The _David_, that finally succeeded in sinking the _Housatonic_, proved so costly an experiment in human lives, because she was not worked as a submarine, but as a low freeboard surface torpedo boat, a purpose for which she was never designed, and for which, as we have seen, she proved dangerous and inefficient. As some one has observed, she was intended for submerging at pleasure—her own pleasure, however, not that of her crew. During the attack on the _Housatonic_, on February 17th, the vessel did not run under water. The crew submerged it to the hatch coaming and left the cover open against the protest of Mr. Howgate, who despatched it on its mission. The attack was made by a spar torpedo, and the wave thrown up by its explosion, when it struck the _Housatonic_, entered the open hatchway and swamped the vessel. Most accounts of the feat of the _David_ state that _all_ the crew were drowned. From the following extract it would seem that the gallant captain survived the attack. “I remember on one occasion during the war,” wrote Hobart Pacha in an article, “The Torpedo Scare,” appearing in _Blackwood’s Magazine_ for June, 1885, “when I was at Charleston, meeting in a coffee-room at that place a young naval officer (a Southerner) with whom I got into conversation. He told me that that night he was going to sink a Northern man-of-war which was blockading the port, and invited me to see him off. I accompanied him down to his cigar-boat, as he called it, and found that she was a vessel about forty feet long, shaped like a cigar, on the bow of which was placed a torpedo. On his stepping on board with his crew of four men, his boat was immersed till nothing but a small piece of funnel was visible. He moved off into the darkness at no great speed—say at about five miles an hour. The next evening, on visiting the coffee-house, I found my friend sitting quietly smoking his pipe. He told me that he had succeeded in making a hole in the frigate which he had attacked, which vessel could, in fact, be seen lying in shallow water, some seven miles off, careened over to repair damages. But he said that, on the concussion made by firing the torpedo, the water had rushed in through the hatches of his boat, and she had sunk to the bottom. All his men were drowned. He said he didn’t know how he escaped himself, but he fancied that he came up through the hatches, as he found himself floating about, and swam on shore. This affair was officially reported by the American blockading squadron, corroborating the fact of the injury done to the frigate, and stating that the torpedo-boat was got up, with four dead bodies in her hold. Here is one system which might be utilised in naval warfare if perfected, and I am given to understand that a submarine torpedo-boat is already invented by Mr. Nordenfelt.”