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This vessel plied as a Channel ferryboat between Folkestone and Dieppe. On March 24, 1916, at 4.30 p. m., while near the latter port, with 436 persons on board, including seventy-five Americans, she was struck by a torpedo from a submarine.

By means of special apparatus mounted on a small boat he can by the means of a wireless station on shore start or stop the vessel, or steer it in any direction by his wireless control. He has applied the same system to the control of torpedoes. By this means a torpedo may be controlled after it has left the shore and may be directed in any direction as long as it is within sight.

A coastguard was sending up flash signals which faded into a pale twinkle as the white dawn crept over the water. There was a good deal of shipping about, mostly fishing-boats and small coasting craft, with one large steamer hull-down to the west, and a torpedo destroyer between us and the land.

Why, most of our submarines are equipped with a formidable device for cutting these nets. This device, in one form, resembles an enormous pair of sheers which cut through the nets like paper. In another form they are equipped with powerful tearing arms which drag the net away and expose the sides of the battleship to the deadly messenger from the torpedo tube. Am I tiring you?"

In the first place, an excellent lookout was kept on the Union ships on account of the several attempts which had been made against them by similar boats. If she were discovered, one shot striking the boat as she approached, even a rifle shot, would suffice to sink her. No one knew what she would do even if she succeeded in exploding the torpedo.

We are far out of range of their electro-magnetic detectors, and our torpedo will have such a velocity that they will have no time to protect themselves against it after detection. Unless they shift in the next few seconds, they are lost. This is the most perfect shot I ever had at one of them, but one shot is all I dare risk we must not betray ourselves."

The officer in charge of the torpedoes receives the command to clear the loaded torpedo for firing, while the captain quietly calculates, first, the relative position of his boat to the enemy's ship, according to the course she has taken; secondly, at which point he must aim the torpedo to take surest effect, and in the same way as in hunting a hare he withholds the shot to correspond to his victim's gait.

He called an order, and the Russian seamen, who had been standing about the deck, listening half-amused and half-indignant, to the altercation, made a move in the direction of the destroyer's 4-pounder and her port torpedo deck tube. But our skipper had been expecting and keenly on the watch for such a move, and he now hailed again: "Destroyer ahoy! Keep away from the tube and the gun, you men!

Round a rope hanging from the bow of the vessel one of these chains was flung, and the torpedo was dropped from the end of the spar, while the launch shot away, paying out the electric cable as she went. But this latter was not required. The torpedo swung round by the current and hit the ship with sufficient violence.

Thus the problem becomes increasingly difficult, and the protection of the trade route will be no more thoroughly effected than it is to-day unless we overwhelm the enemy by a tremendous fleet of destroyers. The "Triumph" was torpedoed while moving slowly; both warships had out their torpedo nets. The Germans have in operation submersibles of 2000 tons displacement.