The Submarine Torpedo Boat
Its Characteristics And Modern Development

CHAPTER XIII SUBMARINE MINES Like the submarine torpedo boat, the conception of the submarine mine dates back a great many years. The first recorded use of this sort of engine of destruc- tion was in 1585 at the Siege of Antwerp, when floating mines of a kind were used quite successfully against the Spaniards. These so-called mines were in reality small boats carrying heavy loads of gun-powder which was cov- ered over with pieces of timber and weighted down with good sized chunks of iron and rock. After lighting a slow burning fuse leading to the powder charge, these small vessels were set adrift in the current so as to be borne down upon the fleet of the enemy. When the fuse had burned down to the powder the explosion would occur scattering the pieces of rock and iron in all directions. The real ancestor of the modern submarine mine was however, evolved by David Bushnell, the father of the submarine boat. Bushnell’s mine consisted of a keglike container filled with gun-powder and discharged by an ingenious arrangement of a flint-lock actuated by a time clock mechanism. I he clockwork was set in operation by the release of a pin when the mine was set free and the explosion occurred thereafter at a definite time accordingly as the mechanism had been adjusted. Fulton was the next to take up mines and he carried out a great deal of experimental work with them in this country and abroad. Several years later Samuel Colt, 195