placed as described. Be it said in passing that only places of decisive importance, commercially or militarily, need such defences. Modern fleets cannot afford to waste ammunition in bombarding unimportant towns,—at least when so far from their own base as they would be on our coast. ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... extremity, kept afloat by pieces of cork. This grappling-iron, it was intended, should hook itself to the cable of the vessel it was to destroy, and thus swing the catamaran alongside. It was, indeed, on a larger scale, though with less destructive power, something like Harvey's torpedo of the ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... harbor, at the time of the battles just described, the Spaniards had a fleet of war-ships under the command of Admiral Cervera, an old and able naval commander. In the fleet were four large cruisers and two torpedo-boats. Three of the cruisers were of seven thousand tons burden each, and all could make from eighteen to nineteen knots an hour. Each carried a crew of about five hundred men, and all were well supplied with guns ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... noticed two British torpedo boat destroyers, one to starboard, the other on the port bow, apparently keeping pace with the Volhynia. They were still there at noon, subjects of speculation among the passengers; and at tea-time their number was increased to five, the three new destroyers appearing suddenly ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... Demetri glared at him, felt his sprained right wrist with his left hand, picked up his hat, shook off the dust from his disordered clothes, and went his way without a word. Barndale went his way also. The band crashed out again, and the crowd once more began its circle. When a torpedo is lowered into the sea, the wound it makes in the water is soon healed. But the torpedo goes on and explodes by-and-by, with terrible likelihood ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... San Niccolo da Lido, where I supped at a little osteria beneath the trees, a number of gray torpedo boats rushed to and fro in the harbor entrance, restless as hunting dogs straining at the leash. That night Venice was dark, so black that one stumbled from wall to wall along the narrow lanes in the search for his ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... seems to me it would be a good idea if every woman who is both protected and untrained but whose husband is approaching forty should, if not financially independent, begin seriously to think of fitting herself for self-support. The time to prepare for possible disaster is not after the torpedo has struck the ship. ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... knowledge of the affair. Holland, lacking evidence as to the perpetrator of the crime, would have had to swallow this denial but for an accident which furnished her with the missing proof. One of the Tubantia's small boats drifted ashore. In the boat was a fragment of a Schwarzkopf torpedo—a type manufactured and used only by Germany. This fragment was forwarded to Berlin, with another and more urgent demand for explanation, apology, ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... and would like to pay my respects. Sampson is a thin man with a gray beard. He looks like a college professor and has very fine, gentle eyes. He asked me why I meant to leave the ship, and I said I had heard one of the torpedo boats was going to Key West, and I thought I would go with her if he would allow it. He asked if I had seen the cable from Long, and I said I had heard of it, and that I was really going so as not to embarrass him with my presence. He said, "I have received three ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... time I embarked at Liverpool, on board the Mistress of the Seas, the S.S. Olympic, the largest passenger boat afloat. For three days we lay in the channel, awaiting our escort, four torpedo boat destroyers, and, finally, as the wheel of the mighty leviathan commenced churning the waters, I knew we were really off ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... is a gunboat, and will be armed with three kinds of guns: one to fire on the surface of the water, a submarine gun to use under the water, and torpedo tubes. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 30, June 3, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... that he did not run into any ambush of Peruvian ships; a very sharp look-out was therefore kept incessantly during the six days which the fleet took to steam from Valparaiso to Antofagasta. There was no Bolivian navy, if we except a few steam- launches and old spar-torpedo-boats; there was nothing, therefore, to fear in that direction; but, as the Chilians had not as yet had time to advance their forces overland up the coast, a contingent of five hundred regulars was put on board the ships to effect the occupation of Antofagasta; two hundred and ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... used by the dirigibles this is understandable. They could not be handled by a single man without the aid of mechanical devices. Some are dropped from a cradle which is tilted into a vertical position after the shell has been inserted. Others are fired from a tube not unlike the torpedo tube of a submarine, but which imparts only slight initial velocity to the missile. Its chief force is derived from gravity, and to be assured of its explosion the aviator must discharge it from a height ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... whether from confidence in their position or contempt for their enemy, were unprepared and replied feebly. They had seven battleships to Togo's six, but the big ships of Japan were supported by a flotilla of torpedo-boats which outnumbered those of Russia. These alert little craft did great execution. Creeping into the harbour while the bombardment kept the enemy occupied they sank two battleships and one armoured cruiser. Other Russian vessels were badly damaged; but, according ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... fallen into a well of silence and was not to be extracted by any hydraulic power, though she smiled like the June sky over her head. Di's peculiarities were out in full force, and she looked as if she would go off like a torpedo, at a touch; but through all her moods there was a half-triumphant, half-remorseful expression in the glance she fixed on John. And Laura, once so silent, now sang like a blackbird, as she flitted to and fro; but her fitful song was always, "Philip, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was explained by the submarine explosion of this torpedo. Cyrus Harding could not be mistaken, as, during the war of the Union, he had had occasion to try these terrible engines of destruction. It was under the action of this cylinder, charged with some explosive substance, nitro-glycerine, picrate, or some other material of the same nature, ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... Stanley and his advisers to admit anything, yet universally suspected of being the cause of all the trouble. He, too, wishes to cancel his engagements for the graduating ball, and thinks something ought to be done to those young idiots of yearlings who set off the torpedo. "Nothing could have gone wrong but for them," says he; but the wise heads of the class promptly snub him into silence. "You've simply got to do as we say in this matter, Billy. You've done enough mischief already." And so it results that the message he ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... stocking feet and carrying a pillow which he placed on his chair before sitting down. "What new monkey shine is that?" growled old Botts. "S-s-s-h, pa," said Johnny anxiously; "I was playing fireworks with Billy Simson this afternoon and I swallowed a torpedo." "Did, eh?" "Yes, and if anything should touch me kinder hard I might go off and all ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... the officer on the bridge had seen it too. Simultaneously everyone seemed to become aware that something was wrong—and for a brief second almost a panic occurred. The ship was swinging to port, but Vane realised that it was hopeless: the torpedo must get them. And the sea-gulls circling round the boat shrieked discordantly at him. . . . He took a grip of the rail, and braced himself to meet the shock. Involuntarily he closed his eyes—the devil . . . it was worse than a crump—you could hear that coming—and ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... to this position, in the shadow of a beautiful clump of ash trees, stood the rustic shelters of the regimental cooks. From behind the wall of trees came a terrifying crash. The war-gray, iron field kitchen, which the army slang calls a contre-torpilleur (torpedo-boat destroyer), stood in a little clearing of the wood; there was nothing beautiful to the machine, which was simply an iron box, two feet high and four feet square, mounted on big wheels, and fitted with a high oval chimney. ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... Thales of Miletus was the first to describe the properties of amber, which, when rubbed, attracted and repelled light bodies. The ancients also described what was probably tourmaline, a mineral which has the same qualities. The torpedo, a fish which has the power of emitting electric impulses, was known in very ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... Mundy, of Boston, happened to be on an American steamer on the Mississippi River in the vicinity of New Orleans. It was rumored that a Spanish torpedo-boat had evaded the United States war vessels and made its way up the great river. The general alarm and the impossibility of detecting the approach of another vessel set Mundy thinking. It seemed to him that there should be some way of communicating through the water and of listening ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... Journal thinks the problem of a torpedo boat capable of firing rapidly and with certainty, has at length reached ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... vessels heretofore authorized are under contract or in course of construction except the armored ships, the torpedo and dynamite boats, and one cruiser. As to the last of these, the bids were in excess of the limit fixed by Congress. The production in the United States of armor and gun steel is a question which ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... powerful pivot-gun, that one of McClellan's shells struck during the first day's bombardment, and split it into fragments. At Gloucester Point, across the York river, the great guns of the Merrimac were planted, it is said, and a fleet of fire-rafts and torpedo-ships were moored in the stream. By all accounts, there could have been no less than five hundred guns behind the Confederate entrenchments, the greater portion, of course, field-pieces, and, as the defending army was composed of one hundred thousand men, we must add that number of small arms to ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... a torpedo-boat with a City of Paris siren went mad and broke her moorings and hired a friend to help her, it's just conceivable that we might be carried as we are ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... precipitated the greatest of all wars in a manner so underhanded as to suggest a trap. They knew, as no one else knew, in those quiet mid-summer days of July, that civilization was about to be suddenly and most cruelly torpedoed. The submarine was Germany and the torpedo, Austria, and the ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... supplied for its hundreds of inhabitants. The efficiency of all the elaborate arrangements of the hull for safety in collision, fire, or battle, depends upon the Engineers. Their machinery trains and elevates, loads and controls the heavy guns. The use of the Whitehead torpedo and all its appliances would be an impossibility without the Engineers. In addition to this there is the propulsion of the ship, and the control and supervision of a large staff of artificers and men. And yet the Engineer officers are the lowest paid class of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... "Torpedo-boat from Moudros to Malta," he explained, "transport to Marseilles, troop train to Calais, and there our people shot me across the Channel on a hospital ship. Then I ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... torpedo boat No. 11 was seized by the Slav members of her crew and brought into Ancona, but their offers of service were refused. The ringleaders showed, by refusing to accept large sums of money, that ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... danger, the vagueness hung heavily. As Dan cast his eyes gloomily into the wake of the tug, he saw a dark object shoot out of the foam and dart down upon them like a torpedo; in fact a torpedo could not have worked more serious effect upon the boat than did ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... brutal age, ministered to by hard-fisted men, and we had put it a hundred decent years behind us when—it all comes back again! To-day there are no prisons for the crews of merchantmen, but they can go to the bottom by mine and torpedo even more quickly than their ancestors were run into Le Havre. The submarine takes the place of the privateer; the Line, as in the old wars, is occupied, bombarding and blockading, elsewhere, but the sea-borne traffic must continue, and that is being looked after by the lineal descendants ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... these disaster-filled times, when men tax their ingenuity to build increasingly powerful aggressive weapons, it was possible that, unknown to the rest of the world, some nation could have been testing such a fearsome machine. The Chassepot rifle led to the torpedo, and the torpedo has led to this underwater battering ram, which in turn will lead to the world putting its foot down. At least I hope ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... of small paper torpedoes in various places around the lawn. Give each child a paper bag and at a signal, which is the explosion of a torpedo, they begin to hunt for the hidden torpedoes. The one finding the most is given a small flag which the children salute ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... the land batteries, for the batteries would redouble their fire. Might better have saved their powder and let us run into the fields and be blown to bits, you will say. Not at all. They would consider that a waste of good mines. Nobody wants to waste a whole mine on a poor little torpedo boat destroyer — and twenty to forty men. There's no profit ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... the identity of electricities. 'Is it right,' he seemed to ask, 'to call this agency which I have discovered electricity at all? Are there perfectly conclusive grounds for believing that the electricity of the machine, the pile, the gymnotus and torpedo, magneto-electricity and thermo-electricity, are merely different manifestations of one and the same agent?' To answer this question to his own satisfaction he formally reviewed the knowledge of that day. He added to it new experiments ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... and cherished, while perfectly aware of their limitations as to beauty and to brains. Immediately behind her slipped in Mrs. Cripps. The doctor abstained, conscious of having put a match to the fuse which had exploded yesterday's astounding homiletic torpedo. The whole affair irritated him to the point of detestable ill-temper. Still, if only to throw dust in the public eye, the house of Cripps must be represented. He therefore deputed the job—like so many another ungrateful ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Fanning Harding and Regina Mortlake came whizzing up to the gate in the latter's big touring car—the one in which she had arrived in Sandy Beach. The machine was the gift of her father. It was a commodious, maroon-colored car, with a roomy tonneau and fore-doors and torpedo ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... the run, just as he was, and then the worst happened. I think the hippo went under water when he found the sneeze was coming, for just as pa got to the tank the water flew into the air like a torpedo had exploded under a battle-ship, and the hippo had sneezed all right and pa and the audience which had followed him were drenched and deafened by the explosion. The hippo had blown the water all ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... man; but when the Italian had bowed himself out and his guests had sunk into their seats again, he said dryly to Fulkerson, "I reckon they didn't have to torpedo that well, or the derrick wouldn't look quite so ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... turned to the teleceiver screen. To their horror, they saw a menacing shape blasting toward them. They recognized it instantly—a space torpedo! ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... provided with an automatic sprinkler. He made encouraging calculations as to the infrequency of collisions on the Sound, and scoffed at himself, "Why, the most shipping there could be at night would be a couple of schooners, maybe a torpedo-boat." But dread of ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... British merchantmen in the West India track. Her commander was Captain Jacob Jones, a name revived in modern days by a destroyer of the Queenstown fleet in the arduous warfare against the German submarines. Shattered by a torpedo, the Jacob Jones sank in seven minutes, and sixty-four of the officers and crew perished, doing their duty to the last, disciplined, unafraid, so proving themselves worthy of the American naval service and of the memory of the ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... France held Tunis, France held Bizerta. Tunis and Bizerta would shield temporarily the remains of Serbia. From the end of November, 1915, the smaller French ships, torpedo boats, trawlers and transports made the trip from Durazzo to San Giovanni di Medua to embark the Serbian Army. Great steamers, such as the Natal, Sinai, and Armenie, and a flotilla of armored cruisers followed them. Thirteen thousand men ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... his one-man torpedo alertly as he probed the southern bay of Ramasarett. He was a scientist-12 and also a hereditary hunter. If the giant fish, long since eliminated from the rest of the seas, were breeding in some secret area of the far and desolate southern rocks, ...
— Join Our Gang? • Sterling E. Lanier
... the thing descend from the sky. They had not compared notes, however, and their descriptions varied from a black pear-shaped globe which had hovered for minutes before descending behind the mountains into the lake, to detailed word pictures of a silvery, torpedo-shaped vessel of space with portholes and flaming rockets and an unknown flag displayed ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... having waited the thirty seconds which brought no response, "let's see you make good! Will you fire a torpedo, or one of ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... chemical action (336. 346.). It is a fact, too, that many philosophers are still drawing distinctions between the electricities from different sources; or at least doubting whether their identity is proved. Sir Humphry Davy, for instance, in his paper on the Torpedo[E], thought it probable that animal electricity would be found of a peculiar kind; and referring to it, to common electricity, voltaic electricity and magnetism, has said, "Distinctions might be established ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... said Priscilla. "You've read 'The Riddle of the Sands,' I suppose. You must have. Well, that's exactly what he's at, mapping out mud-banks and things so as to be able to run a masked flotilla of torpedo boats in and out when the time comes. There was one of the same lot caught the other day sketching a fortification in Lough Swilly. Father read it to me out of ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... ten and a hundred million meteorites enter our atmosphere and are cremated, every day. Most of them weigh only an ounce or two, and are invisible. Some of them weigh a ton or more, but even against these large masses the air acts as a kind of "torpedo-net." They generally burst into fragments and fall without ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... "It's not a torpedo, or an infernal machine, that you need be in such trepidation," she whispered. "It won't ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... her periscope for a minute as she took her observations. Then she launched a torpedo at a big German supply-ship not more than a ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... 1915, the Russian Black Sea fleet ran into the Breslau and the Hamidieh and damaged them both in a running fight. A week later Russian torpedo boats sank several Turkish ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... radius is about 50,000 miles, depending upon the speed. She carries twelve 16-inch guns, twenty-two 6-inch guns, sixteen 4-inch anti-aircraft guns, eight 3-pounders, four rapid-fire guns, six aerial torpedo tubes, and six bomb droppers, which can simultaneously discharge tons of explosives. She has a complement of 1400 officers and men. She required three years and eight months to build at a cost of $10,000,000. In action her entire ship's company is protected by at least six ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... Bird Cage Walk. Cody and Grahame-White and eight of his air men left Hendon an hour ago to reconnoitre the south coast. Admiral Beatty has started with the Channel Squadron to head off the German convoy in the North Sea, and the torpedo destroyers have been sent to lie outside of Heligoland. We'll get that back by daylight. And on land every one of the three services is under arms. On this coast alone before sunrise we'll have one hundred thousand men, and from Colchester ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... country, could not move himself in bed without luminous corruscations. Such may have been the case of those people, who have been related to have taken fire spontaneously, and to have been reduced to ashes. The electric concussion from the gymnotus electricus, and torpedo, are other instances of the power of the animal system to accumulate electricity, as in these it is used as a weapon of defence, or for the purpose of taking ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... Fritz had a large and varied assortment of "Minenwerfer" with which to entertain us at all hours, day and night. A good many people, even among the soldiers themselves, think that Minenwerfer or "Minnie" for short, is the name of the projectile or torpedo, while, as a matter of fact, it is the instrument which throws it; a literal translation being "mine-thrower." In the same way they often speak of the shells thrown by trench mortars as "trench mortars" themselves. Now the family ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... are nineteen, and the right sex for the adjective. Miss Sally did, being both, and for our own part we think it was inconsiderate and thoughtless of cook. Sally was sprung upon that young man like a torpedo on a ship with no guards out, saying with fascinating geniality through a smile (as one interests oneself in a civility that means nothing) that Mr. Fenwick had just gone out, and she didn't know when he would be back. But why not ask Mrs. Prince at ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... was thrilling: battleships, cruisers, torpedo-boats, the Royal yacht, the Admiralty yacht, and, most interesting of all, Nelson's ship, the Victory. As if the steamer knew that a crowd of eager Cubs were longing to see all round the Victory, it went out of its way to steam right round it, slowly and quite near, ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... line are a serious menace to the vessels carrying them, and they should not be so carried by vessels other than torpedo boats. ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... the broncos he had seen ridden with a Spanish bit; but a big ship under full headway is not stopped very abruptly, and the Narcissus swept on, turning as she went in order to offer as little target as possible to the torpedo. ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... never paid much attention to warfare, and has in general disdained to develop inventions for the destruction of life and property. Some years ago, however, he became the joint inventor of the Edison-Sims torpedo, with Mr. W. Scott Sims, who sought his co-operation. This is a dirigible submarine torpedo operated by electricity. In the torpedo proper, which is suspended from a long float so as to be submerged a few feet under water, are placed the small electric motor for propulsion and steering, and the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... reflection. Although allowed an hour's time for consideration, the soldiers refused to surrender, and opened fire with their rifles on the battleships. Then, before the Kinshu Maru was blown in two by a torpedo, a number of the Japanese officers and men performed harakiri.... This strong display of the fierce old feudal spirit suggests how dearly a Russian ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... considerable amount of trial and modification, attained the unprecedented speed of 341/2 knots an hour, and His Majesty's navy has possessed, in the Turbinia's younger and greater sister, the Viper, now unhappily lost, a torpedo-destroyer capable of 41 miles an hour. There can be little doubt that the sea speeds of 50 and even 60 miles an hour will be attained within the next few years. But I do not think that these developments will do ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... Horatius at the bridge surpassed in heroism young Osmond Kelly Ingram, who threw overboard the explosives on the American destroyer Cassin in order that the German submarine's torpedo should not detonate them and destroy his ship—and gave his life for his comrades and his country in doing so. Ingram sought danger instead of fleeing it. He might have saved his life without discredit. But he did not think of ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... German U-boats as they did over sauerkraut and pretzels and Limburger and "wienies", otherwise known as "hot dogs". Actually, Jimmie found, they were hoping to encounter a submarine; not to be hit, of course, but to have the torpedo pass within a foot or two, so that they might have something thrilling to write ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... the ocean; saw a big passenger liner the victim of torpedo fire; saw babies tossed into the water by distracted mothers who jumped in after them to join them ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... electric cannon. It fires a solid ball, weighing about twenty-five pounds, but instead of powder, which would hardly do under water, and instead of compressed air, which is used in the torpedo tubes of the Government submarines, we use a current of electricity. It forces the cannon ball out with ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... recognising it. If true at all, there is no truth in heaven or earth of deeper practical importance to us; and Protestantism must have lapsed from its once generous spirit, if it persists in imposing a dogma of its own upon our hearts, the touch of which is fatal as the touch of a torpedo to any high or noble ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... of which was larger than the rest. The smaller ones were about eight inches long. All were torpedo-shaped, but had flattened bottoms, which enabled them to stand upright. Two of the smaller ones were empty and unstoppered, the others contained a colourless liquid, and possessed queer-looking, nozzle-like stoppers that were connected by a thin metal rod with ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... Crew Drilling Life-Savers at Work Biograph Pictures of a Military Hazing Developing Moving-Picture Films Building an American Bridge in Burmah Viaduct Across Canyon Diablo Beginning an American Bridge in Mid-Africa Lake's Submarine Torpedo-Boat Protector Speeding at the Rate of 102 Miles an Hour Singing Into the Telephone "Central" Telephone Operators at Work Central Making Connections The Back of a Telephone Switchboard A Few Telephone Trunk Wires The Lanston Type-Setter Keyboard Where the "Brains" ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... could fly out 30 or 40 miles from land, and rising to a great height, descry any hostile ships on the distant horizon, observe their number, strength, formation and direction, and return within two hours with a report to obtain which would require several swift torpedo-boat destroyers and a much greater time. The question as to whether it would be practicable to bombard an enemy on land or sea with explosive bombs dropped or discharged from flying machines or airships, is one which is much discussed but ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... secretly conscious of a superiority. No neighbour mind serves as a mirror to reflect the generous confidence he felt within himself; and perhaps the man never yet existed, who could maintain his enthusiasm to its full vigour, in the midst of this kind of solitariness. He is touched with the torpedo of mediocrity. I believe that nothing which Mary produced during this period, is marked with those daring flights, which exhibit themselves in the little fiction she composed just before its commencement. Among effusions of a nobler cast, I find occasionally ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... 1770; an unknown Negro in Baltimore when the Federal troops were mobbed in that city en route to the front, and Elijah B. Tunnell, of Accomac county, Virginia, who fell simultaneously with or a second before Ensign Bagley, of the torpedo boat Winslow, in the harbor of Cardenas May 11, 1898, ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... of the command of men writ plain thereon. The propellers have swirled faithfully and unceasingly; the good ship in consequence has cleft the passive waves. But who knows what hideous lurking peril of mine or torpedo we have not survived, what baleful eye has not glowered at us, itself unseen, and retired again to its foul underworld, baulked ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... everlasting deep, I thought it was just as short to come up t'other side, so out I came in those parts. If I don't take the shine off the Sea Serpent, when I get back to Boston, then my name's not Sam Patch'.) 'Well,' says I, 'Professor, send for Sam Patch, the diver, and let him dive down and stick a torpedo in the bottom of the Province and blow it up; or if that won't do, send for some of our steam towboats from our great Eastern cities, and tow it out to sea; you know there's nothing our folks can't do, when they once fairly take hold on a thing ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... preceded by their offspring, pairs of soldiers, all might be seen consulting before it and experimenting, advancing their hands over the trough with a certain hesitation. Finally they would touch the living rag at the bottom,—the gelatinous flesh of the fish-torpedo,—receiving a series of electric shocks which quickly made them loosen their prey, laughing and raising the other hand ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... spaces of tossing, blue-grey water, for the sight of a sinister periscope, or for the smudge of a friendly cruiser, and when night fell, a thousand pairs of ears listened with strained intentness for the impact of the deadly torpedo or for the signal of ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... grounds. He was just thinking sorrowfully, as he listened to the music, how like his own position was to that of the hero of Tennyson's Maud—a poem to which he was greatly addicted, when Mr Pickering's 'Hi!' came out of nowhere and hit him like a torpedo. ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... much too shy to ask questions, but she sat like one in a dream, taking in with wide-open eyes all the details of the charming view,—the shores, broken by red-roofed villas and cottages rising from clouds of leafy greenery; the Torpedo Island with its tall flag-staff and floating banner over the dwelling of the Commandant; Fort Adams, whose steep glacis seemed powdered with snow just then from the multitude of daisies in bloom upon them; the light-houses; the soft rises of hill; and beyond, the shimmering heave of the ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... grew almost beside himself with despair; and determined on doing something, he seized the two Eds, and extracting from their pockets every torpedo he could find, flung the latter, in the heat of his passion, out of the window, which naturally resulted in a report much louder than the first one, and thus materially quickened the pace ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... flank and at the rear, the torpedo-boat destroyers were scouting vigilantly, with gunners standing by ready to fire promptly at any periscope or conning tower of an enemy craft ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... skilful and active fishermen in those parts, brought us a fish, which, they said, benumbed their hands. This fish ascends the little river Manzanares. It is a new species of ray, the lateral spots of which are scarcely visible, and which much resembles the torpedo. The torpedos, which are furnished with an electric organ externally visible, on account of the transparency of the skin, form a genus or subgenus different from the rays properly so called.* (* Cuvier, Regne Animal volume ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... of long ship-building experience. Dozens of apparently seaworthy boats have gone up the Yangtze-Kiang, not to return. After years of experiment a somewhat satisfactory river-boat has been evolved. It combines the sturdiness of a sea-going tug with the speed of a torpedo-boat destroyer. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... off and they were in the middle of the canal. The Mungana had passed it. It was in a line with Alan's head. Oh Heavens! a sudden smother of foam, a rush like that of a torpedo, and set low down between two curving waves, a flash of gold. Then a gurgling, inhuman laugh and a weight upon his back. Down went Alan, ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... vessel, to which the above odd name has been given by its inventor, M. Donato Tommasi, of Paris, France, is a combination of a boat wholly submerged with a raft: a connecting link, to borrow the naturalist's expression, between the submerged torpedo boat and the monitor. The advantages which are expected to be realized from this hybrid craft, the inventor describes as follows: "It is evident that a vessel, plunged several yards below the surface of the sea, is no longer influenced by wind or wave. Let the sea be agitated, let there be the most ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... to 100 deg. C. decomposes slowly, and sunlight causes it to undergo a slow decomposition. It can, however, be preserved for years without undergoing any alteration. It is very susceptible to explosions by influence. For instance, a torpedo, even placed at a long distance, may explode a line of torpedoes charged with gun-cotton. The velocity of the propagation of the explosion in metallic tubes filled with pulverised gun-cotton has been found to be from 5,000 to 6,000 mms. per second in tin ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... boats were set to mark the route, and Latham set out on his second attempt at six o'clock. Flying at a height of 200 feet, he headed over the torpedo boats for Dover and seemed certain of making the English coast, but a mile and a half out from Dover his engine failed him again, and he dropped to the water to be picked up by the steam pinnace of an English warship and put ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... has also been played in Italy long ago. The voices would be taken for ventriloquists, whilst scenes heard would be considered to be perceived in catalepsy by a person in good health, and in full possession of his faculties, if not a doctor. At Fiume is the Whitehead torpedo manufactory, but as the hammering and other noises connected with it would prevent the chief persons in charge of the factory from being got at, the hypnotists were doubtless foiled there. Of course they may have got some information indirectly, but nothing ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... a Plaice side by side, and it is plain that they live in very different ways. One is made to dart like an arrow, the other to lie flat. One is the shape of a torpedo, the other is flat like a raft. The shape and colour of the Plaice tell their own story of a life on the sandy, pebbly bed of the sea. And look at the eyes! Both are on the upper side of the head! What could be better ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... muttered; "his old brag and ostentation have caught these fools! I wonder where his vessel is? If I could fire a torpedo under it and send them all where young Jack and the other boy have gone to, I shouldn't have a dull moment for ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... importunate demon of distrust, distrust of himself, awakened by the master-mechanic's warning, refused to be quieted; and when, after the three hours of the slow return journey were out-worn, McCloskey came to tell him that the train was pulling into the Angels yard, the explosion of a track torpedo under the wheels made him ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... curb in front of his door he found a long gray torpedo touring car throbbing with impatience, and at the wheel sat a plump young lady in a vivid green bonnet and driving coat. In the tonneau sat a more slender young lady all in gray, except for the brown of her eyes and the pink of her cheeks and the ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... what would there have been to conquer? Mr. Jeff Davis was constantly writing him to take command of a corps in the confederate army, but Col. Sellers said, no, his duty was at home. And he was by no means idle. He was the inventor of the famous air torpedo, which came very near destroying the Union armies in Missouri, and the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... discharging or receiving cargo, while out on the pale-green, translucent surface of the harbor were scattered a dozen or more war-ships of the North Atlantic Squadron, ranging in size from the huge, double-turreted monitor Puritan to the diminutive but dangerous-looking torpedo-boat Dupont. All were in their war-paint of dirty leaden gray, which, although it might add to their effectiveness, certainly did not seem to me to improve their appearance as component parts of an otherwise beautiful marine picture. Beyond the war-ships and ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... depending on it; for in the main never a bit of ill heart had Colin, though doubtlessly he had in him, deeply established, a trim of rebellion against education that seemed ever on the alert, and which repulsed even its portended approach with a vigour resembling the electric energy of the torpedo. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... submarine, which was thrown into the struggle in increasing numbers, represented an entirely new development, for the submarine is a vessel which can travel unseen beneath the water and, while still unseen, except for a possible momentary glimpse of a few inches of periscope, can launch a torpedo at long or short range and with deadly accuracy. In these circumstances it became imperative to organize the Admiralty administration to meet new needs, and to press into the service of the central administration a large number of officers charged with ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... superdreadnoughts, failed to materialize, and for weeks the people of Great Britain and Germany could only wonder what had become of their naval forces and why they did not come into contact with each other. A few minor engagements in the North Sea, in which light cruisers and torpedo-boat destroyers were concerned, served only to ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... There's a torpedo-boat at the Havre at this moment. A telegram from me will bring her to the Needle at the ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... naval architect named DUNKIN claims to have constructed a new style of vessel, impervious to rams, shell, or shot." Now, then, where is our friend, Captain ERICSSON? The Captain has a torpedo which he is anxious to explode, near a strong vessel belonging to somebody else. He says it will blow up anything. DUNIN says nothing can blow up his vessel. A contest between these very positive inventors would be a positive ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... later and we took stock together of ways and means. We see eye to eye now on every point. Just before lunch we heard the transport Manitou had been attacked by a Turkish torpedo boat from Smyrna. The first wireless came in saying the enemy had made a bad shot and only a few men had been drowned lowering the boats. Admiral Rosy Wemyss and Hope, the Flag-Captain, of the Q.E. were my guests ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... circulated, I know not with what authenticity, that Johnson considered Dr. Birch as a dull writer, and said of him, 'Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand, than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs all his faculties[465].' That the literature of this country is much indebted to Birch's activity and diligence must certainly be acknowledged. We have seen that Johnson honoured him with a Greek Epigram[466]; and his correspondence with him, during ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... us describe the nature of another kind of fish. Perhaps the crews of the aforesaid ships have been benumbed into idleness by the touch of a torpedo, by which the right hand of him who attacks it is so deadened—even through the spear by which it is itself wounded—that while still part of a living body it hangs down benumbed without sense or motion. I think some such misfortunes must have happened to men who are ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... to tired to wright ennything. i never had so much fun in my life. i only got burned 5 times. 1 snapcracker went off rite in my face and i coodent see ennything til mother washed my eyes out. Zee Smith fired a torpedo and a peace of it flew rite in the corner of my eye and made a blew spot there. i fired every one of my snapcrackers. it took me ...
— The Real Diary of a Real Boy • Henry A. Shute
... TORPEDO. A cartilaginous fish allied to the rays, furnished with electrical organs, by means of which it is able to give powerful shocks. Also, a contrivance for blowing up ships of war by means of ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... the 26th of last April, should have given the enemy matter for reflection. Although allowed an hour's time for consideration, the soldiers refused to surrender, and opened fire with their rifles on the battleships. Then, before the Kinshu Maru was blown in two by a torpedo, a number of the Japanese officers and men performed harakiri.... This strong display of the fierce old feudal spirit suggests how dearly a Russian success would ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... interesting sites, though there is some picturesqueness of costume and situation about it; and the Englishman is pleased to see many ships with the national flag, and to know that one of the great industries of the place is the Whitehead torpedo factory. The Tarsia, as the Rjeka was called, gave the name of Tarsatica to the ancient Liburnian city. The Romans built a castle on the bank of the stream to rein in the ferocious Gepids. Round this castle the ancient Tarsatica ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... to your attention the suggestions contained in this report in regard to the condition of our fortifications, especially our coast defenses, and recommend an increase of the strength of the Engineer Battalion, by which the efficiency of our torpedo system would ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... nerve-cell, or "soul-cell," from the brain of an electric fish (Torpedo), magnified 600 times. In the middle of the cell is the large transparent round nucleus, one nucleolus, and, within the latter again, a nucleolinus. The protoplasm of the cell is split into innumerable fine threads (or fibrils), which are embedded in intercellular ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... he whispered. Before I could straighten him out a second and more awful idea hit him. He grabbed a handful of shirt on the first torpedo and poked his face down. "You ...
— Arm of the Law • Harry Harrison
... before Santiago the terror of our great battleships was the two Spanish torpedo-boat destroyers, those swift, fiendish sharks of the sea, engines of death and destruction, and yet, when the great battle came, it was the unprotected Gloucester, a converted yacht, the former plaything and pleasure-boat of a summer vacation, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... at night against torpedo and aeroplane attacks. From that mortar Armand has shot half a dozen bombs of phosphide of calcium which are hurled far into the darkness. They are so constructed that they float after a short plunge and are ignited on contact by the action of the ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... afternoon, was happily attended with no loss of life or serious injuries to the men employed in the shaft, it reads a new lesson as to the firing of charges of powder by electricity, and one that should be carefully noted by railway and civil engineers, and even by the torpedo service of the United States. The exact cause of the explosion has scarcely been fully and accurately set forth by the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... wings on the rocks!" hollers Caligula. "If I see any more I'll fire on 'em and swear they was torpedo-boats!" ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... THE torpedo, in capital letters and italics with a line under the word. I've invented one that would ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... assured that the only prickles that sting from the Royal hedgehog are those which possess a torpedo property, and may benumb some of my friends. I am quite silent, and 'hush'd in grim repose.' The frequency of the assaults has weakened their effects,—if ever they had any;—and, if they had had much, I should hardly have held my tongue, or withheld my ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... after the warning signal. It was when we were nearing the shores of Italy that I had best opportunity to see the destroyers at work. We sighted a submarine which let fly at one of the troopers—the torpedo passing its bow and barely missing the boat beyond it. Quick as a flash the Japanese were after it—swerving in and out like terriers chasing a rat, and letting drive as long as it was visible. We cast around for the better part of an hour, dropping overboard depth charges which ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... have lost both taste and smell in some complete paralysis. The use of Morse's telegraph is by no means confined to the small clique who possess or who understand electrical batteries. It is not only the torpedo or the Gymnotus electricus that can send us messages from the ocean. Whales in the sea can telegraph as well as senators on land, if they will only note the difference between long spoutings and short ones. And they can listen, too. ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... ten yards off and they were in the middle of the canal. The Mungana had passed it. It was in a line with Alan's head. Oh Heavens! a sudden smother of foam, a rush like that of a torpedo, and set low down between two curving waves, a flash of gold. Then a gurgling, inhuman laugh and a weight upon his back. Down went Alan, down ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... control helmet over my head and dropped into the Exec's chair. A quick check showed the crew at their stations, the torpedo hatches clear, the antiradiation shields up and the ship in fighting trim. I stole a quick glance at Chase. Sweat stood out on his gray forehead. His lips were drawn back into a thin line, showing his teeth. His face was tense, but whether ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... credit there are: A bust of her royal highness the Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein; Mr. Gladstone, in marble and bronze; G. F. Watts, in bronze, for the 'Permanent Manchester Art Exhibition'; Mr. Peter Brotherhood, inventor of a torpedo engine, in marble and bronze, which held the place of honor at the Royal Academy the year of its exhibition; Princess Henry of Prussia, in marble; her highness Princess Helena of Saxe-Altenburg; his excellency the Baron von Rheinbaben, ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... Reconnaissance; Photography; Wireless; Bombing; Contact Patrol; Fighting. Co-operation with the Navy: Coast Defence, Patrol and Convoy Work; Fleet Assistance, Reconnaissance, Spotting for Ships' Guns; Bombing; Torpedo Attack. Home Defence: Night Flying and Night Fighting. The Machine and Engine. Tactics and ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... twenty minutes our shells flayed the German front line, and under this arch of shrieking explosives the battle party crawled right up to the rim of the bombardment. What wire remained uncut was blown to fragments by a torpedo, and when the barrage lifted and came down behind, the raiders jumped into the enemy's trench and set to work. For twenty minutes they bombed and destroyed, cleared dug-outs, pulled down machine guns, barricaded communication ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... with me at five-thirty," were his first words. "Katy's all ready, and means to sit up till the boat gets in at two-thirty, keeping a little supper hot and hot for you. The Torpedo Station is in its glory just now, and there's going to be a great explosion on Thursday, ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... the grandson of an Irishman; Henry O'Reilly built the first telegraph line in the United States; and John W. Mackey was the president of the Commercial Cable Company. John P. Holland, the inventor of the submarine torpedo boat, was a native of Co. Clare; and McCormick, the inventor of the reaping and mowing machine, was ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... had it been taken from him, or had he himself passed it on into another's keeping? There were a few incidents that strengthened the possibility of the latter theory. After the torpedo struck the ship, in the few moments during the launching of the boats, Danvers was seen speaking to a young American girl. No one actually saw him pass anything to her, but he might have done so. It seems to me quite likely that he entrusted the papers to this ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... and spoke. "Captain, I'm getting a very short wave transmission from a point out on the starboard bow. Does that sound like your torpedo?" It ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... lunch and dinner. And they even insist upon trifling with the holies of your smoking times, trying to light up cigarettes themselves, and jabbering all the time, why then you seize on a civil offer to risk your neck in a racing car as a drowning man would catch at a torpedo if he found ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... striking objections to such a revelation. From the little we know of the structure of the human understanding, we must be convinced that an overpowering conviction of this kind, instead of tending to the improvement and moral amelioration of man, would act like the touch of a torpedo on all intellectual exertion and would almost put an end to the existence of virtue. If the scriptural denunciations of eternal punishment were brought home with the same certainty to every man's mind as that the ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... deg., 35'; longitude 28 deg., 16', or about two hundred and fifty miles north-west of the Cape Verdes; that wreckage from her had been observed somewhat south of that point; and that bodies floating in vacuum-belts had been recovered by a Spanish torpedo-boat. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... likewise possess the power of accumulating this influence in a great degree; for instanc the torpedo, and electrical eel, which will both give strong shocks; and if the circuit have a small interruption a spark may be seen, as was shown by Mr. Walsh. On dissecting these fish, Mr. Hunter found an organ very similar to the pile of Volta; it consists of numerous membranaceous ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... it also makes them uncomfortable, since they do hold enough values in common with the Danes to understand perfectly the implications of the Danish jibes. Such psychological opposition merges into sabotage very easily. For instance when the Germans demanded ten torpedo boats from the Danish navy, the Danes prepared them for delivery by taking all their guns and equipment ashore, and then burning the warehouse in which these were stored. The Nazis even forbade the press to mention the incident, lest it become a signal ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... feel that this can't last. We sit here talking, and leave everything to Mangan and to chance and to the devil. Think of the powers of destruction that Mangan and his mutual admiration gang wield! It's madness: it's like giving a torpedo to a badly brought up child to ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... "If the place is the best they know how to do in the way of a town, I don't care a heap about their ideas of boats. And—but I beg your pardon, Mr. Holt. My tongue's running a bit ahead of my manners, I guess. So this is where that famous submarine torpedo boat is being built? And she's a diving ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... "Regarding the sinking of torpedo boat V-187," says the Tageblatt account, "an eyewitness says the small craft fought heroically to the bitter end against overwhelming odds. Quite unexpectedly the V-187 was attacked by a flotilla of English destroyers coming from the north. Hardly had ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... the strain of the meal-hours. He would never have believed it. But then use is everything; only the very potency of his success prevented anything resembling elation. He felt like a man who, in his legitimate search for a loaded gun to help him on his way through the world, chances to come upon a torpedo—upon a live torpedo with a shattering charge in its head and a pressure of many atmospheres in its tail. It is the sort of weapon to make its possessor careworn and nervous. He had no mind to be blown up himself; and he could not get rid of the notion that the explosion was bound to ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... her ends. Men's hearts had hitherto been but potter's clay in her hands, and she had no misgivings now; but she felt that the love of Le Gardeur was a thing she could not tread on without a shock to herself like the counter-stroke of a torpedo to the naked foot of an Indian who rashly steps upon it as it basks in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Were greased with blood. They swept the seas For England; and—we reap the fruits Of their heroic deviltries! Our creed is in the cold machine, The inhuman devildoms of brain, The bolt that splits the midnight main, Loosed at a lever's touch; the lean Torpedo; "Twenty Miles of Power"; The steel-clad Dreadnoughts' dark array! Yet ... we that keep the conning tower Are not so strong as they Whose ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... Medusa, and talking about next day's trip, when a little launch came buzzing up from seaward, drew alongside, and this chap I'm speaking of came on board, shook hands with Dollmann, and stared hard at me. Dollmann introduced us, calling him Commander von Brning, in command of the torpedo gunboat Blitz. He pointed towards Norderney, and I saw her—a low, grey rat of a vessel—anchored in the Roads about two miles away. It turned out that she was doing the work of fishery guardship on ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... have heard, Mr. Hewitt—I know there are rumors—of the new locomotive torpedo which the government is about adopting; it is, in fact, the Dixon torpedo, my own invention, and in every respect—not merely in my own opinion, but in that of the government experts—by far the most efficient ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... on the run, just as he was, and then the worst happened. I think the hippo went under water when he found the sneeze was coming, for just as pa got to the tank the water flew into the air like a torpedo had exploded under a battle-ship, and the hippo had sneezed all right and pa and the audience which had followed him were drenched and deafened by the explosion. The hippo had blown the water all out of his tank, and he lay at the bottom, on his side, sneezing little sneezes ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... the clouds form almost a solid flooring, one feels very much at sea, and wonders if one is in the navy instead of aviation. The diminutive Nieuports skirt the white expanse like torpedo boats in an arctic sea, and sometimes, far across the cloud-waves, one sights an enemy escadrille, moving as ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... there were undecked cannon sloops and richly gilded frigates, which were models of the ones the kings had used on their travels. Finally, there were also the heavy, broad armour-plated ships with towers and cannon on deck—such as are in use nowadays; and narrow, shining torpedo boats which ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... coast at the mouth of the Tagliamento River, but withdraws on being attacked by Italian destroyers; Austrian destroyer shells Monopoli; Austrian torpedo boat sinks Italian merchantman Maria Grecia; Italian squadron, supported by an Anglo-French contingent, bombards several islands of the Dalmatian ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... of Di Conti, as it is printed by Ramusio, from a Portuguese version, contains a passage not found in Poggio, in which it is alleged that a river of Ceylon, called Arotan, has a fish somewhat like the torpedo, but whose touch, instead of electrifying, produces a fever so long as it is held in the hand, relief being ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... high tension, generated in the animal system, in the Torpedo, Gymnotus and Silurus. The shocks given by these fish are sometimes very severe. The gymnotus, or electric eel, was elaborately investigated by Faraday. It has the power of voluntarily effecting this discharge. ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... attacked immediately, revealing her periscope for a minute as she took her observations. Then she launched a torpedo at a big German supply-ship not more than a thousand ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... uneven keel made Jonah claw around more than usual, made the whale land-sick. A whale can throw a stream from its snout for about five rods, but when it strikes land that way under heavy ballast it chucks all its load, water and solids, like a torpedo hitting a ship. I have experimented with small whales—say from ten to twenty feet over all, and never knew one to miss when he bumped land. The whale was prepared especially to do that—to release Jonah, and does it with wonderful automatic economy—the same that we ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... enormous vessels being out of the question, the designer must reduce the size. But now the City of Paris will no longer serve as a model, he must look elsewhere for a vessel of high speed, and smaller scale, and naturally he picks out a torpedo boat at the other end of the scale. A speed of 24 knots—and it is claimed even of 25, 26, and 27 knots—has been attained on the mile by a torpedo boat. But such a performance is useless for our mode of comparison, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... who wrote the name "Anzac" with their blood on the Gallipoli beach. For the Southland incident was duplicated in almost every particular on the Ballarat in April, 1917. This story was enacted in the waters of the English Channel, and there were no casualties, for the work of rescue by torpedo-boats was made easy as each man calmly waited his turn and enlivened the monotony meanwhile with ragtime, and again and again did the strains of "Australia Will Be There!" ring out over the waters. As they sang "So Long, Letty," many substituted other Christian ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... she saw Walter! He was in a beautiful, brand new little two-seater, which was shaped very much like a torpedo and came smartly close to ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... exterior calm of a nation plunged in the greatest of wars, yet fighting, so it seemed at the time, with its top hat on and its smile still undisturbed. Across the English Channel three days later the Dutch steam packet Princess Juliana carried us safely through mine fields and between lanes of British torpedo boats and torpedo boat destroyers. We landed on the Continent at Flushing. Thence we headed for The Hague, Holland, the neutral gateway of northern Europe, where we found the American Minister, Dr. Henry van Dyke, and his first secretary, Marshall ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... Meanwhile one fed the men. Now by this same strategy he hoped to shatter those mysterious unknowns of the Central European command. Delhi might talk of a great flank march through Holland, with all the British submarines and hydroplanes and torpedo craft pouring up the Rhine in support of it; Viard might crave for brilliance with the motor bicycles, aeroplanes, and ski-men among the Swiss mountains, and a sudden swoop upon Vienna; the thing was to listen—and wait for the other side to begin experimenting. ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... things are. To see objects at a distance, it must be on the surface, and to see them even close at hand it must at least expose its periscope. Having definitely located an object within easy range, it may wholly submerge and deliver its torpedo without seeing the target. But the chance of a hit under these conditions is remote. Normally the submarine remains on the surface until it sights an enemy. Having approached as close as seems practicable without danger of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... Conversations" had the same infirmity. A very little thing would disturb him for hours, and his friends were never sure of his equanimity. I was present once when a blundering friend trod unwittingly on his favorite prejudice, and Landor went off instanter like a blaspheming torpedo. There were three things in the world which received no quarter at his hands, and when in the slightest degree he scented hypocrisy, pharisaism, or tyranny, straightway he became furious, and laid about ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... metal," said Jack. "See how the moonlight gleams upon them. By George, Captain, they are big as whales. Can they be some type of torpedo-shaped ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... man-of-war, sailless and grim, and the conceit is strengthened by the warlike build of the electric sweeper. It is easy to imagine the iron flanges that sweep the snow from the track to be rammers for a combat at close quarters, and the canvas hangers that shield the brushes, torpedo-nets for defence against a hidden enemy. The motorman on the working end of the sweeper looks like nothing so much as the captain on the bridge of a man-of-war, and he conducts himself with the same imperturbable calm under the petty assaults of ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... what 'wearing' means, Boston," panted the doctor, "but I know the Spanish nature. She's going to ram that hundred and thirty tons of nitro. Don't stop. Pull away. Hold on, there; hold on, you fools!" he shouted. "That's a torpedo; keep away from her!" ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... of International Airways stared foolishly when they saw Carr Parker and the giant Martian enter the mysterious ship which was a trespasser on their landing stage. They gazed incredulously as the gleaming torpedo-shaped vessel arose majestically from its position. There was no evidence of motive power other than a sudden radiation from its hull plates of faintly crackling streamers of silvery light. They fell back in alarm as it pointed its ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... "I should think so! Why, Rupert, our woods were full of squirrels. Such dear little things!—you never saw such pretty squirrels. One of them got so tamed that he used to eat out of my hand. His name was Torpedo. I named him myself. Then there was Beppo, the dearest dog! I wish you knew him. We used to run races and have the greatest fun. And Aunty and I had nice times ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... batteries would redouble their fire. Might better have saved their powder and let us run into the fields and be blown to bits, you will say. Not at all. They would consider that a waste of good mines. Nobody wants to waste a whole mine on a poor little torpedo boat destroyer — and twenty to forty men. There's no profit ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... he muttered; "his old brag and ostentation have caught these fools! I wonder where his vessel is? If I could fire a torpedo under it and send them all where young Jack and the other boy have gone to, I shouldn't have a dull moment for the rest ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... Mrs. Pigg. "Whoever heard of such a thing?" but she ran out to see what it was, and at that moment the cabbage bounded right in front of the pen, hit a big stone, burst open with a noise like a torpedo, and out rolled Buddy Pigg, over and over, just like a pumpkin. But, believe me, he wasn't hurt the least mite, but ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis
... followed order, and soon the gig, with the captain, Trendon, and the torpedo expert, was driving for the point marked "Seal Cave" on the map ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Spanish fleet, with much loss of life, in Manila Bay, May 1, 1898; seven Americans were wounded, none killed. Admiral Cervera, with the pride of the Spanish battle- ships, cruisers, and torpedo-boats, reached Cuban waters from Cape Verde Islands, and, May 19th, sailed into Santiago Harbor, where he was blockaded—"bottled up"—by Admirals Sampson and Schley's fleets. Cervera's fleet, in an attempt to ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... said. "She sends her regards and says a little less heft on the next solar plexus you torpedo ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... Zero, brightening, 'a torpedo in the Thames! Superb, dear fellow! I recognise in you the marks ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... passed through Palace Yard on their way to the House shuddered as they observed a long, black, wicked-looking motor-car, shaped like a torpedo. In this machine Mr. PEMBERTON-BILLING, the new Air-Member for East Herts, had done most of his electioneering. Now he had arrived to take his seat and, rumour said, to make his maiden speech. Would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... to the effect that, next to the Zeppelin air ship, M. Santos Dumont's balloon was probably attracting most of the attention of experts. The account given of this air vessel by the Daily Express was somewhat startling. The balloon proper was compared to a large torpedo. Three feet beneath this hangs the gasoline motor which is to supply the power. The propeller is 12 feet in diameter, and is revolved so rapidly by the motor that the engine frequently gets red hot. The only accommodation for the traveller is a little bicycle seat, from which the aeronaut will ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... another detail. What you are and what he is are both mere footnotes to a philosophy. All history is a footnote to it—or at best a marginal illustration. There is no such thing as communing with Meakins unless you use (as I do) a torpedo or battering-ram as a starter. If you let him have his way he sits in his chair and in his deep, beautiful voice addresses a row of remarks to The Future in General—the only thing big enough or worth while to talk to. He sits perfectly motionless ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... know that as he went after gas his step was springier than it had been for a long, long while. He did not know why it was that he whistled while he filled the torpedo-shaped tank—indeed, Johnny did not even know that he whistled, nor that it was the first time since he had worked over his plane down at Sinkhole Camp when all his dreams were bright, and bad luck had not knocked at his door. Yet he did whistle while he made ready for flight, and his eyes ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... as a means of ascertaining the mental condition of those about her. She has learned to connect certain movements of the body with anger, others with joy, and others still with sorrow. One day, while she was out walking with her mother and Mr. Anagnos, a boy threw a torpedo, which startled Mrs. Keller. Helen felt the change in her mother's movements instantly, and asked, "What are we afraid of?" On one occasion, while walking on the Common with her, I saw a police officer taking a man to the station-house. The agitation ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... in effect, a claim to torpedo at sight, without regard to the safety of the crew or passengers, any merchant vessel under any flag. As it is not in the power of the German Admiralty to maintain any surface craft in these waters, the attack can only be delivered ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... protected by barbed wire entanglements, of bombing whole countrysides, of desolating states and wiping out industries, not to mention the cost of building forty million dollar ships that can be sunk in six or seven minutes with one well aimed torpedo, the limit has been reached, and bankruptcy sooner or later ensues. Capitalism is now paying that ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... hundreds of yards from its goal, the protective mirror was punctured and the freight of high explosive let go, with a silent, but nevertheless terrific, detonation. But now another torpedo was on its way, and another, and another; boring on ruthlessly toward the smaller sphere. Fighting simultaneously three torpedos and the giant globe, the enemy began dodging, darting hither and thither with a stupendous acceleration; but the tiny pursuers could not be ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... three reminded the President that they were the owners of some torpedo or other warlike invention which, if the government would only adopt it, ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... rebel would disappear in a magical way, that was perfectly bewildering. Finally, he dreamed that the rebel assumed the offensive, and one day he met him in the street, carrying in his hand something that looked like a lump of coal, which he threw at Frank. It proved, however, to be a torpedo, for it exploded with a loud report, and as Frank sprang over a fence that ran close by the sidewalk, to escape, he came violently in contact with the walls of a house. At this stage of his dream he was suddenly awakened. To his no small amazement, he found himself stretched ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... creatures in their race for revenge. From the south, came a three-decked vessel, a great island of floating steel, with a flag as red as the angry sky behind it, snapping in the wind. To the south of it plunged two long low-lying torpedo boats, flying the French tri-color, and still further to the north towered three magnificent hulls of the White Squadron. Vengeance was written on every curve and line, on each straining engine rod, and on each polished ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... from Concord and Lexington, was the return of Mr. Perkins to his home. A piece of burning punk lay in the road, and presently he stepped on that. The fleeing forces had doubled on their tracks, also, and a fire-cracker exploded near him. Then a torpedo. And there was no enemy in sight to take revenge on. Mr. Perkins hastened his steps and was soon, himself, ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... water, and instantly, like the gentleman in The Tempest, he 'suffered a sea-change into something rich and strange.' Other men puffed, snorted, and splashed. George passed through the ocean with the silent dignity of a torpedo. Other men swallowed water, here a mouthful, there a pint, anon, maybe, a quart or so, and returned to the shore like foundering derelicts. George's mouth had all the exclusiveness of a fashionable club. His breast-stroke was a thing to see and wonder at. When he did ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... to crush and overawe the opposition they had aroused. In the latter aim they certainly succeeded. Sunday night was the end of the organised opposition to their movements. After that no body of men would stand against them, so hopeless was the enterprise. Even the crews of the torpedo-boats and destroyers that had brought their quick-firers up the Thames refused to stop, mutinied, and went down again. The only offensive operation men ventured upon after that night was the preparation of mines and pitfalls, and even ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... the game was with the salmon. He suffered himself to be drawn, skip-ping with pretended delight at getting to the haven where I would fain bring him. Yet no sooner did he feel shoal water under his ponderous belly than he backed like a torpedo-boat, and the snarl of the reel told me that my labor was in vain. A dozen times, at least, this happened ere the line hinted he had given up the battle and would be towed in. He was towed. The landing-net was useless for one of his size, and I would not have him gaffed. ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... above have confused the two distinct inventions of Fulton just referred to. In the latter half of 1803 he repaired to England, and later on to the United States, and after the year 1803 he seems to have had neither the will nor the opportunity to serve Napoleon. In England he offered his torpedo patent to the English Admiralty, expressing his hatred of the French Emperor as a "wild beast who ought to be hunted down." Little was done with the torpedo in England, except to blow up a vessel ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... announced that afternoon, should be. One fact only was publicly known, and that was that the English fleet, only lately dismissed from its manoeuvres and naval review, had vanished. There were guard ships, old cruisers and what not, at certain ports, torpedo-boats roamed the horizons of Deal and Portsmouth, but the great fleet, the swift forts of sea-power, had gone, disappearing no one knew where, into the fine weather haze that brooded over the midsummer sea. There ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... is not known who first overstepped the bounds of punctilio; but the consequences were immediate. Buck Malone, of the Mulberry Hills, with a Dewey-like swiftness, got an eight-inch gun swung round from his hurricane deck. But McManus's simile must be the torpedo. He glided in under the guns and slipped a scant three inches of knife blade between the ribs of the Mulberry Hill cruiser. Meanwhile Brick Cleary, a devotee to strategy, had skimmed across the lunch counter ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... going splendidly, and both Dick and Murray were enjoying temporary rank as commanders of torpedo-boats during the winter manoeuvres of 1891-92, when suddenly, without any warning, Fate turned her face away from one of the chums and plunged him from the pinnacle of light-hearted happiness to the depths of misery ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... grotto, hero, innuendo, motto, mosquito, mulatto, negro, portico (oes or os), potato, tornado, torpedo, veto, volcano. ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... of vessel, to which the above odd name has been given by its inventor, M. Donato Tommasi, of Paris, France, is a combination of a boat wholly submerged with a raft: a connecting link, to borrow the naturalist's expression, between the submerged torpedo boat and the monitor. The advantages which are expected to be realized from this hybrid craft, the inventor describes as follows: "It is evident that a vessel, plunged several yards below the surface of the sea, is no longer influenced by wind or wave. Let the sea be agitated, ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... trifling thing after all. I was bicycling very pleasantly down a country road to-day, when one of those small pungent beetles, a tiny thing, in black plate-armour, for all the world like a minute torpedo, sailed straight into my eye. The eyelid, quicker even than my own thought, shut itself down, but too late. The little fellow was engulphed in what Walt Whitman would call the liquid rims. These small, hard creatures ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... three-decker of Nelson's time or the battleship of to-day. The 'pinnace' (quite different from more modern pinnaces) was the frigate or the cruiser. And, in Henry VIII's fleet of 1545, the 'row-barge' was the principal 'mosquito' craft, like the modern torpedo-boat, destroyer, or even submarine. Of course the correspondence is far from ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... terrible sensation to any passenger, no matter how brave he may think himself," he went on to say, "when he feels the shock as a torpedo explodes against the hull of the steamer and knows that in a short time she is doomed to be swallowed by the sea. And you told me once yourself, Jack, that this scheming cousin of yours couldn't swim ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... 1806 when Fulton came home to begin her construction. Since his luckless experience with the French Institute he had tested a steamer on the Seine; failed to interest Napoleon; tried, without success, to get the British Government to adopt his torpedo; tried and failed again with the American Government at Washington. Fulton's thoughts seemed to have been riveted on his torpedo; but Livingston was confident of the future of the steamboat, and had had an engine built for it in England, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... thinks the problem of a torpedo boat capable of firing rapidly and with certainty, has at length reached a satisfactory solution. ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... bear with it a torpedo-like power. The first blow, abrupt and stunning, had paralysed. Afterwards, it seemed to carry with it a benumbing faculty, which repressed external display. We say seemed; for there were not wanting indications, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... toward a meeting place. The ship moved a trifle faster, because it was climbing. The speeds would match exactly when they met. The small torpedo-shaped shining ship and the bulging glowing metal satellite floated with a seeming vast deliberation in emptiness, while the most gigantic of possible round objects filled all the firmament beneath them. ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... the estimate of Tolstoy by Merejkowski. The main points of this study have been known to students who followed Tolstoy's extraordinary career for the past quarter of a century. Ibsen's individualism appeals. Better his torpedo exploding a thousand times under the social ark than the Oriental passivity of the Russian. There is hope in the message of Brand; none in Tolstoy's nihilism. One glorifies the will, the other denies, rejects it. No comparison can be made ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... to theory. The torpedo craft could be an atomic jet. All right, he had been in bad shape when he fell into it by chance and the bed machine had caught him as if it had been created for just such a duty. What kind of a small plane would be equipped with a restorative apparatus? ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... shamble, where I can descry Fragments of men, rags of anatomy, Corruption's wardrobe, the transplantive bed Of mankind, and th' exchequer of the dead! How thou arrests my sense! how with the sight My winter'd blood grows stiff to all delight! Torpedo to the eye! whose least glance can Freeze our wild lusts, and rescue headlong man. Eloquent silence! able to immure An atheist's thoughts, and blast an epicure. Were I a Lucian, Nature in this dress Would make me wish a Saviour, and confess. ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... rumble of trains. They had no conception of its import. They did not even realize that war had actually burst upon the serenity of their peaceful lives. Each transport vessel was placed in command of a naval officer, and guarded in its passage across the channel by light cruisers and torpedo destroyers. The transport of the whole Expeditionary Army was completed within ten days, without the loss of a man and with a precision worthy of all military commendation. But such secrecy was maintained that the British public remained in ignorance of its passage ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... point on the border, the order is known in Mexico before it is executed. It is the same with coded communications to Foreign Powers. The movements of our fleet are known to foreign naval attaches even before the maneuvers are carried out. The whereabouts of the smallest torpedo boat and submarine is no secret—to ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... power of 6,071, which on the trial trip gave a speed of 14.66 knots per hour. Five hundred and ten tons of coal are carried in the bunkers, which at a speed of 10 knots should enable the ship to make a voyage of 2,800 knots. Torpedo defense netting is fitted, and there are three masts with military tops carrying ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... that the United States government requested that British war vessels keep away from our coast and then allowed the U-boat 53 to land at Newport and obtain information in regard to the sailing of vessels, which it then proceeded to torpedo. This occurred about the time of the blowing up of vessels ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... speak of him in this manner:—'Tom is a lively rogue; he remembers a great deal, and can tell many pleasant stories; but a pen is to Tom a torpedo, the touch of it benumbs his hand and his brain.' Hawkins's Johnson, p. 209. Goldsmith in his Life of Nash (Cunningham's Goldsmith's Works, iv. 54) says:—'Nash was not born a writer, for whatever humour he might have in conversation, he used to call a pen his torpedo; whenever he grasped ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... ships sailing in echelon formation, preceded, followed, and flanked by destroyers; at night every glimmer of light eclipsed, the ships speeding ahead in perfect blackness, each inch of the sea swept by watchful eyes to discover the telltale ripple of a periscope or the trail of a torpedo, gun crews on the alert, depth bombs ready. Nor was the crossing anything like a vacation yachting cruise for the doughboys transported, packed as they were like sardines two and three decks below the waterline, brought up in shifts to catch a ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... lived. It was cruel enough to be lassoed and disgrace enough to be "hog-tied," as Jim called it, but to be thrust down into a bag and packed on a horse was adding insult to injury. Tom frothed at the mouth and seemed like a fizzing torpedo about to explode. The lioness being considerably longer and larger, was with difficulty gotten into the other pannier, and her head and paws hung out. Both lions kept ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... commercial and military aircraft flights, flights of migratory birds and a myriad of other considerations which might furnish explanations. Generally, the flying objects are divided into four groups: Flying disks, torpedo or cigar-shaped bodies with no wings or fins visible in flight, spherical or balloon-shaped objects and balls of light. The first three groups are capable of flight by aerodynamic or aerostatic means and can be propelled and controlled by methods known to aeronautical ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... the Confederate service in 1861, and was employed at first at Richmond and later as naval agent in Europe. When Lee surrendered, he was in the West Indies on his way to put in use against Federal vessels in Southern ports a method of arranging torpedo mines which he ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... such an aerial ship might be, from which two men could blow up fortress after fortress and city after city when and where they chose. Armies could be annihilated, granite and steel would be as tinder before a bomb or torpedo of picric acid dropped ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... project presents the further advantage of rendering it easier to put the port of Havre quickly in defense. A certain number of floating batteries, anchored behind the breakwaters and protecting the advances of torpedo boats by means of their firing, would make a formidable defense. Not having to perform any evolutions, they might without danger be invested with armor plate thicker than that of ordinary ironclads. In order to complete the system, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... 1864 a Confederate ironclad ram, the Albemarle, appeared on the waters of Albemarle Sound. As no Union war ship could harm her, Commander W. B. Gushing planned an expedition to destroy her by a torpedo. On the night of October 27, with fourteen companions in a steam launch, he made his way to the ram, blew her up with the torpedo, and with one other man escaped. His adventures on the way back to the fleet read like fiction, and are told ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... boys and girls deal with life aboard submarine torpedo boats, and with the adventures of the young crew, and possess, in addition to the author's surpassing knack of storytelling, a great educational ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... thrilling: battleships, cruisers, torpedo-boats, the Royal yacht, the Admiralty yacht, and, most interesting of all, Nelson's ship, the Victory. As if the steamer knew that a crowd of eager Cubs were longing to see all round the Victory, it went out of its way to steam right round it, slowly ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... distress. This was Rojestvensky's flag-ship, and the enemy made it one of their chief targets, sweeping its decks until the great ship became a veritable shambles. Admiral Rojestvensky, wounded and his ship slowly settling under him, was transferred in haste to a torpedo-boat destroyer, and as evening came on the huge ship, still fighting desperately, turned turtle and vanished beneath the waves. As for the admiral, the destroyer which bore him was taken and he fell ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... physics is necessary. It is trite to mention the development in recent years of those mechanical and electrical arts that have made modern civilization. The submarine, vitalized by storage battery and Diesel engine, the torpedo with its gyroscopic pilot and pneumatic motors, the wireless transmission of speech over seas and continents—these things no longer excite wonder nor claim attention as we scan the morning paper; yet how many understand their mechanism or appreciate the ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... fortifications whose walls seemed to run down into the sea, and, beyond, the steep slopes, upon which the picturesque city of Valetta is built. A few naval vessels were within sight of the Transport. A wicked looking submarine and a French torpedo boat passed close by. ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... him. With a crashing bellow of rage and a sweep of his powerful tail he darted at the inoffensive head. But it vanished instantly, and a sudden tremendous turmoil, developing into a wake that lengthened out with the speed of a torpedo-boat, showed him the hopelessness of pursuit. Turning abruptly, he swam back to the shore and sulkily withdrew into the thickets to seek some ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... with," said Fuller, "let's decide what shape we want to use. As designer, I'd like to point out that a sphere is the strongest, a cube easiest to build, and a torpedo shape the most efficient aerodynamically. However, we intend to use it in space, ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... coal; getting the battle-ships and the armored cruisers on the Atlantic into one squadron, both to train them in manoeuvring together, and to have them ready to sail against either the Cuban or the Spanish coasts; gathering the torpedo-boats into a flotilla for practice; securing ample target exercise, so conducted as to raise the standard of our marksmanship; gathering in the small ships from European and South American waters; settling on the number ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... intervening spaces of tossing, blue-grey water, for the sight of a sinister periscope, or for the smudge of a friendly cruiser, and when night fell, a thousand pairs of ears listened with strained intentness for the impact of the deadly torpedo or for the signal ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... historical account of electricity dates back to 600 years B. C. Thales of Miletus was the first to describe the properties of amber, which, when rubbed, attracted and repelled light bodies. The ancients also described what was probably tourmaline, a mineral which has the same qualities. The torpedo, a fish which has the power of emitting electric impulses, was ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... "I never got a chance to deliver it. It is in my pocket at this moment. But I reckon it better not stay there, to rise up in judgment against us," he added, sotto voce, as he arose, went to the fire, drew the white paper torpedo from his vest pocket and dropped it into the flames, where it ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... himself that every state-room was provided with an automatic sprinkler. He made encouraging calculations as to the infrequency of collisions on the Sound, and scoffed at himself, "Why, the most shipping there could be at night would be a couple of schooners, maybe a torpedo-boat." But dread of the unknown was ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... of keenest feeling by implying that she had been deluded with a false vision of happiness in marrying him. As to saying that he was master, it was not the fact. The very resolution to which he had wrought himself by dint of logic and honorable pride was beginning to relax under her torpedo contact. He swallowed half his cup of coffee, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... attempt to drive away the blockaders; and in the course of this prolonged struggle there appeared, for almost the first time in the history of warfare, that most terrible of offensive weapons, the submarine torpedo. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... heavily-padded armor. They checked his instruments, making sure that the protective devices of the suit were functioning at full efficiency. Then all three went out to the flitter. A tiny speedster, really; a torpedo bearing the stubby wings and the ludicrous tail-surfaces, the multifarious driving-, braking-, side-, top-, and under-jets so characteristic of the tricky, cranky, but ultra-maneuverable breed. But this one had something that the ordinary speedster or flitter ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... persistent in his endeavors to drive off the enemy, he adopted the invention of David Bushnell, a native of his own State, which the inventor called the "great American Turtle," and which, in fact, was a submarine torpedo, probably the first one thus used in warfare. It was to be guided by one man, and that man was to have been Bushnell himself; but, unfortunately, he fell sick, and the "turtle" boat with its infernal machine was entrusted to a Connecticut sergeant named ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... pinto. Top (of head) verto. Topaz topazo. Topic subjekto. Topmost plejsupra. Topography topografio. Topple fali. Topsy-turvy, to turn renversi. Topsy-turvy renversita—ite. Toque cxapo. Torch torcxo. Toreador toreadoro. Torment turmenti. Torment turmento—ado. Torpedo torpedo. Torpedo boat torpedboato. Torpid sensenta. Torpidity sensenteco. Torpor sensento. Torrent torento. Torrid varmega. Torsion tordo. Torso torso. Tortoise testudo. Tortuous torda. Torture turmentego. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... attempt to cross the Dvina near Deveten, a few miles northwest of Dvinsk, but were repulsed. Another similar undertaking, attempted August 8, 1916, east of Friedrichstadt, met the same fate. On that day German batteries successfully bombarded Russian torpedo boats and other vessels lying off the coast of Kurland and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... France, in June, 1864. Admiral David Glasgow Farragut entered Mobile Bay, August 5, lashed to the mast of his flagship, the Hartford, and fought the last naval battle of the war. The monitor Tecumseh, which led the National vessels, was struck by the explosion of a torpedo, and sank with Commander Craven and nearly all her officers and men. Farragut, unshaken by this disaster, ordered the Hartford to go ahead heedless of torpedoes, and the other vessels to follow. He ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... cheap tin-plate, and weighs but a fraction of other substances. It is largely replacing brass and copper in all departments of industry — especially where dead weight has to be moved about, and lightness is synonymous with economy — for instance, in bed-plates for torpedo-boat engines, internal fittings for ships instead of wood, complete boats for portage, motor-car parts and boiling-pans for confectionery and in chemical works. The British Admiralty employ it to save weight in the Navy, and the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... accomplish her ends. Men's hearts had hitherto been but potter's clay in her hands, and she had no misgivings now; but she felt that the love of Le Gardeur was a thing she could not tread on without a shock to herself like the counter-stroke of a torpedo to the naked foot of an Indian who rashly steps upon it as it basks in a ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... particular spheres of work, just as warships are built in accordance with the special duty which they are expected to perform. In reconnaissance, speed is imperative, because such work in the air coincides with that of the torpedo-boat or scout upon the seas. It is designed to acquire information respecting the movements of the enemy, so as to assist the heavier arms in the plan of campaign. On the other hand, the fighting corsair of the skies might be likened to the cruiser ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... him is a wonderful place for boat sailing. It fairly bristles with the masts of schooners and yachts, and the guns of torpedo destroyers, and while the architect and the grown-ups did not have a naval base in mind when the sketch was made, I do appreciate ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... or the poor man would have shot himself: we had to gather ourselves together, and show a smooth front to it,—which happily, though difficult, was not impossible to do. I began again at the beginning, to such a wretched, paralyzing torpedo of a task as my ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... so far as to involve discussions whether Godfrey or Hadley had invented the quadrant; whether Hulls or Fulton was the father of the steamboat; whether steamboats were first used in England or America; and whether Fulton should have offered his invention of the submarine torpedo to France as well as to England. One may easily say at the present time that the national spirit should have risen superior to such trivialities; but the national spirit was taking a most provincial cast. Originality was claimed for ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... to the bay, also in the subsequent fierce encounters with a huge Confederate "ram" and gun-boats. At the beginning of the latter encounters one of Farragut's best iron-clads (the Tecumseh) was sunk in a few seconds by a torpedo exploded under her, when all but seventeen of her one hundred and thirty men perished. Undismayed, Farragut pushed on, won a victory, and permanently closed the port of Mobile. When the Tecumseh went to ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... who first overstepped the bounds of punctilio; but the consequences were immediate. Buck Malone, of the Mulberry Hills, with a Dewey-like swiftness, got an eight-inch gun swung round from his hurricane deck. But McManus's simile must be the torpedo. He glided in under the guns and slipped a scant three inches of knife blade between the ribs of the Mulberry Hill cruiser. Meanwhile Brick Cleary, a devotee to strategy, had skimmed across the lunch counter and thrown the switch of the electrics, leaving the combat ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... placed at the water-pumps, the oxygen containers, air-purifiers and [v]distilling machinery, and the [v]hatchways were thoroughly examined; the gunners took their posts at the torpedo tubes. The order had been given to move about as little as possible, to keep in the berths when not on duty, and not to talk and laugh. Then the watchman left the [v]conning tower, and the main ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... be indicative of an inquisitive nature. Jimmy's stood out like the handles on a loving-cup. With all this explosive material bottled up in him, he felt like a torpedo-boat deprived ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... force of the Navy consists of four battle ships of the first class, two of the second, and forty-eight other vessels, ranging from armored cruisers to torpedo boats. There are under construction five battle ships of the first class, sixteen torpedo boats, and one submarine boat. No provision has yet been made for the armor of three of the five battle ships, as it has been impossible to obtain it at the price fixed by Congress. It is of great importance ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... enthusiasm, "Marston will come! and Elphinstone of the torpedo! and the gallant Bloomsbury, and Billsby the brave, and all our friends of the Baltimore Gun Club! And we shall receive them with all the honors! And then we shall establish projectile trains between the Earth and the ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... books for boys and girls deal with life aboard submarine torpedo boats, and with the adventures of the young crew, who, by degrees, become most expert in this most wonderful and awe-inspiring field of modern naval practice. The books are written by an expert and possess, in addition to the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... just ahead, a dozen giant craft, torpedo-shaped and steel-incased, the scarlet fire of their gas blasts holding them poised steady in their fifty-mile-long line. From curious swellings that broke the clean lines of their under-bodies black spheres were dropping in steady streams. Allan knew then whence came the crash ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... the shout, "Triumph's been torpedoed." Mac jumped on his fire-step, and, looking down the trench, saw beyond it sure enough the poor old Triumph with a heavy list towards him. Some of the fellows had seen the torpedo strike her right amidships, and a great column of water rise high in the air and ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... distinguish the vessels from the hulks. The Pinola struck the third from the eastern shore and her men jumped on board. The intention was to explode two charges of powder with a slow match over the chains, and a torpedo by electricity under the bows of the hulk, a petard operator being on board. The charges were placed, and the Pinola cast off. The operator claims that he asked Bell to drop astern by a hawser, but that instead ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... and torpedo lines placed as described. Be it said in passing that only places of decisive importance, commercially or militarily, need such defences. Modern fleets cannot afford to waste ammunition in bombarding unimportant towns,—at least when so far ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... Type Torpedo Boat.—The fastest type of British torpedo boat, constructed by Messrs. Yarrow ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... wide, and five feet deep. Her motive power consisted of eight men whose duty it was to turn the crank of the propeller shaft by hand until the target had been reached. When this primitive craft was closed for diving there was only sufficient air to support life for half an hour. Since the torpedo was attached to the boat itself there was no chance of escape. The only hope was to reach and destroy the enemy vessel before the crew were ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... coast with renewed vigilance. The inhabitants made every attempt to drive away the blockaders; and in the course of this prolonged struggle there appeared, for almost the first time in the history of warfare, that most terrible of offensive weapons, the submarine torpedo. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... will remember with pleasure the presence in our midst of this famous Polar navigator in August, 1880, and his lady, whose kindliness of manner and elegant French, won the hearts of many. The instructive torpedo lectures of the scientific commander of the Northampton iron-clad, Capt. Fisher, will likewise retain a corner in the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Even the insult failed to move me. The rest of the game was with the salmon. He suffered himself to be drawn, skip-ping with pretended delight at getting to the haven where I would fain bring him. Yet no sooner did he feel shoal water under his ponderous belly than he backed like a torpedo-boat, and the snarl of the reel told me that my labor was in vain. A dozen times, at least, this happened ere the line hinted he had given up the battle and would be towed in. He was towed. The landing-net was useless for one of his size, and I would ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... cargo, while out on the pale-green, translucent surface of the harbor were scattered a dozen or more war-ships of the North Atlantic Squadron, ranging in size from the huge, double-turreted monitor Puritan to the diminutive but dangerous-looking torpedo-boat Dupont. All were in their war-paint of dirty leaden gray, which, although it might add to their effectiveness, certainly did not seem to me to improve their appearance as component parts of an otherwise beautiful marine picture. Beyond the war-ships and nearer to ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... tired to wright ennything. i never had so much fun in my life. i only got burned 5 times. 1 snapcracker went off rite in my face and i coodent see ennything til mother washed my eyes out. Zee Smith fired a torpedo and a peace of it flew rite in the corner of my eye and made a blew spot there. i fired every one of my snapcrackers. it took me ...
— The Real Diary of a Real Boy • Henry A. Shute
... to realise," he said, "that I have just come from a cruise on a torpedo-boat. There was such a sea on as a rule that cooking operations were entirely suspended, and we lived ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... few steps up the hill and found Richard Lane waiting for them in his car. The long, grey racer looked almost like some submarine monster, with its flaring head-lights and torpedo-shaped body which scarcely ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... engine of war such an aerial ship might be, from which two men could blow up fortress after fortress and city after city when and where they chose. Armies could be annihilated, granite and steel would be as tinder before a bomb or torpedo of picric acid dropped from ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... Boat in the World.—Messrs. Thornycroft & Co., of Chiswick, in making preliminary trials of a torpedo boat built by them for the Spanish navy, have obtained a speed which is worthy of special record. The boat is twin-screw, and the principal dimensions are: Length 147 ft. 6 in., beam 14 ft. 6 in., by 4 ft. 9 in. draught. On a trial at Lower Hope, on April 27, the remarkable mean speed ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... about ten yards off and they were in the middle of the canal. The Mungana had passed it. It was in a line with Alan's head. Oh Heavens! a sudden smother of foam, a rush like that of a torpedo, and set low down between two curving waves, a flash of gold. Then a gurgling, inhuman laugh and a weight upon his back. Down went Alan, ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... 3 the next morning, we boarded a destroyer to make the run to Off, which was eighty-five miles away along the coast, and put off out of the harbour through the gap in the torpedo-net about dawn. It was a lovely morning without a breath of air; this was as well perhaps, because the interior of the vessel, an old-type craft making a tremendous fuss over going, say, 18 knots, was not particularly attractive. ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... shell. Everything thinner has been punctured, and now an eighty-ton gun, to cost sixty thousand pounds, is getting ready to perforate that. There must be a stopping-point for all this somewhere. Perhaps the fate of armor afloat may soon be settled finally by the torpedo, as its efficiency on land was disposed of by the bullet, and the men-at-arms of the sea no longer lord it over hosts of wooden yeomanry. Happy the nation that can look on with its hands firmly in its pockets while others lavish their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... officer on the bridge had seen it too. Simultaneously everyone seemed to become aware that something was wrong—and for a brief second almost a panic occurred. The ship was swinging to port, but Vane realised that it was hopeless: the torpedo must get them. And the sea-gulls circling round the boat shrieked discordantly at him. . . . He took a grip of the rail, and braced himself to meet the shock. Involuntarily he closed his eyes—the devil . . . it was worse than a crump—you could hear that coming—and this. ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... they are. There is also the fact that I have only hired the skis for three weeks. Also—a minor point, but one that touches me rather—that I shall want my hair cut long before March is out. Thomas, imagine me to be a torpedo-destroyer on the Maplin Sands, and tell me what ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... The torpedo boat was found after the war lying on the bottom of the harbor, about one hundred feet from the wreck of the Housatonic, with her bow pointing toward the sloop of war and with every man of her crew dead at his post,—just as they ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Bemerhaven, and people began to talk about coal torpedoes. Then I knew as in all probability I'd carried the man who managed the business, and I gave word to the police, but they never could make anything of it. You know what a coal torpedo is, don't you? Well, you see, a cove insures his ship for more than its value, and then off he goes and makes a box like a bit o'coal, and fills it chock full with dynamite, or some other cowardly stuff of the sort. ...
— The Cabman's Story - The Mysteries of a London 'Growler' • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not at his best when playing a lone-handed or tactically isolated part in battle. He is not a kamikaze or a one-man torpedo. Consequently, the best tactical results obtain from those dispositions and methods which link the power of one man to that of another. Men who feel strange with their unit, having been carelessly received by it, and indifferently handled, will rarely, if ever, fight strongly and courageously. ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... Lido, where I supped at a little osteria beneath the trees, a number of gray torpedo boats rushed to and fro in the harbor entrance, restless as hunting dogs straining at the leash. That night Venice was dark, so black that one stumbled from wall to wall along the narrow lanes in the search for his own doorway. War was close at hand: the menace ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... relieve from their misery. This is not rhetorical exaggeration. The weapons of offence regularly win in their race with the weapons of defence. Fortresses that took years to construct are shattered in a day. The ironclad is sunk by the torpedo. How very little margin lay between this country and starvation through action of submarines! Suppose the enemy had possessed five times as many submarines from the first, would our defensive measures have prevailed? How small an extension ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... from Cronstadt; cruisers and torpedo-boats came. An order was issued to the sailors and to the Red Guards who patrolled all the works of the Taurida, to make use of their arms if any one attempted to enter the palace. For that day unlimited powers were accorded to the military authorities. At ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... large branching nerve-cell, or "soul-cell," from the brain of an electric fish (Torpedo), magnified 600 times. In the middle of the cell is the large transparent round nucleus, one nucleolus, and, within the latter again, a nucleolinus. The protoplasm of the cell is split into innumerable fine threads (or fibrils), which are embedded in intercellular ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... mean film one as it sent a torpedo to blow us out of the water. Wouldn't it be great if we could ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... attacked by a submarine. Germany admits that it was a German submarine. The submarine deliberately fired a torpedo at the GREER, followed later by another torpedo attack. In spite of what Hitler's propaganda bureau has invented, and in spite of what any American obstructionist organization may prefer to believe, I tell ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... the entire Spanish fleet, with much loss of life, in Manila Bay, May 1, 1898; seven Americans were wounded, none killed. Admiral Cervera, with the pride of the Spanish battle- ships, cruisers, and torpedo-boats, reached Cuban waters from Cape Verde Islands, and, May 19th, sailed into Santiago Harbor, where he was blockaded—"bottled up"—by Admirals Sampson and Schley's fleets. Cervera's fleet, in an attempt to escape, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... hummed and spoke. "Captain, I'm getting a very short wave transmission from a point out on the starboard bow. Does that sound like your torpedo?" It was Mannion. ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... are," replied Henry. "And this is how it came about. When I read of the leak in the navy's secrets and the attempts of the Germans to torpedo our transports, I wrote to Captain Hardy about it. I told him we could be just as useful catching German spies in New York as we were in Pennsylvania. He answered and said he didn't think we could be of any ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... entered the northwest passage of Key West Harbor, and was headed towards the quaint island city that had been brought into such sudden prominence by the war. The port was filled with United States cruisers, gun-boats, yachts converted into torpedo-boat destroyers, Government hospital-ships, and others flying the flag of the Red Cross Society, transports, colliers, supply-ships, water-boats, and a huddle of prizes—steamers and sailing-vessels captured off the Cuban coast. ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... explosion, but it found no solution of the disaster. Various theories were advanced of internal spontaneous explosion, but no one was misled. The general sentiment of Americans was that the Spanish in Cuba deliberately exploded a submarine torpedo under her, to accomplish the result that followed. Previous to this cowardly act there was much difference of opinion among the people of all sections of the country as to the propriety of declaring war against ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... long been waited for, and the arrangements sailed in secret, and the news was known in American cities scarcely any sooner than it was in France, so careful had the military authorities been not to give the lurking German submarines a chance to torpedo the transports. ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... been circulated, I know not with what authenticity, that Johnson considered Dr. Birch as a dull writer, and said of him, 'Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand, than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs all his faculties[465].' That the literature of this country is much indebted to Birch's activity and diligence must certainly be acknowledged. We have seen that Johnson honoured him with a ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Government, which should be announced that afternoon, should be. One fact only was publicly known, and that was that the English fleet, only lately dismissed from its manoeuvres and naval review, had vanished. There were guard ships, old cruisers and what not, at certain ports, torpedo-boats roamed the horizons of Deal and Portsmouth, but the great fleet, the swift forts of sea-power, had gone, disappearing no one knew where, into the fine weather haze that brooded over the midsummer ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... or Anzac Cove, and must also envisage the possibility of a still further reduction of my front in the near future. Taking the first question of abandoning Anzac Cove and closing to the North, Suvla Bay is now netted and comparatively secure from torpedo attack. Further, it offers certain facilities for disembarkation in winter gales. It has, therefore, some decided advantages but though I should be able to hold it safely at present, it would present no facilities for further contraction of ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... until it hit his forehead and then it turned over, spilling the eggs on the floor and making a terrible mess. As the eggs broke, each one made a noise like a small paper torpedo, and Billy knew the noise would bring the cook, so he scooted up the stairs to the next landing, where he kept very still in order to hear what the cook would say when she saw the broken eggs for he heard ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... not actually published until May 1st—the very date on which the Lusitania left New York harbor. This conjunction was bound to appear intentional rather than fortuitous, and even to-day the majority of Americans believe that I must have known beforehand of the design to torpedo the Lusitania. ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... out. Order followed order, and soon the gig, with the captain, Trendon, and the torpedo expert, was driving for the point marked "Seal Cave" on the map ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... be a solemn farce. "I never got a chance to deliver it. It is in my pocket at this moment. But I reckon it better not stay there, to rise up in judgment against us," he added, sotto voce, as he arose, went to the fire, drew the white paper torpedo from his vest pocket and dropped it into the flames, where it was instantly burned ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... out into the stream all I could think of was that there were a million German submarines with a torpedo on each, across the warhead of which was inscribed my ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... are purely accidental and contrary to my principles. We shall wipe the floor of the mill-pond with the scalps of able-bodied British tars! I see Professor Edison about to arrange for us a torpedo-hose on wheels, likewise an infernal electro-semaphore; I see Henry Irving dead-sick and declining to play Corporal Brewster; Cornell, ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... mistress of mysteries—the Ocean. Just as to save life is greater than to destroy it, so is the true savior of the seas the Fisheries craft, not the battleship; so is the hatchery mightier than the fortress, the net or the microscope a more powerful weapon for good than the torpedo ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the old broadside, sailing frigate in single conflict was brought to the highest point of perfection ever reached, that this same navy should have contained the first representative of the modern war steamer, and also the torpedo—the two terrible engines which were to drive from the ocean the very whitewinged craft that had first won honor for the starry flag. The tactical skill of Hull or Decatur is now of merely archaic interest, and has but little more bearing on the manoeuvring of a modern fleet than have the ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... it is supposed, escaped the vigilance of the Channel Squadron, consisting of H.M. First-class Battle-ship Blunderer, accompanied by the third-class cruiser Jack-ass, and the torpedo-boats Corkscrew and Tooth-brush, which, also it is supposed, represent a fleet of thirty-six iron-clads, twenty-six armoured cruisers, attended by fifty torpedo vessels, have sailed victoriously up the Thames, and, having seized the Serpentine, command ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... warfare; and this passion for war and its preparations occurs frequently among these early artists. Leonardo designed scores of military engines. Francesco di Giorgio has left a whole bookful of such sketches, in one of which he anticipates the torpedo-boat.[84] So, too, Michael Angelo took his share in erecting fortifications, though he did not fritter away so much time on experiments as some of his contemporaries. Donatello and his colleagues did not even leave us plans to compensate for their ignominious failure. One ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... collapsible sail resembled that of the familiar chambered nautilus, was surprisingly ahead of its time; it had a fish-like shape, screw propulsion (by a two-man hand winch), horizontal diving rudder, compressed air tank, water tank filled or emptied by a pump, and a torpedo[1] consisting of a detachable case of gunpowder. A lanyard ran from the torpedo through an eye in a spike, to be driven in the enemy hull, and thence to the submarine, which as it moved away brought the torpedo up taut against the spike and caused its explosion. Fulton interested Napoleon ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... where I can descry Fragments of men, rags of anatomy, Corruption's wardrobe, the transplantive bed Of mankind, and th' exchequer of the dead! How thou arrests my sense! how with the sight My winter'd blood grows stiff to all delight! Torpedo to the eye! whose least glance can Freeze our wild lusts, and rescue headlong man. Eloquent silence! able to immure An atheist's thoughts, and blast an epicure. Were I a Lucian, Nature in this dress Would make ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... get to the entrance of the Channel you will probably find it swarming with French cruisers and torpedo-destroyers, so if you'll be advised by me, you'll leave Queenstown out and get as far ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... He's like a torpedo blow-up under the engine-room. The bank'll sink if he stays aboard another month, I do believe. And yet," he added, with a shake of the head, "I don't see but he'll have to stay; there ain't another ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... t'other side, so out I came in those parts. If I don't take the shine off the Sea Serpent, when I get back to Boston, then my name's not Sam Patch'.) 'Well,' says I, 'Professor, send for Sam Patch, the diver, and let him dive down and stick a torpedo in the bottom of the Province and blow it up; or if that won't do, send for some of our steam towboats from our great Eastern cities, and tow it out to sea; you know there's nothing our folks can't do, when they once fairly take hold on a thing ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... III., headed the infantry advance in the direction of Rustchuk, and served with marked distinction in command of one of the corps in the army of the Lom. A younger brother, the Grand Duke Alexis, the nautical member of the imperial family, had charge of the torpedo and subaqueous mining operations on the Danube, and was held to have shown practical skill, assiduity, and vigour. Prince Serge of Leuchtenberg, younger brother of the Leuchtenbergs previously mentioned, was shot dead by a bullet through the head in the course of his duty as a staff officer ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... days in bed Fulton went to his foundry to inspect the battery's machinery causing a relapse from which he died. This resulted in some delay in completing the machinery and stopped work on the Mute, an 80-foot, manually propelled, torpedo boat that Fulton was having built in ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle
... course! There's a torpedo-boat at the Havre at this moment. A telegram from me will bring her to the Needle ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... his weight and muscle on the left rein. The team and cart swerved that way and crashed like a torpedo into the pillar. The men on the cart went flying like skittles. The driver's strap burst, the pillar rang with the shock, and John Byrnes fell on the car track with a broken shoulder twenty feet away, while Erebus—beautiful, ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... those in the center of the column, and directly under the colors. The men scattered, and a piece of old cloth was seen lying on the ground at the point from which the report emanated. Colonel McKean, who was very near, lifted the cloth with the point of his sword, and discovered a torpedo carefully buried in the ground, except a nipple which had been filled with fulminating powder, which was covered by the old cloth. The fuse only had exploded. Had the machine itself exploded, it must ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... cried Zero, brightening, 'a torpedo in the Thames! Superb, dear fellow! I recognise in you the marks of an ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... no other actor's role, comes upon the stage in fitting scenes, keeps to the text and the impersonations which right principle and pure taste assign him. His grimaces are not for the church. He may not sing his catches when penitent souls are listening to the "Miserere," drop his torpedo-puns when life's mystery and solemnity are pressed heavily upon the soul,—be irreverent, profane, or vulgar. He must know and keep his place. But he should have his place, and have it confessed; and that place is not quite at the end of the procession of the benefactors of the race. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... When he first saw the great ship sailing up in the sunshine, its decks crowded with peaceful passengers, and he rose like a murderer out of his hiding-place in the bowels of the sea, what were the feelings with which he ordered the torpedo to be fired? When, having launched his bolt, he sank and then rose again, and heard the drowning cries of his victims struggling in the water, what were the emotions with which he ran away? And when he returned to ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... "a naval architect named DUNKIN claims to have constructed a new style of vessel, impervious to rams, shell, or shot." Now, then, where is our friend, Captain ERICSSON? The Captain has a torpedo which he is anxious to explode, near a strong vessel belonging to somebody else. He says it will blow up anything. DUNIN says nothing can blow up his vessel. A contest between these very positive inventors would be a positive luxury—to those who ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... heard a word of the danger of meeting a submarine. The idea that one might send a torpedo after us popped into my mind once or twice, but when it did I looked out at the destroyers, guarding us, and the airplanes above, and I felt as safe as if I had been in bed in my wee hoose at Dunoon. It was a true highway of war that those whippets of the sea ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... 6, 1915, the Russian Black Sea fleet ran into the Breslau and the Hamidieh and damaged them both in a running fight. A week later Russian torpedo boats sank several Turkish supply boats ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... since the country followed, in scanty telegram from port to port, the Oregon speeding down one side of a continent and up the other to Bahia; then came two anxious, silent weeks when apprehension and fear pictured four Spanish cruisers with a pack of torpedo boats sailing out into the west athwart the lone ship's course, the suspense ending only when tidings came of her arrival at Jupiter Inlet; then off Santiago, after a month of waiting, there is the outcoming of Cervera's squadron, when this splendid ship, with steam all the time up, leaps ...
— The Voyage of the Oregon from San Francisco to Santiago in 1898 • R. Cross
... toy torpedo boats—mere streaks of red and black upon the water, with Italy's flag at the taffrail. But the little ships were no toys and Assunta hated them, for the strange craft told of the ceaseless battle waged by authority against the mountain smugglers and reminded the widow of her own lawless husband's ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... manager, with enthusiasm. "Sloshing about in those waves, sea-sick mostly, and wet all the time, and with a mutinous crew, and so afraid you'll miss something that you can't write what you have got." Then he added, as an after- thought, "And our cruisers thinking you're a Spanish torpedo-boat and chucking shells ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... the subject of naval construction. Before entering the German Secret Service, I certainly knew the difference between a torpedo and a torpedo boat destroyer, but naturally could not give an accurate description of the various types of destroyers and torpedoes. My instructor in this subject was Lieutenant Captain Kurt Steffens, torpedo expert of the Intelligence Department of the Imperial Navy. After a month of ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... word that they tried to torpedo the Orduna, but failed by a hair. This does not look like a reversal of policy. Of course those chaps think we are bluffing because we have been too polite. We have talked Princetonian English to a water-front bully. I did not believe for one moment that ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... all, there is no truth in heaven or earth of deeper practical importance to us; and Protestantism must have lapsed from its once generous spirit, if it persists in imposing a dogma of its own upon our hearts, the touch of which is fatal as the touch of a torpedo to any high or noble endeavours ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Confederate ram "Raleigh" was in the Cape Fear River above the town of Smithville, the scene of the last adventure. Cushing obtained permission from his superior officer to ascend the river, and try to blow up the ram with a torpedo. On the night of the 23d of June he started, taking with him Jones and Howarth, the officers who had been with him in the previous trip, and fifteen men. The night was pitchy dark, and all went well as they passed the fort and the little town of Smithville. Fifteen miles ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... kept afloat by pieces of cork. This grappling-iron, it was intended, should hook itself to the cable of the vessel it was to destroy, and thus swing the catamaran alongside. It was, indeed, on a larger scale, though with less destructive power, something like Harvey's torpedo of the ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... among the bruisers of the main, by the mob of iron-clads, infinitely diverse of aspect and some of them shapeless, like the geologic monsters that weltered in the primal deep. Which of these is to triumph ultimately and devour its misshapen kindred, or whether they are not all to go down before the torpedo, that carries no gun and fires no shot, is a "survival-of-the-fittest" question to be solved by Darwins yet to come. But it is tolerably safe to say that where the best shooting is to be done it will continue to be done with the conico-cylindrical missile, spirally revolving around ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... believed it impossible that Germany should carry out her threat, but they were soon to be disillusioned. Because the handsome vessel passed through a zone of the seas which the Teuton war lords declared blockaded, they sent a torpedo from an underseas boat into her bowels. The horrors of that event are still fresh in the minds of millions. No such ruthless and wanton destruction of innocent human beings had been accomplished by a so-called ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... "I do not think you would find much difference between oakum-picking and sentry-go, and a plank-bed and a hammock on board a torpedo-boat have each great claim ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... read as follows: "A queer thing has happened here. A cruiser which had come in for repair was due to go out this morning. She was ready for sea the night before, the officers and crew had all come back from short leave, and the working parties had cleared out. Then in the middle watch, when the torpedo lieutenant was testing the circuits, it was discovered that all the cables leading to the guns had been cut. Dawson has been called in, and bids me say that, if you can come down, now is the chance of your life. I ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... warships on the 26th of last April, should have given the enemy matter for reflection. Although allowed an hour's time for consideration, the soldiers refused to surrender, and opened fire with their rifles on the battleships. Then, before the Kinshu Maru was blown in two by a torpedo, a number of the Japanese officers and men performed harakiri.... This strong display of the fierce old feudal spirit suggests how dearly a Russian success ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... false vision of happiness in marrying him. As to saying that he was master, it was not the fact. The very resolution to which he had wrought himself by dint of logic and honorable pride was beginning to relax under her torpedo contact. He swallowed half his cup of coffee, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Choof-choof-choof! came the Torpedo Destroyer behind us, and I wrapped the reins around my wrist, in case Parsifal should get uneasy and want to print ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... Connecticut, and had never till that day seen the ocean. She was much too shy to ask questions, but she sat like one in a dream, taking in with wide-open eyes all the details of the charming view,—the shores, broken by red-roofed villas and cottages rising from clouds of leafy greenery; the Torpedo Island with its tall flag-staff and floating banner over the dwelling of the Commandant; Fort Adams, whose steep glacis seemed powdered with snow just then from the multitude of daisies in bloom upon them; the light-houses; the soft rises of hill; and beyond, the shimmering ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... Outlines seemed merged, rocks did not look the same, whirlpools had a different vortex, islands of stone had a new configuration. As they sped on, lurching, jumping, piercing a broken wall of wave and spray like a torpedo, shooting an almost sheer fall, she came to rely on a sense of intuition rather than memory, for night had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... engine of destruction, and in these disaster-filled times, when men tax their ingenuity to build increasingly powerful aggressive weapons, it was possible that, unknown to the rest of the world, some nation could have been testing such a fearsome machine. The Chassepot rifle led to the torpedo, and the torpedo has led to this underwater battering ram, which in turn will lead to the world putting its foot down. At least I hope ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... experienced before. For twenty minutes our shells flayed the German front line, and under this arch of shrieking explosives the battle party crawled right up to the rim of the bombardment. What wire remained uncut was blown to fragments by a torpedo, and when the barrage lifted and came down behind, the raiders jumped into the enemy's trench and set to work. For twenty minutes they bombed and destroyed, cleared dug-outs, pulled down machine guns, barricaded communication trenches, and handed prisoners ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... explained by the submarine explosion of this torpedo. Cyrus Harding could not be mistaken, as, during the war of the Union, he had had occasion to try these terrible engines of destruction. It was under the action of this cylinder, charged with some explosive substance, nitro-glycerine, picrate, or some other ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... bears, he retired somewhat crestfallen and went with his difficulties to Angelique, the young lady in the wine shop in the Rue des Francs-Bouchers. Angelique informed him that a brave sailor on leave from his torpedo boat was in the habit of visiting the wine shop every evening. He ought to know something of the sea. A meeting was arranged by Angelique between Hegisippe, Septimus and the brave sailor, much to Emmy's skeptical amusement; and the brave ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... objections to such a revelation. From the little we know of the structure of the human understanding, we must be convinced that an overpowering conviction of this kind, instead of tending to the improvement and moral amelioration of man, would act like the touch of a torpedo on all intellectual exertion and would almost put an end to the existence of virtue. If the scriptural denunciations of eternal punishment were brought home with the same certainty to every man's mind as that the night ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... two. It is important, therefore, that we should have a more rapid increase in the number of serviceable ships. I concur in the recommendation of the Secretary that the construction of 8 armored ships, 3 gunboats, and 5 torpedo boats be authorized. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... and instantly, like the gentleman in The Tempest, he 'suffered a sea-change into something rich and strange.' Other men puffed, snorted, and splashed. George passed through the ocean with the silent dignity of a torpedo. Other men swallowed water, here a mouthful, there a pint, anon, maybe, a quart or so, and returned to the shore like foundering derelicts. George's mouth had all the exclusiveness of a fashionable club. His breast-stroke was a thing to see and wonder at. When he did ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... solitude made them a more conspicuous and easier mark, like lonely trees on the heath. Yet all this while the land was full of garrisons, the embayed waters full of fleets. With the impunity of a Levanter, Paul skimmed his craft in the land-locked heart of the supreme naval power of earth; a torpedo-eel, unknowingly swallowed by Britain in a draught of old ocean, and making sad havoc ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... almost level with the water, and the boat seemed down by the head, and did not take the sea well. Though there was scarcely any chop, the waves came over, forward, as though a storm were running. Tonet, however, with nothing in particular to lose on the venture, made fun of the old-tub—a torpedo-boat he called her, she sat ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... (8) Tanta torpedo invaserat animum Vitellii, ut si principem eum fuisse non meminissent, ipse oblivisceretur. Hist., ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... the German submarine exploits continued and found among their victims a British warship, along with the many merchantmen. On March 11, 1915, the British auxiliary cruiser Bayano, while on patrol duty became the victim of a German torpedo off the Scotch coast. She went down almost immediately, carrying with her the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... almost against his plate and both hands and both feet manipulating controls, hurled the first torpedo. Propelling rockets viciously aflame, it twisted and looped around the incandescent rods of destruction so thickly and starkly outlined, under perfect control; unaffected by the hideous distortion of all ether-borne signals. Through a pirate screen it went, ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... even insist upon trifling with the holies of your smoking times, trying to light up cigarettes themselves, and jabbering all the time, why then you seize on a civil offer to risk your neck in a racing car as a drowning man would catch at a torpedo if he found ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... long, will you," left her and swam out into the blue with her swift, over-hand stroke. Neville was the best swimmer in a swimming family. She clove the water like a torpedo destroyer, swift and untiring between the hot summer sun and the cool summer sea. She shouted to the others, caught them up, raced them and won, and then they began to duck each other. When the Hilary brothers and sisters were swimming or playing ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... commerce and a school of navigation. The city is second only to Helsingfors for its trade; sail-cloth, cotton and tobacco are manufactured, and there are extensive saw-mills. There is also a large trade in timber and a considerable butter export. Ship-building has considerably developed, torpedo-boats being built here for the Russian navy. Vessels drawing 9 or 10 feet come up to the town, but ships of greater draught are laden and discharged at its harbour (Bornholm, on Hyrvinsala Island), which is entered yearly by from 700 to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... The third member of the group was Billy Barnes, the young reporter, already down to us as the chronicler of the Chester boys' adventures in Nicaragua and the depths of the Everglades of Florida. Since the boys' return from Florida on the U. S. torpedo boat, the Tarantula, they had been busy putting into shape the rough working plans of the African hunting expedition they had planned ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... as in an ague fit. No man is brave in presence of an earthquake, or a bursting boiler, or an exploding torpedo. I could not be expected to feel much courage in presence of the fearful fate that ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... especially successful. To her credit there are: A bust of her royal highness the Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein; Mr. Gladstone, in marble and bronze; G. F. Watts, in bronze, for the 'Permanent Manchester Art Exhibition'; Mr. Peter Brotherhood, inventor of a torpedo engine, in marble and bronze, which held the place of honor at the Royal Academy the year of its exhibition; Princess Henry of Prussia, in marble; her highness Princess Helena of Saxe-Altenburg; his excellency the Baron von Rheinbaben, minister of finance; his excellency ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... as I rode along, I found the column turned out of the main road, marching through the fields. Close by, in the corner of a fence, was a group of men standing around a handsome young officer, whose foot had been blown to pieces by a torpedo planted in the road. He was waiting for a surgeon to amputate his leg, and told me that he was riding along with the rest of his brigade-staff of the Seventeenth Corps, when a torpedo trodden on by his horse had exploded, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... complicated curricula, of which more anon. Lying in the still waters of the dock, alongside the comparatively big grey cruiser, were the trim little hulls of a numerous flotilla of 20-knot motor launches, newly arrived from Canada, with wicked-looking 13-pounder high-angle guns, stumpy torpedo-boat masts and brand-new White Ensigns and brass-bound decks. These were the advance guard of a fleet of over 500 similar craft, to the command of which many of the officers being trained would, after a period of practical ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... indecisively. Phillips stepped past him and considered the cross passages near the midpoint of the corridor. Those in the plane of the control room deck probably led to port and starboard airlocks, he reasoned, so the others might lead to the torpedo turrets. ...
— This World Must Die! • Horace Brown Fyfe
... inventor of the telegraph, was the grandson of an Irishman; Henry O'Reilly built the first telegraph line in the United States; and John W. Mackey was the president of the Commercial Cable Company. John P. Holland, the inventor of the submarine torpedo boat, was a native of Co. Clare; and McCormick, the inventor of the reaping and mowing machine, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... their fire. Might better have saved their powder and let us run into the fields and be blown to bits, you will say. Not at all. They would consider that a waste of good mines. Nobody wants to waste a whole mine on a poor little torpedo boat destroyer — and twenty to forty men. There's no ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... "It is a torpedo," shouted Ralph. Every one leaned over the ship's side and waited, some with terror on their faces, others pale but calm. Two or three rushed for the companionway, and ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... nearer the harbour we began to meet the sharp-nosed destroyers and torpedo boats that guard the harbour, and as we neared the entrance we were delighted with the view of a vast park and grounds with a castle peeping out from the trees. This park is known as Mount Edgecombe, the seat of Earl Edgecombe. The park is one of the most beautiful in England ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... End. So it proved. By eight o'clock we could make out clearly the coast of Cornwall. As the land grew nearer the famous Eddystone Lighthouse came into view, and, making a great sweep around it, instead of running for Southampton as we all had expected, we headed for Plymouth. A number of torpedo boats, commonly called "Ocean Lice," accompanied us for the last few miles, as ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... upon me before I had thought to execute these instructions, I straightened myself out rigidly, and lo! I shot in like a torpedo on the very top of the billow, holding the point of the board up, yelling like a Comanche Indian. So fast, so straight did I go, that it was all I could do to swerve in the shallow water and not be hurled with force on ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... once, was napping; perhaps dreaming of him Cyn called the Torpedo—Celeste's father—and she obtained the dish, reached her own door again without being seen by any one except the Duchess, and was congratulating herself on her good luck, when suddenly, like an apparition, Quimby ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... be admitted here that, at the present moment, torpedoes hold such large charges of explosive that the cellular division of ships does not adequately protect them. This means that a contest has been going on between torpedo-makers and naval constructors like the contest between armor-makers and gunmakers, and that just now the torpedo-makers are in the lead. For this reason a battleship needs other protection than that ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... the horse of Santa Klaas, named Sleipnir, which goes so fast that, in our day, the torpedo and submarine U-boats are named after him. This wonderful animal used to have eight feet, for swiftness. That was when Woden rode him, but, in course of time, four of his legs dropped off, so that the horse of Santa Klaas looks less like a centipede and more like other horses. Whenever ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... of Bristol, R. I., although blind since he was fifteen years old, is the founder and head of one of the most noted shipbuilding establishments in the world. He has superintended the construction of some of the swiftest torpedo boats and steam and sailing yachts afloat. He frequently takes his turn at the wheel in sailing his vessels on trial trips. He is aided greatly by his younger brother Nathaniel, but can plan vessels and conduct business without him. After examining a vessel's hull or ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... trying to do? Ram me with a new-fangled torpedo?" asked an angry voice, and a man in a gold laced uniform, who, from his importance plainly showed himself to be the captain of the ship, shook ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... embarked at Liverpool, on board the Mistress of the Seas, the S.S. Olympic, the largest passenger boat afloat. For three days we lay in the channel, awaiting our escort, four torpedo boat destroyers, and, finally, as the wheel of the mighty leviathan commenced churning the waters, I knew we ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... agreed to warn the crews and passengers of passenger liners. We have lived up to that promise in every way. We are not out to torpedo without warning neutral ships bound for England. Our submarines have respected every one of them so far, and they have met scores in the North Sea, the ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... just then, and Phil, caught off his guard, took a header and landed astride one of the gasoline cans. "I wonder if that was a torpedo," he grunted ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... Pigg. "Whoever heard of such a thing?" but she ran out to see what it was, and at that moment the cabbage bounded right in front of the pen, hit a big stone, burst open with a noise like a torpedo, and out rolled Buddy Pigg, over and over, just like a pumpkin. But, believe me, he wasn't hurt the least mite, ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis
... would have been conquered. For what would there have been to conquer? Mr. Jeff Davis was constantly writing him to take command of a corps in the confederate army, but Col. Sellers said, no, his duty was at home. And he was by no means idle. He was the inventor of the famous air torpedo, which came very near destroying the Union armies in Missouri, and the city of St. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... to turn over the bridge when news was brought that a motor-boat belonging to Essad was in San Giovanni harbour. We sent a policeman galloping on to stop it, and followed as fast as our meagre horses would allow. We also heard that a submarine had been in the port the day before and had tried to torpedo the ships lying there—but ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... farmer may know whether or not to prepare to plow, and the Sunday school whether to arrange or to postpone its picnic tomorrow; airships mount the heavens, steamships plough the ocean's bosom, submarine torpedo boats undermine the deep with missiles of death, while photography turns one inside out, and doctors no longer guess at the location of a bullet. All these things have come to pass within my life-time. What may the young before me expect in the next ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... inflate it. Even she understood what a terrible engine of war such an aerial ship might be, from which two men could blow up fortress after fortress and city after city when and where they chose. Armies could be annihilated, granite and steel would be as tinder before a bomb or torpedo of picric acid ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... "that says a steamer was hailed by a submarine a few miles off the Lizard Head. It escaped by its superior speed, but only by a narrow margin, for the submarine launched a torpedo that barely missed striking the after portion ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... generous confidence he felt within himself; and perhaps the man never yet existed, who could maintain his enthusiasm to its full vigour, in the midst of this kind of solitariness. He is touched with the torpedo of mediocrity. I believe that nothing which Mary produced during this period, is marked with those daring flights, which exhibit themselves in the little fiction she composed just before its commencement. ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... seemed merged, rocks did not look the same, whirlpools had a different vortex, islands of stone had a new configuration. As they sped on, lurching, jumping, piercing a broken wall of wave and spray like a torpedo, shooting an almost sheer fall, she came to rely on a sense of intuition rather than memory, for night ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Priscilla. "You've read 'The Riddle of the Sands,' I suppose. You must have. Well, that's exactly what he's at, mapping out mud-banks and things so as to be able to run a masked flotilla of torpedo boats in and out when the time comes. There was one of the same lot caught the other day sketching a fortification in Lough Swilly. Father read it to me out ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... matter-of-factness, indeed, more dreadful than any most passionate outburst. But at the root of the apparent apathy lay despair and remorse,—weary, like gorged and sleeping tigers far back in their dens. Only the dull torpedo of misery was awake, lying motionless on the bottom of the deepest ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... of the Edison and Sim's torpedo is also driven by an electric motor. In this case the current is conveyed from the ship or fort which discharges the torpedo by an insulated conductor running off a reel carried by the torpedo, the "earth" or return half of ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... and that in its practice explosives are largely used. To "blow-up" effectively, whether in a literal or figurative sense, is difficult. To improve this power in war, and in the literal sense, I set myself to work. I invented a torpedo, which seemed to me better than any that had yet been brought out. To test its powers, I made a miniature fortification, and blew it up. I also blew up our ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... twelvemonth been conducting it. If this instance stood alone, some explanation, some disavowal by the German Government, some evidence of criminal mistake or wilful disobedience on the part of the commander of the vessel that fired the torpedo might be sought or entertained; but unhappily it does not stand alone. Recent events make the conclusion inevitable that it is only one instance, even though it be one of the most extreme and distressing instances, ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... turn the crank of the propeller shaft by hand until the target had been reached. When this primitive craft was closed for diving there was only sufficient air to support life for half an hour. Since the torpedo was attached to the boat itself there was no chance of escape. The only hope was to reach and destroy the enemy vessel before the crew were ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... bathing-suit, and insert him in the water, and instantly, like the gentleman in The Tempest, he 'suffered a sea-change into something rich and strange.' Other men puffed, snorted, and splashed. George passed through the ocean with the silent dignity of a torpedo. Other men swallowed water, here a mouthful, there a pint, anon, maybe, a quart or so, and returned to the shore like foundering derelicts. George's mouth had all the exclusiveness of a fashionable club. His breast-stroke ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Grahame-White and eight of his air men left Hendon an hour ago to reconnoitre the south coast. Admiral Beatty has started with the Channel Squadron to head off the German convoy in the North Sea, and the torpedo destroyers have been sent to lie outside of Heligoland. We'll get that back by daylight. And on land every one of the three services is under arms. On this coast alone before sunrise we'll have one hundred thousand ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... nest and was watching it and him—watching him with no agreeable or timid expression in its angry eyes. He was just expecting Victor Hugo's devil fish to complete his horror when a sudden, sharp, bone-breaking shock struck him from an electrical eel or marine torpedo. This was a real and sensible danger, and as he struggled to ascend the hulk to the rotten half-deck, the spongy substance gave way, the treacherous quicksand, with its smooth, tenacious throat-clutch, slid down and caught him. The danger was real and imminent, when his companions ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... story of the "Torpedo Plan" and of Capt. Lance's heroic part in America's last mighty battle with the ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... a pity, tho, that the fight didn't test our naval armaments better. It didn't prove anything. If we'd only used our torpedo-boats, and they'd got out their torpedo-boat destroyers, and then we'd had some ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... "let's decide what shape we want to use. As designer, I'd like to point out that a sphere is the strongest, a cube easiest to build, and a torpedo shape the most efficient aerodynamically. However, we intend to use it in space, ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... flag-ship of the second squadron has just sent out an order for its first division to prepare for an emergency signal drill. And the first division are to have a torpedo drill at the same time. Wait—in half a minute it ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... translucent surface of the harbor were scattered a dozen or more war-ships of the North Atlantic Squadron, ranging in size from the huge, double-turreted monitor Puritan to the diminutive but dangerous-looking torpedo-boat Dupont. All were in their war-paint of dirty leaden gray, which, although it might add to their effectiveness, certainly did not seem to me to improve their appearance as component parts of an ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... the signal for a flotilla of torpedo boats to enter the harbor of Port Arthur and blow up the ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... and do it to her; but that there gunboat's got heavy steel plates right round her, going ever so deep, and they'd be rather too much for my tools. They'd spoil every auger I've got. The skipper hasn't got a torpedo aboard, has he? One of them new 'uns that you winds up and sets a-going with a little screw-propeller somewheres astern, and a head full of nitro— what-d'ye-call-it, which goes off when ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... and leaped; cross-currents boiled out from projecting irregularities in the walls; here and there the waters tumbled madly and flung wet arms aloft, while up out of the gorge came a mighty murmur, redoubled by the echoing cliffs. A log came plunging through and it moved with the speed of a torpedo. Phillips watched it, fascinated. ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... cause is the acquisition by the flotilla of battle power. It is a feature of naval warfare that is entirely new.[10] For all practical purposes it was unknown until the full development of the mobile torpedo. It is true that the fireship as originally conceived was regarded as having something of the same power. During the Dutch wars—the heyday of its vogue—its assigned power was on some occasions actually ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... French. The building of armored battle ships has been followed by the construction of small swift vessels from which to launch torpedoes at the battle ships. Other swift vessels have been constructed to pursue and destroy the torpedo boat. High explosives and smokeless ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... move himself in bed without luminous corruscations. Such may have been the case of those people, who have been related to have taken fire spontaneously, and to have been reduced to ashes. The electric concussion from the gymnotus electricus, and torpedo, are other instances of the power of the animal system to accumulate electricity, as in these it is used as a weapon of defence, or for the purpose of taking ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... has gone into such matters deeply, paying Mr. Brennan over half a million dollars for his torpedo invention. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... 'You are right, I must be in the wrong. It is very cold...' Then I half opened my eyes and saw the telegraph pole, the trees, and the lake. Far up the lake, where the Italian Frontier cuts it, the torpedo-boats, looking for smugglers, were casting their search-lights. One of the roving beams fell full on me and I became broad awake. I stood up. It was indeed cold, with a kind of clinging and grasping chill that was not to be expressed in degrees of heat, but in dampness perhaps, or perhaps ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... you, Gerald, she's a dandy," said Jim, after the boys had shaken hands and made a few formal inquiries about the interval which had elapsed since last they met. As Jim spoke, his eye roamed over the long torpedo body of ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... originality. "The Socratic dialectics, clearing away," says Grote, [Footnote: Grote, part ii. ch. 68; Maurice, Ancient Philosophy, p. 119.] "from the mind its mist of fancied knowledge, and, laying bare the real ignorance, produced an immediate effect like the touch of the torpedo; the newly created consciousness of ignorance was humiliating and painful, yet it was combined with a yearning after truth never before experienced. Such intellectual quickening, which could never commence until the mind had been disabused of its original illusion of false knowledge, was considered ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... which was thrown into the struggle in increasing numbers, represented an entirely new development, for the submarine is a vessel which can travel unseen beneath the water and, while still unseen, except for a possible momentary glimpse of a few inches of periscope, can launch a torpedo at long or short range and with deadly accuracy. In these circumstances it became imperative to organize the Admiralty administration to meet new needs, and to press into the service of the central administration a large number of officers charged with ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... steel twelve inches thick. One gun in each turret and the guns could swing around on four-fifths of the circle, so that every gun could be brought to bear on an enemy either to port or starboard. No other guns were carried in time of war and no cruisers, torpedo boats, or torpedoes were used, for experience in war had shown that they were useless waste of men and money. The battleship was propelled by rotary engines developing fifty thousand horsepower, driving the ship at a sustained ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans
... regarding him anxiously. That decided him. With a crashing bellow of rage and a sweep of his powerful tail he darted at the inoffensive head. But it vanished instantly, and a sudden tremendous turmoil, developing into a wake that lengthened out with the speed of a torpedo-boat, showed him the hopelessness of pursuit. Turning abruptly, he swam back to the shore and sulkily withdrew into the thickets to seek ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... stocks a vessel of an altogether novel design, and this latest addition to his miniature navy had cost him a great many hours of work and the exercise of no small amount of patience before it could be pronounced ready for use. It was said to be a "torpedo-boat destroyer," and was constructed out of the hull of an old tin boat. Her engines had once formed the motive power of a clockwork locomotive, but they had now been adapted to marine requirements, and made to ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery
... "his old brag and ostentation have caught these fools! I wonder where his vessel is? If I could fire a torpedo under it and send them all where young Jack and the other boy have gone to, I shouldn't have a dull moment for ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... which was gradually tapered towards the stern. A different material was also used, varnished silk being tried as an experiment. The envelope was attached to a keel on which was mounted the engine, a 35 horse-power Anzani, driving two swivelling four-bladed propellers. From the keel was suspended a torpedo-shaped boat car in which a crew of two was accommodated. Originally a vertical fin and rudder were mounted at the stern end of the keel, but these were later replaced by fins on the stern ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... Why do they call the Colodia and her sister ships 'torpedo boat destroyers'? We don't see many torpedo boats anyway. They are ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... claw around more than usual, made the whale land-sick. A whale can throw a stream from its snout for about five rods, but when it strikes land that way under heavy ballast it chucks all its load, water and solids, like a torpedo hitting a ship. I have experimented with small whales—say from ten to twenty feet over all, and never knew one to miss when he bumped land. The whale was prepared especially to do that—to release Jonah, and does it with wonderful automatic ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... present issue, on page 9948, we give illustrations of two torpedo boats, the Azor and Halcon, which have lately been constructed by Messrs Yarrow & Co., of Poplar, for the Spanish government. They are 135 ft. in length by 14 ft. beam, being of the same dimensions as No. 80 torpedo boat, lately completed by the above firm for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... more the natural organ of the torpedo, or of the electrical eel, than the Leyden Phial or the ordinary electric batteries, I may ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... There's war there as there is on land in Germany. Nobody tries to get goods through on land on the continent, and they make no complaints that commerce is stopped. Everybody tries to ply the Channel and the North Sea as usual, both of which have German and English mines and torpedo craft and submarines almost as thick as batteries along the hostile camps on land. The British Government (which now issues marine insurance) will not insure a British boat to carry food to Holland en route to the starving ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... bewildering. Finally, he dreamed that the rebel assumed the offensive, and one day he met him in the street, carrying in his hand something that looked like a lump of coal, which he threw at Frank. It proved, however, to be a torpedo, for it exploded with a loud report, and as Frank sprang over a fence that ran close by the sidewalk, to escape, he came violently in contact with the walls of a house. At this stage of his dream he was suddenly awakened. To his no small amazement, he found himself stretched ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... cottages, and churches. Lord Keith had the sense to laugh at all that stuff, but he had not the grand mechanical powers which have now enabled the human race, not to go, but to send one another to the stars. A clumsy affair called a catamaran, the acephalous ancestor of the torpedo, was expected to relieve the sea of some thousands of people who had no business there. This catamaran was a water-proof box about twenty feet long, and four feet wide, narrowed at the ends, like ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... other man," Bill declared promptly. "Positively! Everybody ought to know that. He invented a device so that they could smell a German submarine half a mile away, and they could tell when a torpedo was fired. Another invention turned a ship about with her prow facing the torpedo, so that it would be most likely to go plowing and not hit her, as it would with broadside on. I guess that saved many a ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... this while the land was full of garrisons, the embayed waters full of fleets. With the impunity of a Levanter, Paul skimmed his craft in the land-locked heart of the supreme naval power of earth; a torpedo-eel, unknowingly swallowed by Britain in a draught of old ocean, and making sad ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... a great deal; of those who knew all to betray nothing; and of those who were kept in ignorance to strain a fact out of the conflicting innuendos the general mystification waxed apace, and was at its height, when a name struck on Evan's ear that went through his blood like a touch of the torpedo. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... home, "if we admit that the plotters have conspired to sink a British battleship at Malta, the easiest way in war-time, when unidentified strangers cannot get aboard a warship, would be to effect the sinking by means of a submarine's torpedo. And, if this be the plan of the plotters, then the crime is likely to be attempted only when there are British and American war craft, and none others, in ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... afraid to make anything like a positive statement as to the heights achieved by some of the monsters, but it really appeared to me that a few of them rose nearly, if not quite, five and twenty feet into the air, descending again with a splash which reminded me of some of the torpedo experiments I had witnessed when staying for ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... old subterfuge? When he first saw the great ship sailing up in the sunshine, its decks crowded with peaceful passengers, and he rose like a murderer out of his hiding-place in the bowels of the sea, what were the feelings with which he ordered the torpedo to be fired? When, having launched his bolt, he sank and then rose again, and heard the drowning cries of his victims struggling in the water, what were the emotions with which he ran away? And when he returned to tell his story of the work ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... left New York harbor. This conjunction was bound to appear intentional rather than fortuitous, and even to-day the majority of Americans believe that I must have known beforehand of the design to torpedo the Lusitania. ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... further advantage of rendering it easier to put the port of Havre quickly in defense. A certain number of floating batteries, anchored behind the breakwaters and protecting the advances of torpedo boats by means of their firing, would make a formidable defense. Not having to perform any evolutions, they might without danger be invested with armor plate thicker than that of ordinary ironclads. In order to complete ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... the reasons of the latter phenomenon consists in the torpedo effect of what we may call, under the circumstances, the difference of ranks. The schoolmaster is a despot to his scholar; for every man is a despot, who delivers his judgment from the single impulse of his own will. The boy answers his questioner, as Dolon answers Ulysses in the Iliad, at the ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... trouble be? 4. Draw a picture to show the parts of your left ear, and name each part. 5. How do you take care of your ears? 6. Comment on doing each of these things:—firing a bean shooter at anyone; throwing gravel or sand; firing off a cap or torpedo close to some one's head; boxing a person on the ear; running a nail cleaner or pencil point into your ear; putting on the baby's cap so that the ears are folded forward; asking your teacher to repeat her ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson
... leaned steeply to port with a forward crank, her two starboard screws, now free, spinning asleep like humming-tops. A six-inch shell, beautifully aimed, had shattered her engines, killing two stokers, and a torpedo-mine had knocked a hole nine feet ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... in the empty and useless formality of blockading his antagonist, but assisted the British army on the Niagara frontier till navigation closed, about Nov. 21st. A couple of days before, Midshipman McGowan headed an expedition to blow up the two-decker (named the St. Lawrence) with a torpedo, but was discovered by two of the enemy's boats, which he captured and brought in; the attempt was abandoned, because the St. Lawrence was found not ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... solemnly entered the room in his stocking feet and carrying a pillow which he placed on his chair before sitting down. "What new monkey shine is that?" growled old Botts. "S-s-s-h, pa," said Johnny anxiously; "I was playing fireworks with Billy Simson this afternoon and I swallowed a torpedo." "Did, eh?" "Yes, and if anything should touch me kinder hard I might go off and ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... a thousand pairs of eyes swept the horizon, and the intervening spaces of tossing, blue-grey water, for the sight of a sinister periscope, or for the smudge of a friendly cruiser, and when night fell, a thousand pairs of ears listened with strained intentness for the impact of the deadly torpedo or for the signal ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... tried a new plan. We used a 'go-devil-squib.' That's a sort of torpedo, holding about a quart of the glycerine, and it has a firing head of its own. We drop that down the pipe and when it hits on the top cannister it goes off, and sets off the rest of the explosive. But, ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch - Or, Great Days Among the Cowboys • Laura Lee Hope
... and directly under the colors. The men scattered, and a piece of old cloth was seen lying on the ground at the point from which the report emanated. Colonel McKean, who was very near, lifted the cloth with the point of his sword, and discovered a torpedo carefully buried in the ground, except a nipple which had been filled with fulminating powder, which was covered by the old cloth. The fuse only had exploded. Had the machine itself exploded, it must have destroyed many ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... now hear of nothing but smokeless powder and small bore rifles, heavy ironclads and swift cruisers, torpedo boats and dynamite guns. Europe seems hastening on to that time foretold by General Grant when, worn out by a fatal and ruinous policy, she will bow to the supremacy of peace-loving America, and learn anew from her ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... gardening on a summer afternoon, you may look very fetching, if you are nineteen, and the right sex for the adjective. Miss Sally did, being both, and for our own part we think it was inconsiderate and thoughtless of cook. Sally was sprung upon that young man like a torpedo on a ship with no guards out, saying with fascinating geniality through a smile (as one interests oneself in a civility that means nothing) that Mr. Fenwick had just gone out, and she didn't know when he would be back. But why not ask Mrs. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... the forts guarding the entrance to the bay, also in the subsequent fierce encounters with a huge Confederate "ram" and gun-boats. At the beginning of the latter encounters one of Farragut's best iron-clads (the Tecumseh) was sunk in a few seconds by a torpedo exploded under her, when all but seventeen of her one hundred and thirty men perished. Undismayed, Farragut pushed on, won a victory, and permanently closed the port of Mobile. When the Tecumseh went to the bottom the Admiral prayed for ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and ardent boy in these impressionable years. He soon got to be keenly interested in the Navy, amassed a surprising amount of information about the types, engine strength and gun-power of the principal warships, and found delight in making models of cruisers and torpedo-boats. The Army in those days made no appeal to him, though he was familiar with military sights and sounds—the ceremonious displays that take place from time to time in a garrison town, bugles blowing, the crunch of feet on the gravel in the barrack square, and the tramp, ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... to the teleceiver screen. To their horror, they saw a menacing shape blasting toward them. They recognized it instantly—a space torpedo! ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... off Mobile bar August 1, where all was expectancy and preparation for the coming fight, a fight which perhaps had more in it of dramatic interest than any other naval battle of the war. The wooden ships pushing into the bay through the torpedo-strewn channel and under the fierce storm of shot and shell from Fort Morgan, lashed together in pairs for mutual support in case of disaster; the sudden and tragic sinking of the Tecumseh by torpedo stroke, with the loss of the heroic Craven and ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... Englishmen, a tall blond princess of some royal house of Northern Europe, and any number of Belgians going home to enlist. In the Straits of Dover, an hour or so out from Folkestone, we ran through a fleet of British warships guarding the narrow roadstead between France and England; and a torpedo-boat destroyer sidled up and took a ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... latter half of 1803 he repaired to England, and later on to the United States, and after the year 1803 he seems to have had neither the will nor the opportunity to serve Napoleon. In England he offered his torpedo patent to the English Admiralty, expressing his hatred of the French Emperor as a "wild beast who ought to be hunted down." Little was done with the torpedo in England, except to blow up a vessel off Walmer as a proof of what it could do. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... her credit there are: A bust of her royal highness the Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein; Mr. Gladstone, in marble and bronze; G. F. Watts, in bronze, for the 'Permanent Manchester Art Exhibition'; Mr. Peter Brotherhood, inventor of a torpedo engine, in marble and bronze, which held the place of honor at the Royal Academy the year of its exhibition; Princess Henry of Prussia, in marble; her highness Princess Helena of Saxe-Altenburg; his excellency the Baron von ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... when the clouds form almost a solid flooring, one feels very much at sea, and wonders if one is in the navy instead of aviation. The diminutive Nieuports skirt the white expanse like torpedo boats in an arctic sea, and sometimes, far across the cloud-waves, one sights an enemy escadrille, moving ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... other philosophers; and Mr. Wilcke, a celebrated electrician, believed them to be electric. Lin. Spec. Plantar. p. 490. Swedish Acts for the year 1762. Pulteney's View of Linneus, p. 220. Nor is this more wonderful than that the electric eel and torpedo should give voluntary shocks of electricity; and in this plant perhaps, as in those animals, it may be a mode of defence, by which it harrasses or destroys the night-flying insects which infest it; and probably it may emit the same sparks ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... Atlantic Fleets.—Before long a Spanish fleet of four new, fast armored cruisers and three large sea-going torpedo-boat destroyers appeared in the West Indies. The Spanish admiral did not seem to know exactly where to go. But after sailing around the Caribbean Sea for a time, he anchored in Santiago harbor—on the southern coast of Cuba. In the American navy there were only two fast armored cruisers, the New ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... quadrant; whether Hulls or Fulton was the father of the steamboat; whether steamboats were first used in England or America; and whether Fulton should have offered his invention of the submarine torpedo to France as well as to England. One may easily say at the present time that the national spirit should have risen superior to such trivialities; but the national spirit was taking a most provincial cast. Originality was claimed for everything; inheritance ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... been sucked under by a comber had not Captain Holt grapped him by the collar and landed him on his feet again. Now and then a roller more vicious than the others would hurl a log of wood straight at the cart with the velocity of a torpedo, and swoop back again, the log missing ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... a submarine dive down into green water, see the torpedo slid into the tube, breech-block closed, and—"Now—for Kaiser and fatherland!"—by means of an image thrown on a screen from the periscope, see the English cruiser go up in a tower of water ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... This was the way in which they got their name. Navies had small gunboats before torpedoes were used. Then they had torpedo-boats. Then they built torpedo-gunboats. Finally, they built boats big enough to destroy gunboats, torpedo-boats, and torpedo-gunboats, without, however, losing the handy use of guns and torpedoes in vessels much ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... ingenuity to build increasingly powerful aggressive weapons, it was possible that, unknown to the rest of the world, some nation could have been testing such a fearsome machine. The Chassepot rifle led to the torpedo, and the torpedo has led to this underwater battering ram, which in turn will lead to the world putting its foot down. At least I hope ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... complete chart and assigned a certain area which he is to explore. Remember, gentlemen, that this first major expedition is to be purely one of exploration; the one of conquest will set out after you have returned with complete information. You will each report by torpedo every tenth of the year. We do not anticipate any serious difficulty, as we are of course the highest type of life in the Universe; nevertheless, in the unlikely event of trouble, report it. We shall do the rest. In conclusion, ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... to press bids fair to cost immeasurably more aintenance of armies upon a peace-footing-the feeding and clothing of the men, the building and maintenance of barracks and forts, of battleships and torpedo boats, of guns and ammunition, automobiles, aeroplanes, and the increasing list of expensive modern military appurtenances. Europe spends nearly two billion dollars a year in times of peace on its armies and navies-money enough to build four or five Panama canals annually. The entire merchant ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... cut in two in order that half of it might be drawn to the top at a time. Rear Brakeman Joe was left to guard the part of the train that remained behind, and he did this by walking back a few hundred yards along the track, and placing a torpedo on top of one of the rails. Then he went back as much farther and placed two torpedoes, one a ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... at the time, with its top hat on and its smile still undisturbed. Across the English Channel three days later the Dutch steam packet Princess Juliana carried us safely through mine fields and between lanes of British torpedo boats and torpedo boat destroyers. We landed on the Continent at Flushing. Thence we headed for The Hague, Holland, the neutral gateway of northern Europe, where we found the American Minister, Dr. Henry van Dyke, and his first secretary, Marshall Langhorne, ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... There is nothing mean about the British public. "What are a few bales of gun-cotton,' it cries—" a few tons of paltry bullets, in comparison with the march of civilisation and humanity and open markets? We do but give them of our best, our finest Bessemer steel, our latest thing in torpedo-boats—nothing is too good for them. What are we, if not magnanimous?' says the British public. I always like that about it—it never grudges a few millions for war expenditure in the cause of philanthropy! Considering how very sharply it looks after its L s. d. in other directions, this ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... of the famous Ten Thousand, attempts a definition of virtue itself, the principle that underlies specific kinds of virtues such as justice. After a cross-examination he confesses his helplessness in a famous simile: Socrates is like the torpedo-fish which benumbs all who touch it. Then the real business begins. How do we learn anything at all? Socrates says by Reminiscence, for the soul lived once in the presence of the ideal world; when it enters the flesh it loses its knowledge, but ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... little torpedo-boat would cut like a knife-blade through the water on messenger service; or a gunboat would drop lightly down the hill of the sea, along the top of which it patrolled so vigilantly; and ever on ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... of life as one of the varieties or manifestations of energy. Nevertheless, electricity has an important influence upon vital phenomena, and is in turn set in action by the living being—animal or vegetable. We have electric fishes—one of them the prototype of the torpedo of modern warfare. There is the electric slug which used to be met with in gardens and roads about Hoinsey Rise; there is also an electric centipede. In the study of such facts and such relations the scientific electrician has before him an ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... will tow your boat maybe fifteen miles; that is to say, he partly tows the boat, but the heavy motor launch must also use its power to keep up or the line will at once be snapped. The tuna belongs to the mackerel family, is built like a white-head torpedo, and for gameness, speed and endurance is hard to beat. Only the pala of the South Pacific Seas, also a mackerel, may, according to Louis Becke, be his rival. Becke indeed claims it to be the gamest of all fish. But its manoeuvres are different from a tuna's and similar to those of the tarpon. ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... was a passenger entered the northwest passage of Key West Harbor, and was headed towards the quaint island city that had been brought into such sudden prominence by the war. The port was filled with United States cruisers, gun-boats, yachts converted into torpedo-boat destroyers, Government hospital-ships, and others flying the flag of the Red Cross Society, transports, colliers, supply-ships, water-boats, and a huddle of prizes—steamers and sailing-vessels captured off the Cuban coast. Amid these the Speedy slowly threaded her ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... of Socrates has the effect of a torpedo's shock upon him. When he talks with other persons he has plenty to say about virtue; in the presence of Socrates, his thoughts desert him. Socrates replies that he is only the cause of perplexity in others, because he is himself perplexed. He ...
— Meno • Plato
... steaming radius is about 50,000 miles, depending upon the speed. She carries twelve 16-inch guns, twenty-two 6-inch guns, sixteen 4-inch anti-aircraft guns, eight 3-pounders, four rapid-fire guns, six aerial torpedo tubes, and six bomb droppers, which can simultaneously discharge tons of explosives. She has a complement of 1400 officers and men. She required three years and eight months to build at a cost of $10,000,000. In action her entire ship's company is protected ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... bounds of punctilio; but the consequences were immediate. Buck Malone, of the Mulberry Hills, with a Dewey-like swiftness, got an eight-inch gun swung round from his hurricane deck. But McManus's simile must be the torpedo. He glided in under the guns and slipped a scant three inches of knife blade between the ribs of the Mulberry Hill cruiser. Meanwhile Brick Cleary, a devotee to strategy, had skimmed across the lunch counter and thrown the switch of the electrics, leaving the combat to ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... not remind me of that, mother. I have hardly ever opened a newspaper in my life without seeing our name in it. The Undershaft torpedo! The Undershaft quick firers! The Undershaft ten inch! the Undershaft disappearing rampart gun! the Undershaft submarine! and now the Undershaft aerial battleship! At Harrow they called me the Woolwich Infant. At Cambridge it was the same. A little brute at King's ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... Castellan, were standing round a great glass tank, twenty-five feet long, and fifteen broad, supported on a series of trestles. The tank was filled with water up to within about six inches of the upper edge. The depth was ten feet. A dozen models of battleships, cruisers and torpedo craft were floating on the surface of the water. Five feet under the surface, a grey, fish-shaped craft with tail and fins, almost exactly resembling those of a flying fish, was darting about, now jumping forward like a cat pouncing on a bird, now drawing back, and then suddenly coming ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... railway speed. The older boys munched steadily and easily, while Bud and Bobby pecked intermittently in short nibbles. Amarilly had the "star method," which they all vainly tried to emulate. At short and regular intervals a torpedo-like report issued from the gum as she snapped her teeth down upon it. Cory kept hers strung out elastically from her ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... nothing to his wife. Even from the grave he would hold a shadowy yet not impotent rod over her and her family! Lady Ann suspected something of the sort, and spent every moment safe from his possible appearance, in searching for some such hidden torpedo. But there was one thing of which sir Wilton took better care than of his honour—and that was his bunch ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... upon the stage in fitting scenes, keeps to the text and the impersonations which right principle and pure taste assign him. His grimaces are not for the church. He may not sing his catches when penitent souls are listening to the "Miserere," drop his torpedo-puns when life's mystery and solemnity are pressed heavily upon the soul,—be irreverent, profane, or vulgar. He must know and keep his place. But he should have his place, and have it confessed; and that place is not quite at the end of the procession of the benefactors of the race. Punch, as we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... prospective Antarctic expedition, and on the following day he called upon Sir Clements and volunteered to command it. Of this eventful visit Sir Clements wrote: 'On June 5, 1899, there was a remarkable coincidence. Scott was then torpedo lieutenant of the Majestic. I was just sitting down to write to my old friend Captain Egerton[1] about him, when he was announced. He came to volunteer to command the expedition. I believed him to be the best man for so ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... Ferminard at home, in an apartment smelling of garlic and the south. Ferminard, a tall, black-bearded creature, with a glittering eye; a brigand from the Rhone Valley who had flung himself into the politics of his country as a torpedo flings itself into the sea, greeted Adams with effusion, when he read Pugin's card; gave him cigarettes, and shut the open window in honour of ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Germany were one big ship and all the Germans on board, and I had a torpedo big enough to blast them all to—where ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... even supplied power for a miniature searchlight. It was Bones who had her painted Service grey, and would have added another funnel if Hamilton had not detected the attempted aggrandizement. Bones claimed that she was dustproof, waterproof, and torpedo-proof, and Hamilton had voiced his regret that ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... found the bay full of shipping. Four large transports were already engaged in the work of embarkation, and another arrived after we did. The warships presented a gallant array, twelve in all, belonging, with two or three exceptions, to the North Coast Squadron. There were four torpedo-boats in addition. The most powerful vessels were the Chen-Yuen and the Ting-Yuen, barbette ships, English-built, I think, of 7280 tons. The King-Yuen and Lai-Yuen were two barbette ships of smaller tonnage—2850. Then came the ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... anti-British feeling, and it was said that her activity in running up earthworks and apparently impregnable fortifications was in anticipation of Disraeli declaring war and ordering the fleet to bombard the Crimean ports; hence, too, in addition to the strong fortifications, torpedo mines were laid for miles along the seaboard, and every possible means and opportunity were taken to make it widely known that the Black Sea was one deadly mine-field. The Press on all sides was, as usual, brimful of reports of the most alarmist nature—these, of course, for the most ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... construction of an experimental ship. This ship, the Turbinia, after a considerable amount of trial and modification, attained the unprecedented speed of 341/2 knots an hour, and His Majesty's navy has possessed, in the Turbinia's younger and greater sister, the Viper, now unhappily lost, a torpedo-destroyer capable of 41 miles an hour. There can be little doubt that the sea speeds of 50 and even 60 miles an hour will be attained within the next few years. But I do not think that these developments will do more than delay the advent of the "explosive" or "storage ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... 4, 1916, the Russians made an attempt to cross the Dvina near Deveten, a few miles northwest of Dvinsk, but were repulsed. Another similar undertaking, attempted August 8, 1916, east of Friedrichstadt, met the same fate. On that day German batteries successfully bombarded Russian torpedo boats and other vessels lying off the coast of Kurland and forced them ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... replied Henry. "And this is how it came about. When I read of the leak in the navy's secrets and the attempts of the Germans to torpedo our transports, I wrote to Captain Hardy about it. I told him we could be just as useful catching German spies in New York as we were in Pennsylvania. He answered and said he didn't think we could be of any ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... helped to bring about this consummation more speedily. The firing of a bomb or of a torpedo from an aerial war engine often accomplished in an hour what could not have been accomplished, a few years before, under months, often ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... been waited for, and the arrangements sailed in secret, and the news was known in American cities scarcely any sooner than it was in France, so careful had the military authorities been not to give the lurking German submarines a chance to torpedo the transports. ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... be in attendance with Admiral Sir Charles Hotham as Commander-in-Chief. Besides a number of Foreign warships, which were specially sent to participate in the function, the British battle-ships numbered twenty-one, the cruisers twenty-six, the torpedo gun-boats seventeen, the torpedo boat destroyers twenty-eight and the sea-going training vessels ten. Amongst the Foreign contributors to the Review were Germany, the United States, Russia, Sweden and Norway, Denmark, Greece, ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... his vigilance. Observing every precaution when he left The Chancery Agency, he spent the intervening time at one of his clubs, from which, having made an early dinner, he set off for Pall Mall at ten minutes to seven. A rakish-looking gray car resembling a giant torpedo was approaching slowly from the direction of Buckingham Palace. The driver pulled up as Paul Harley stepped into the road, and following a brief conversation Harley set out westward, performing a detour before heading south for Lower Claybury, a little town with which ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... afternoon at this final test, and all in, too, but at last I brought him near enough for Captain Dan to grasp the leader.... Then there was something doing around that boat for a spell! I was positive a German torpedo had hit us. But the explosion was only the swordfish's tail and Dan's voice yelling for another gaff. When Captain Dan got the second gaff in him there was another submarine attack, but the boat ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... dream, she hears the talk Of mine, torpedo, bomb and gun— She shudders, but her thoughts are all Encradled with ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... glowing, bluish metal. It was a small thing, scarcely half the size of Roal. From it curled three thin tentacles of the same bluish metal. Suddenly the generators within F-1 seemed to roar into life. An enormous aura of white light surrounded the small torpedo of metal, and it was shot through with crackling streamers of blue lightning. Lightning cracked and roared from F-1 to the ground near him, and to one machine which had come too close. Suddenly, there was a dull snap, and F-1 fell heavily to the floor, and beside him fell ...
— The Last Evolution • John Wood Campbell
... the enemy, whose fire opened briskly; but the masts being out, it was not easy to distinguish the vessels from the hulks. The Pinola struck the third from the eastern shore and her men jumped on board. The intention was to explode two charges of powder with a slow match over the chains, and a torpedo by electricity under the bows of the hulk, a petard operator being on board. The charges were placed, and the Pinola cast off. The operator claims that he asked Bell to drop astern by a hawser, but that instead of so doing, he let go and backed the engines. Be this as it may, ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... in for repair was due to go out this morning. She was ready for sea the night before, the officers and crew had all come back from short leave, and the working parties had cleared out. Then in the middle watch, when the torpedo lieutenant was testing the circuits, it was discovered that all the cables leading to the guns had been cut. Dawson has been called in, and bids me say that, if you can come down, now is the chance of your life. I ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... swung all his weight and muscle on the left rein. The team and cart swerved that way and crashed like a torpedo into the pillar. The men on the cart went flying like skittles. The driver's strap burst, the pillar rang with the shock, and John Byrnes fell on the car track with a broken shoulder twenty feet away, while Erebus—beautiful, raven-black, ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... negotiations the patience of the Government at Tokio was exhausted. On Feb. 8, 1904, the Japanese fleet made a sudden descent upon Port Arthur. This act, so audaciously planned, resulted in the destruction of battle-ships, cruisers, torpedo-boats—nine in all—to which were added the day following two more battle-ships, destroyed ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... before me the often mooted question raised by the sentimentalists and humanitarians concerning the horrors of war. Not long after this time, the papers - the sentimentalist papers - were furious with Lord Dundonald for suggesting the adoption by the Navy of a torpedo which he himself, I think, had invented. The bare idea of such wholesale slaughter was revolting to a Christian world. He probably did not see much difference between sinking a ship with a torpedo, and firing a shell into her magazine; and likely ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... found that amber when rubbed would attract certain light substances, and the ancient philosophers and doctors had discovered the value of an electric shock from a torpedo in rheumatic complaints; that sparks would follow the rubbing of the fur of animals in cold air had also been noticed, but of magnetism, and of electricity, which is a current of magnetism, the world was ignorant, except as to some of its ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... realizes that annexation will necessitate a largely increased navy, and Secretary Long will ask Congress to arrange for the building of more cruisers and torpedo-boats. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 38, July 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... deg. to 100 deg. C. decomposes slowly, and sunlight causes it to undergo a slow decomposition. It can, however, be preserved for years without undergoing any alteration. It is very susceptible to explosions by influence. For instance, a torpedo, even placed at a long distance, may explode a line of torpedoes charged with gun-cotton. The velocity of the propagation of the explosion in metallic tubes filled with pulverised gun-cotton has been found to be ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... next to the Zeppelin air ship, M. Santos Dumont's balloon was probably attracting most of the attention of experts. The account given of this air vessel by the Daily Express was somewhat startling. The balloon proper was compared to a large torpedo. Three feet beneath this hangs the gasoline motor which is to supply the power. The propeller is 12 feet in diameter, and is revolved so rapidly by the motor that the engine frequently gets red hot. The only accommodation for the ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... Russian warships on the 26th of last April, should have given the enemy matter for reflection. Although allowed an hour's time for consideration, the soldiers refused to surrender, and opened fire with their rifles on the battleships. Then, before the Kinshu Maru was blown in two by a torpedo, a number of the Japanese officers and men performed harakiri.... This strong display of the fierce old feudal spirit suggests how dearly a ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... his adversaries. After a duel with the Japanese "Matsushima," the Chinese flagship "Tingyuen" was severely damaged, and only saved from sinking by the intervention of her sister ship, the "Chenyuen." These two ironclads, together with the torpedo boats, succeeded in making their escape, but five of the Chinese vessels were sunk or destroyed. In men, the Chinese lost 700 killed or drowned and 300 wounded, while the Japanese lost 115 killed and 150 wounded. The result of this victory was that the Chinese never afterward attempted to dispute ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... fish here in tolerable quantities, especially when the smoothness of the water permitted us to hale the seyne. Amongst the rest, we got here cavallies, breams, mullets, soles, fiddle-fish, sea eggs, and lobsters; and here, and in no other place, met with that extraordinary fish called the Torpedo, or numbing fish, which is in shape very like the fiddle-fish, and is not to be known from it but by a brown circular spot of about the bigness of a crown-piece near the centre of its back; perhaps ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... tall, thin Italian Consular-clerk, speaking with a strong accent. "An English steam yacht ran aground on the Meloria about ten miles out, and was discovered by a fishing-boat who brought the news to harbor. The Admiral sent out two torpedo-boats, which managed after a lot of difficulty to bring in the yacht safely, but the Captain of the Port has a suspicion that the crew were trying to make ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... tons. The Leipzig, the Nuernberg, and the Dresden were light cruisers of about 3,500 tons. The armament of the larger vessels included eight 8.2-inch and six 6-inch guns. The smaller relied upon either ten or twelve 4-inch pieces. Each ship carried torpedo tubes, and the speed of each was about twenty-two or twenty-three knots an hour. The Dresden, however, could go to twenty-seven knots. The squadron possessed all-important allies. Several German merchant-marine companies, notably the Kosmos, plied along the Chilian ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... moved on toward a meeting place. The ship moved a trifle faster, because it was climbing. The speeds would match exactly when they met. The small torpedo-shaped shining ship and the bulging glowing metal satellite floated with a seeming vast deliberation in emptiness, while the most gigantic of possible round objects filled all the firmament beneath them. They were 200 miles apart. It seemed that the huge ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... Smokeless Powder.—This powder is manufactured at the U.S. Naval Torpedo Station for use in guns of all calibres in the U.S. Navy. It is a nitro-cellulose powder, a mixture of insoluble and soluble nitro- cellulose together with the nitrates of barium and potassium, and a small percentage of calcium carbonate. The proportions in the case of the powder for ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... faces of the passengers as they stampeded for their life-belts, though there was no panic. Nobs rose with a low growl. I rose, also, and over the ship's side, I saw not two hundred yards distant the periscope of a submarine, while racing toward the liner the wake of a torpedo was distinctly visible. We were aboard an American ship—which, of course, was not armed. We were entirely defenseless; yet without warning, we ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... emblazoned on the martyr-roll of heaven. It matters little if ungrateful men have forgotten them, and lauded the makers of mowing-machines, the inventors of steam-boats, the patented proprietors of the telegraph, the torpedo, the needle-gun, the steam engine, the sewing-machine, etc. All these things being of the earth earthy, shall pass away; nay, may become the civilized (?) instruments of driving the enlightened nations of the nineteenth century back into degraded barbarism. Have we not an undeniable proof of this ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... and the head simply widens out as one passes back to the body. The high resistance offered by water necessitates this tendency to a cigar or ship outline, just as it has determined the cigar shape of the ordinary fish torpedo. ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... and yet I too feel that this can't last. We sit here talking, and leave everything to Mangan and to chance and to the devil. Think of the powers of destruction that Mangan and his mutual admiration gang wield! It's madness: it's like giving a torpedo to a badly brought up child to ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... Might better have saved their powder and let us run into the fields and be blown to bits, you will say. Not at all. They would consider that a waste of good mines. Nobody wants to waste a whole mine on a poor little torpedo boat destroyer — and twenty to forty men. There's no profit ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... of temper. In the wooing days everyone is a lamb, and only becomes the howling wolf after marriage. Circumstances that ruffle the temper in the presence of the intended are but like the harmless squib, but would become like the explosive torpedo in his or her absence or in after-marriage. Quarreling caused by matrimonial differences is the most frequent cause of infelicity, and most of it is caused by an innate irate temper of ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... brightened as if by magic. And with equal suddenness there shot round the edge of the southern extremity of the cove, outlining itself against the red sky in the distance the long, low-lying hulk of a vessel—a dark, sinister-looking thing which I recognised at once as a torpedo-destroyer. It was coming along, about half a mile outside the bar, at a rare turn of speed which would, I knew, quickly carry it beyond our field of vision. And I was wondering whether from its decks the inside of the cove and the yawl lying ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... water, for it is there only they can learn their duties as they should be learned. The big vessels should be manoeuvred in squadrons containing not merely battle ships, but the necessary proportion of cruisers and scouts. The torpedo boats should be handled by the younger officers in such manner as will best fit the latter to take responsibility and meet ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... practice is to make the fleet ready for war, it must be carried out with the fleet in its war composition. All the different elements, battleships, cruisers, torpedo craft, and the rest, must be fully represented, otherwise the admiral would be practising in peace with a different instrument from that with which he would need to ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
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