Infernal Machines Submarine and Torpedo Warfare in the War of 1812 by Donald G . Shomette
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n 18 June 1812, when President James Madison signed the Declaration of War against Great Britain, the United States was woefully ill-equipped to conduct naval operations on the open ocean or to protect American territorial waters. With a fleet of only seven frigates and nine smaller vessels against the mighty British Royal Navy's 740 fighting ships, the odds at sea were definitely not in America's favor. 1 Owing to the more significant manpower needs required to defeat Napoleon, the American contest was, forGreat Britain, a secondary theater of concern. Reflecting this view, on 5 January 1813 Admiral Sir Henry E. Stanhope wrote to First Lord of the Admiralty Melville suggesting that attacks on American seaports and towns would be disastrous without sufficient land forces. Instead, he proposed a blockade composed of "small Squadrons under the command of active intelligent officers."2 His words were immediately heeded. Precisely a month later, a Royal Navy blockading squadron, the first to be deployed, arrived at the entrance of the C hesapeake Bay. The force, consisting of nine ships of war mounting 40 1 guns, more than equaled the firepower of the entire United States Navy. 3 In time, the blockade would be extended all along the US coast and bring a halt to America's seaborne trade and a significant component of its privateering and offensive naval capabilities. Desperate measures were called for by the American government. Less than a month after the institution of the blockade, the US Congress passed on 3 March 181 3 legislation, popularly known as the "Torpedo Act," encouraging the private development of torpedoes, submarine instruments, and any other destructive devices to help break the blockade. A bounty of one-half the value of the armed vessel so burnt, sunk, or destroyed, and also half the value of its guns, cargo, tackle, and apparel, would be paid out of the US Treasury to any persons who succeeded in developing such a device, other than armed or commissioned vessels of the United States. 4
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The initiative was not without merit in that the American inventor Robert Fulton had successfully demonstrated the efficacy of both the submarine and the torpedo, or underwater mine, to the governments of both Great Britain and France. Indeed, in 1804, under contract with the British
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Now, with the passage of the Torpedo Act offering a profit incentive, there was an immediate ground swell of interest in the development of Fulton's submarine and torpedo warfare concepts and inventions. A mariner named Elijah Mix was readily recruited by one of Fulton's business affili-
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Robert Fulton's 36-foot "plunging boat, "Nautilus, was successfully deployed in a demonstration at Brest, France, in 1801 for the French military, blowing up a sloop. In 1804 Fulton manufactured torpedoes for the British Admiralty at the Portsmouth Navy Yard. On 14 October 1805, he successfully demonstrated the use of his submarine and his torpedoes off Deale, England, by blowing up the brig Dorothea before key members ofthe British government and admiralty. Admiralty, he had manufactured torpedoes at the Portsmouth Navy Yard for use against the French fleet at Bolougne. His mode of submarine warfare had been supported by no less than William Pitt and Lord Melville of the British Admiralty. Following Lord Nelson's victory at Trafalgar, however, the British government, like thatof France earlier, spurned his ideas. Fulton returned to America, where he secured the interest of President Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, members of the US Congress and others, but soon had famously diverted his entire attention to the development of steam-powered watercraft.
ates, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, and offered a contract to conduct torpedo attacks on enemy vessels in the Chesapeake. 5 If successful, he would receive two-thirds of the federal bounty money, with Fulton receiving the other third. 6 Mix zealously accepted the challenge. The use of torpedoes against His Majesty's ships was not unexpected by the blockaders at the Virginia Capes. Guard boats were stationed every night, and buoys were moored ahead of each vessel when riding at ebb tide, to defeat any torpedo attacks. 7 On the night of 4 June 1813, the discovery of "one of the Powder Machines,
SEA HISTORY 141 , WINTER 20 12- 13