In a manifesto issued in July, 1901, the Navy League declared that owing to the lack of prevision no adequate provision for gyroscopes and other “essentials of efficient fighting” had been made. Soon afterwards, in the House of Commons, Mr. Arnold Forster, referring to the condition of the navy, remarked that the gyroscope was an exceedingly complicated and beautiful appliance, which from its nature and mechanism you could not get by sending round the corner. Its manufacture, he said, was a long process, involving considerable skilled labour, but still it had been carried out with unremitting zeal, and a great many vessels were supplied with them, He assured the House that there had been no relaxation in the effort to provide all torpedoes with this necessary and desirable accomplishment. The working of the gyroscope as applied to the Whitehead torpedo may now be described. In the centre of the lower part of the buoyancy chamber is placed a small heavy-rimmed flywheel or gyroscope about 1¾ lbs. in weight, carefully suspended on gymbals (like a ship’s compass) in a vertical position and transverse to the axis of the torpedo. The apparatus is “set” by winding up a strong spring, and the action of firing the torpedo from the tube releases the spring and causes the gyroscope to spin round at a rate of about 2,200 revolutions a minute. The use of the gyroscope is based on the fact that if a wheel be set spinning on its axis with any considerable velocity, it will always tend to revolve in the same place to which it is set spinning. The gyroscope works a servo-motor, which in its turn works a pair of movable vertical rudders, and the slightest deviation from the direction in which the torpedo was originally fired causes the gyroscope to move the rudders and bring back the torpedo to its pre-determined course. Thanks to the hydrostatic valve, the pendulum, and the gyroscope, the Whitehead torpedo is almost certain to hit the object at which it is aimed. In peace manœuvres the Whitehead has often been run absolutely dead straight, with no divergence either up or down, or from right to left, to a distance of 2,000 yards. In 1890 the range of the Whitehead (Mark X R.L.) was officially placed at 800 yards, so the value of the gyroscope is quite evident. Torpedoes are fired in four ways— 1. By submerged tubes. 2. By above-water tubes. 3. By revolving tubes. 4. By boat’s “dropping gear.”