ELECTRIC TORPEDO BOATS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 65, 17 March 1900, Page 2 (Supplement)

ELECTRIC TORPEDO BOATS.

A boat driven by electricity is fitted to discharge the normal functions of a torpedo boat with" entire satisfaction Jt has sufficient range at slow speed to travel to some, distance from its base It has a rush equal to or greater than that of a steam-driven vessel of the same size. But/above and beyond all this, it has silence, secrecy of movement, absolutely and instantaneous and certain control, and other points of advantage so great as to far outweigh the disadvantage of a short ra--ottis of action. The electric boatwould need only enough men to laimcti The torpedoes, one officer and five men at the outside. It will be at once conceded that a boat without stacks without smoke, without possibility of a flaming funnel, is ] eSs visible and less apt to attract, the attention of the attacked ship than one of the ordinary type. In the matter of silence there, is no high pressure of steam on the electric boat, no boiler tubes to burst and vomit up a small volcano of ashes and fire and steam through the stack no fans that cannot be stopped during an attack (these x'ould be ventilating fans, of course), no racketing reciprocating- engines penned up in a sheetsteel sounding- box. It slips through the water in silence and darkness its low freeboard having no other proiections than the conning tower and signal mas t. In the conning- tower, or whatever corresponds to a conninotower in a torpedo boat, is the steeringwheel and a "controller" precisely similar to those on electric stree Sr platforms, though somewhat laro-er With _the handle of this in one hand ana the steering wheel in the other, he ofticer in charge of the electric Kie r the whole craft absohlte y