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There are boiler troubles and the periodical cleaning of the boiler tubes. There can be defects in the guns, torpedo-tubes, searchlights, or electrical fittings; defects anywhere and everywhere, even in the galley-stove funnel or the wardroom pantry. Mother has a large family and their ailments are very varied and diverse.
Then for three days the two craft lay together, while the engineer and the men familiarized themselves with her internal economy the torpedo-tubes, gasoline-engines, storage-batteries, and motors; and the vast system of pipes, valves, and wires that gave life and action to the boat and while Metcalf experimented with the mysterious searchlight attached to the periscope tube invented by himself, but perfected by others.
There was a rattle of machine-gun fire which drove her men from the deck torpedo-tubes, and a few seconds later one of the Chen Yuen's big guns plumped a shell right into her, crumpling her up like cardboard and sending her to the bottom within a few seconds.
While stricken the undersea craft might show fight. So with guns and torpedo-tubes trained upon the submarine, they waited. But there was no fight in that boat. The depth charges had done their work thoroughly. While the visible portion of the hull appeared to have been uninjured, it was perfectly clear that the vessel was not under perfect control.
Build underneath and each way from the ends of the box a cellular hull to float it; place within it, and below the box, magazines, boilers, and engines; construct above, between the turrets, a lighter superstructure to hold additional quick-fire guns and torpedo-tubes; cap the whole with a military mast supporting fighting-tops, and containing an armored conning-tower in its base; man and equip, provision and coal the fabric, and you can go to sea, confident of your ability to destroy everything that floats, except icebergs and other battle-ships.
He stopped ten seconds to tell the story of the new gun-crew man who was sent up the yard to the storekeeper for a pair of spurs to ride the torpedo-tubes with. There were four guns, one forward, one aft, and two in the waist. They had been slushed down with vaseline to keep the salt-water rust off; now they were swabbing the grease off.
These were for use against boarding-parties. The vessel also contained numerous torpedo-tubes, always loaded. The destroyer registered about a thousand tons, and carried a crew of ninety-five men, who were reported as "a great happy family." The commanding officer said that there was surprisingly little homesickness among the men, many of whom had never before been so far from their native land.
A large foreign timber-brig lay at my feet, and under the round of her stern cowered, close to the wharf-edge, a slate-coloured, unkempt, two-funnelled craft of a type but I am no expert between the first-class torpedo-boat and the full-blooded destroyer. From her archaic torpedo-tubes at the stern, and quick-firers forward and amidship, she must have dated from the early nineties.
By the addition of a greater number of torpedo-tubes, and the improvement of their centralized control in the hand of the commander at the periscope, along lines which we are now developing, it will be possible for the submersible to achieve a greater effectiveness in its torpedo fire.
Pretty soon he had torpedo-tubes swinging inboard and outboard, and between every pair of tubes a man sitting up in an iron seat that looked like the kind that goes with a McCormick reaper, which all helped the gunner's mate to feel better.
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