In 1809, when Lord Cochrane was engaged against the French in the Bay of Biscay, he employed a destroyer most formidable in character. He filled a number of empty puncheons with about fifty thousand pounds of powder; on the tops of these puncheons were placed three hundred and fifty explosive shells, with fuses, and upwards of two thousand hand grenades among and between them. The whole were bound and jammed together with cables, wedges, and sand, on board a small vessel called the _Devastator_. A fifteen minutes' time-fuse being ignited, the crew (Cochrane himself, a lieutenant, and four seamen) rowed away quickly in a boat. The infernal monster did not produce quite the kind of mischief intended; the explosion was one of the most tremendous ever heard; but the enemy's ships were rather too far away to be materially damaged, while Cochrane lost some of his gallant little crew by over-fatigue and drowning by tumultuous waves. During the short war between England and the United States in 1812-13, many submarine boats were suggested and partially tried, but with no great result. The Crimean War (1854-56) brought to the Admiralty a deluge of inventors and projectors, each armed with some new scheme of a 'diabolical' kind. The Earl of Dundonald (the Lord Cochrane of 1809) sounded the government concerning a plan which he had matured long before; but there was hesitation in the matter; and the public learned little more than that the scheme related to a kind of fire-ship. Captain Warner's 'long range' was another crotchet, by which an enemy's vessel was to be destroyed at an immense distance by _something_ being hurled against it; this something, whatever it may have been, did not find favour with the government. Then there was a talk also about Captain Disney's war-projectile, consisting of a metal cylinder having a bursting charge at one end, and at the other a highly combustible liquid; the liquid, when exposed to the air, set fire to almost everything with which it came in contact. This pleasant kind of plaything was to be propelled against ships, buildings, or masses of troops. Captain Disney had another mode of employing what he frankly called his 'infernal fluid,' which would 'cause blindness for several hours to all troops coming within a quarter of a mile of it.' The real nature of the liquid was his peculiar secret, which, so far as we are aware, the government did not think proper to purchase.