A New Terror to Ironclads.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 303, 29 June 1896, Page 2

A New Terror to Ironclads.

France, it is said, possesses a submarine boat capable of sinking, by means of torpedoes, half a dozen Channel squadrons one after the other. It has leaked out that the boat has actually travelled across the channel and right round the Isle of Wight, passing underneath en route several warships, without ever coming to the surface. The boat is an accomplished fact, and if all that is claimed for it is true it is indeed a formidable addition to the French' navy. The boat, known as " Le Goubet," after its inventor, has within the past two or three months been subjected by the French naval authorities to a series of severe tests. The boat is 24ft long with a diameter of 6ft amidships, and weighs nearly eleven tons. Its cigar shaped hull is of steel, and is made in three parts for convenience of stowage on board ship, the sections being screwed together on the inside when the boat is required for use. There is a dome shaped man-hole on the upper surface, and a lead keel which weighs two tons, runs the length of the vessel. Two fins also run the whole length of the sides of the vessel, serving the dual purposes of rollers and carriers for "automobile" torpedoes. Windows of thick glass are placed round the hull, and to some are attached electric lamps for illuminating the water, whilst an ingenious contfivance, like a telescope with mirrors, enables t h e crew to watch vessels from a depth of 12ft below the surface. In ordinary conditions, we are told, the boat will float with only its dome showing above the waves. " When within a reasonable distance of its enemy and sure of its direction water is let into the ' bold and the boat sinks twelve or fifteen feet, its ordinary submergence, or as low as thirty feet, according to the undertake. The " goosefoot " oars are then brought into play, and its auto-mobile torpedoes directed with unerring certainty." If the boat is wanted to rise to the surface in a hurry the keel can be released immediately. The crew of four is accommodated in one small chamber and are enabled to breathe by means of a number of tubes filled with compressed oxygenated air. As occasion arises the gas is liberated, and the vitiated air reoxygenated. The boat it is said, has been submerged fifteen hours without any ill effects beiug felt by its occupants. What England wants now is for some smart inventor to invent a " submarine boat destroyer," or else if she ever does meet the French navy in war her men of- war will.be liable to be attacked from beneath, full fathoms five, by a foe against which their heavy armour is of no avail. '■-