In order to endow the boat with a wide radius of action a battery was provided composed of 720 cells, each containing 29 plates and having an output of 400 amperes and a capacity of 1,800 amperes an hour. The _Gustave Zédé_ had scarcely been placed in the water before the motive power gave out owing to the short-circuiting of most of the cells. To remedy this, two plates were removed from each cell in order that each plate might be wrapped in a “chemise en toile d’amiante.” The result was no better for the covers, and the ebonite joints burst into flames and the boat was in danger of being consumed by fire. It was then decided to reduce it to 360 cells; this gave a speed of eight knots, though originally it was hoped that sixteen would be obtained. The successive crews of the _Gustave Zédé_ have suffered much from the poisonous fumes of the accumulators, and during the earlier trials all the men on board were ill. In the bows is a torpedo tube and an arrangement is used whereby the water that enters the tube after the discharge of the torpedo is forced out by compressed air. Three 17½ Whitehead torpedoes are carried. In spite of the fact that a horizontal rudder placed at the stern had not proved serviceable on the _Gymnote_, such a rudder was fitted in the _Gustave Zédé_. With this rudder she usually plunged at an angle of about 5°, but on several occasions she behaved in a very erratic fashion, seesawing up and down, and once when the Committee and Experts were on board, she proved so capricious, going down at an angle of 30°–35°, often throwing the poor gentlemen on to the floor, that it was decided to fix a system of six rudders, three on each side. Four water tanks are carried, one at each end and two in the middle, and the water is expelled by four Thirion pumps worked by a little electro-motor; these pumps also furnish the air necessary for the crew and for the discharge of the torpedoes. For steering on the surface there was placed on the _Gustave Zédé_ at first a movable shell with folded canvas similar to that of the _Gymnote_. It was found even more dangerous there than on the smaller boat; it was, therefore, taken away and replaced by a fixed kiosk, immovably attached to the hull, and of a shape tapering away fore and aft. The _Gustave Zédé_ possesses, for under-water vision, an optical tube and a periscope. The crew consists of an officer and eight men.