19th Century Torpedoes and Their Inventors (review)
- 19th Century Torpedoes and Their Inventors
By 1900, the name of English expatriate engineer Robert Whitehead had become synonymous with the torpedo and Whitehead's torpedo company in Fiume, Italy, held a virtual monopoly on torpedo manufacture. Whitehead's prominence at the time and in the historical literature has obscured the efforts of his many rivals who also sought to develop mobile weapons intended to sink enemy vessels by hitting them below the waterline. In this extensively researched volume, Edwyn Gray seeks to flesh out the historical record by profiling the numerous other inventors who contributed to the evolution of the torpedo as they sought to circumvent Whitehead's monopoly. He places particular emphasis on identifying the originators of important ideas and giving them proper credit for their innovations.
The book also serves as a compendium of virtually every torpedo developed in the nineteenth century. It covers the period from Robert Fulton's pioneering work in the early 1800s until 1900, although its main focus is on the period after the American Civil War. Gray ends his study at 1900 because, he argues, the technical details of the torpedo become too complex for a general audience to understand as the weapon grows increasingly sophisticated. According to Gray, the character of torpedo development also changed by 1900. The anonymous engineers of the major armament manufacturers and state-owned arsenals replaced individual inventors and stripped the torpedo story of its romance and glamour. Although Gray laments this process, it is a shame he does not examine it more closely. The torpedo might be an interesting lens through which to examine the bureaucratization of military innovation.
Most of the more than seventy weapons described in Gray's book were unsuccessful, some were laughable, few were well known. Gray nevertheless argues that each torpedo "merits its considered place in the history of naval weaponry" (p. viii). He seeks to track down every torpedo ever mentioned in the contemporary literature, regardless of how important, and provides as many technical details as possible for each one. He does not, however, [End Page 233] explain why torpedoes that proved utter failures or mere imitations of more successful efforts merit consideration. Moreover, the information available on some weapons is so sparse that it is impossible to understand how they contributed to torpedo development.
The book is ostensibly organized as a chronological account of torpedo development, but some chapters profile important individuals, such as Colonel Victor von Scheliha, John Louis Lay, Robert Wilson, and Louis Brennan, while others describe key inventions, such as spar torpedoes and towed torpedoes, and still others simply list every torpedo introduced during a specific time span. Moreover, Gray often skips forward and backward chronologically, even when discussing the same inventor or the same invention, and refers constantly to people and weapons described in other chapters. As a result, the narrative is often difficult to follow.
Despite its confusing organization, this comprehensive catalog of nineteenth-century torpedoes and their inventors is a useful companion to Gray's earlier book on Whitehead and his contribution to torpedo development for those interested in nineteenth-century naval technology.
