The Enquirer

Domestic.

TORPEDO WAR

A work has been lately published in New York under this title. The project has been long before the public in various views, but not before the present occasion in a satisfactory and systematic form. It has been a subject of applause to those who have investigated it, while it has been a theme of abuse, reprobation, misrepresentation, and ridicule to those who either knowing nothing about it, or fearing that its efficacy would produce effects the most momentous to military navies, have endeavored to depreciate the torpedo system.

To any man of common understanding who has considered the natural tendency of the explosive power of gunpowder; its operative projectile power, in throwing balls or shells; its common operation even in the explosion of a rocket, of a few ounces weight, the height to which it ascends in the atmosphere; it would appear not very extraordinary, that an augmentation of the quantity of powder from the load of a rocket, or of a twelve pounder fired horizontally, that the effects of an increased quantity and an explosion upwards would prove terrible wherever it could be brought into operation.

The effects of the explosion of powder mills, which have produced concussions terrible as earth-quakes: the effects of artificial mines blown up in military sieges, have been contemplated rather by men who have made military subjects a study, than by legislators or the private citizen

A private citizen during the American revolution, made an attempt to realize the effect of a submarine explosion on ships of war, but public patronage was wanting or secret corruption prevailed against public utility, and Bushnell it is believed died unrewarded and neglected.

We have now a citizen, a native of Philadelphia, whose independence of fortune and whose zeal for science, place him out of the scope of corruption, and above the sordid spirit of avarice, who has at his own expence matured experiments and given demonstration to the efficacy of an invention which for simplicity and power, as well as for the importance of its consequences, once brought into practice, every calculation that can be attempted must fall far short of its power or its consequences.

It is our intention to present to the public the whole treatise just published on this subject, with the plates ;by which means the whole people of America will be enabled to judge for themselves on this most interesting and effective mode of defence.

Mr. Fulton, the author of this work, is a native of Philadelphia, and has spent several years in Europe, where he has matured his torpedo system in conjunction with other great branches of engineering and mechanics; he is also the first successful navigator by philosophical power, against wind, and tide, and weather, as proved by his steam boats which ply on the Hudson and Raritan, and of which there is a prospect to the national advantage to see lines established in the Mississippi, Ohio, and lake Champlain as well as on the Delaware; and we trust at no remote period on the Potomac and James River.

The torpedo which is the subject of our present attention, takes its name from a fish, whose physical electric properties are generally known, to strike with the touch ; the artificial torpedo, is thus described by Mr. Fulton, in page 8 described in plate II above, which we also give in his own words.

( The above is in the Aurora, but as we are without the Plate, we must stop here-for the present.

E. E.