THE STORY OF MY TORPEDO

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1851, 28 August 1907, Page 10

THE STORY OF MY TORPEDO

(By Louis Brennan, C. 8.) Mr Louis Brennan, whose Mono-Rail* way is the scientific and engineering sensation of - the year, i®, of course, als® the inventor of the Brennan torpedo, WUCI 'tbe Government paid 'Elm <£llo,ooo. ' ; The story of how this teriabde engine of destruction first, came to be thought of by him, of how it-: works and what it is, ’is here told ~to the “Reader” for the first time, and in hia own words;:— \

"You want to knoAv about my torpedo. Well, I don t know that I- mind—no Av. If you had come to me before March 31 of this present year, however, my an--6A Avould have to have been different. You see, I Avas, up till then, a--Govern-ment servant, and my lips were sealed. Noav, hoAvever, I am. free to speak.” Thus Mr Brennan, .in the , smokingroom of his pleasant country seat near Gillingham the other day,; to a representative of : the “Reader” who had sought him out there. .* ; "The story,” continued.. Mr, Brennan, “is as folio avs: "When quite a .young man, I Avas articled to Mr Alexander Kennedy Smith, M.P., civil and mechanical engineer, of the Carlton ; • Fo'undry, Melbourne. . In most biographical notices of me you will find it stated that I was, at . this period of my . career, a watchmaker. Nothing of the kind. I Ava© never a Avatchmaker.

“But this is by-tlieway. What is germane to my story is the fact that Avhile I was serving my articles in Mr Smith's Avorkshops I chanced to have control of a' large planing -machine Avhich Avas Avorked' by a leathern driving belt. “After a Avliile I noticed that the lacing of the belt in question Avas getting Avom out, and that it wanted relacing. But being naturally of a someAvhat indolent disposition I let thing®‘slide,'- until at last the belt avu® held together by only a single throng. This struck me as being very extraordinary, ..for, of course/ on the Avell-knoAAm principle of a-' chain being no stronger than its AA’eakest link, this strand of leather, no bigger than an ordinary bootlace, Ava.s operating a powerful machine, Avhich in its turn Avas exerting very great pressure on- the tool that was planing the iron, : ©o that, according to all known mechanical laws, it ought to ha A'© been torn asunder instantly. “I started inA-estigating the phenomenon, and my investigations led me very far afield. But in the end 1 6tumbled upon a novel mechanical paradox, namely, that it is possible to make a machine travel forward by pulling it backAvard. This I soon demonstrated, practically by means of a reel of cotton, AA-ith ‘a pencil thrust through the hole in the centre. “By resting the ends of this pencil on two books, and miwinding the cotton by pulling it toAvards me from underneath, 1 caused the reel to roll forward, and the harder I pulled, the faster the cotton umvound, and the : quicker the reel travelled in the revere© direction. "All \-ery simple, isn't it? But substitute for the reel a steel cylinder carrying m explosive, «m*d fon tlie .cotton a coil of piano-Avire, and you have the Brennan torpedo. < “Talk about necessity being the . mother of in\ r ention! No such thing, I assure you. Accident is the mother of invention, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. A new principle is stumbled upon, as in this instance, and presently ootmes the idea of applying it to some certain thing for which .it would seem to be eminently and specially suitable. “In this particular insitanoe I had discovered my principle. . But I had not yet hit upon any object in connection with AVlnch it could be utilised. It Avas not until I had thought of almost everything else that the idea. of a torpedo entered my head. “Once, however, the idea did., enter mv head, the thing Avas as good as done, although, of course, a tremendous lot of Avork had to be done before the AA'ea-po-n aaus completed in anything like its present, form. I made score© of. models, and in each model Averc introduced impiiovements. “For instance, I soon found. That by using a second Aviie. and differential mechanism, I could not only propel my torpedo, but steer it. and that,’ too, Avith suoh accuracy as to ciaus© ‘it to eitrike an object no bigger than a fruitbasket floating on the waves at a distance of 2200 yards aAyay, or a man ©Aviinining that far off. • . “But every additional improvement meant increased expense, ©o that in the end the Aveapon became an expensive thing to make and to experiment Avith. Each finished torpedo, in fact, costs about <£soo. ■ “And yet, so far as outward appearance goes, it is just an ordinary spindleshaped cylinder of polished steel, measuring 21ft in length by 18in in diameter, and weighing a ton and a quarter. It iB Avorked from the shore by means of a stationary steam-engine. In its head is a charge of 24dlbs of compressed,, guncotton. The'body contains • tivo reels, upon AA'liich the t'u'in Avii'cs —one for propelling and one for steering—are' -wound, together Avith certain -delicate hydrostatic mechanism for regulating the depth of immersion. x ’

"On the back of the- torpedo is fixed a small steel mast, five to six feet in height, which is supported against the rush of r the water by wire stays attached to the snout of the .weapon. At the back of this must are throe email electric lamps, so fixed that although screened from the enemy, they are plainly visible by. the person directing the torpedo.. "At present my torpedo is only used for harbour - and- shore, defence. But I hold and have always held, that its proper ’ place is on board -ship—-not on monster battleship©, such as are now being built, out on specially Constructed torpedo-ships, so strongly . armoured as to he able to bear any amount of punishment from heavy gunfe, - but carrying; themselves.. only light to repel tcirped)O i -;boat attacks. . ...?•. "Such a-vessel, carryiiig.my torpedoes, and fitted,with the apparatus'' atoeessary for discharging them, could v-Steam in amoncst fleet of battl oshijps, and. her-'’-Vl'i ' toti..: ■ " " : • . ife'i si <vMii.il i' •

self invulnerable, destroy them at her leisure. Of course this would revolutionise naval taotacs ae. taught at P sent. and. indeed, would result in the abolutioa of the British' Navy as we now know it, for there , object in building monster W. ing .£2,000,000 apiece, to do work wMon oould be accomplished far better and more eooaiomicallj by torpedo-ships T7 “vfaStkex J moh e li course will ever be adopted or not it is impossible f or me to say. But this one thing Ido know, that up till now vested interests have been too powerful to allow of Jffi] v permitted to show,, even what my torpedo is capable of m th direction. Indeed, the late &r Andrew Clarke once told me that -the nearer perfection I got, the less was of my ever seeing it adopted for use on shin board. The resultant up heaval ? he said., would be too tremendoiw. the change altogether too drastic do sinoerely tope, U<«ever and that is that public opinion will prevent the Admiralty from doing away Sith my torpedo for shore and haibour defence/ as they have just reeentJy done iWaT silently and secretly, with tne whofe of the submarine mines laid down at so much pains and expense.