FIUME AND TORPEDOES.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue LXXIV, 29 August 1919, Page 5

FIUME AND TORPEDOES.

WHITEHEAD'S HEADQUARTERS

Fiume ie to-day a fine city, favored 'by a beautiful situation. The suburbs

are picturesque, and Abbazia, the ■charming little watering place "dis*eovered" by the Hohenzollerns and frequented, in her time, by Carmen Sylvia, 'Queen of Roumania, is only a stone's throw across the bay. But Fiume has, y *ays the Christian Science Monitor, a car more memorable distinction in having been the cradle of the torpedo. It was to Fiume that Whitehead, the Englishman, went iu 1866. There he established the now famous naval works, of which he became the distinguished -director. As an English mechanic, he worked during the Second Empire, first at Marseilles, then at Trieste

It was in his Fiume office, however, "that he invented the automatic torpedo] "the success of which, as a military engine of destruction, the war just finished fully proved. On the eve of the Austro-Prussian War, Whitehead offered his new invention to the Austrian Government, which refused it. He then turned to England, and there found -encouragement and co-operation. The result is well known. Whitehead remained in Fiume, and for many years the leading navies sent their detachments of office?-6 to the works to take _up the specialised study of the Whiteaiead torpedo on the, spot.