In spite of opinions such as these the humanitarians have won the day, and explosive bullets are now tabooed by Great Britain. The great Duke of Wellington used to say that he should not like to see the bullet reduced in size, because it broke the bone, and the object of war was either to kill your man or else put him in hospital and keep him there. With the Mauser and the Lee-Enfield neither of these results is attained. The prototypes of the modern submarine torpedo, although they were employed on the surface of the water and not below, were the “machine,” the “infernal,” the “catamaran,” the “powder-vessel,” &c. “Machines” may be best described as fire-ships specially arranged so as to explode very destructively when alongside one of the enemy’s vessels. They are first found in the British Navy in the seventeenth century, but were soon discontinued, not we are afraid on humanitarian grounds, but because Bushnell and Fulton pointed the way to the more convenient explosive device known as the “torpedo.” In the year 1650 Prince Rupert made an attempt to blow up the English Vice-admiral in the _Leopard_ by a species of “infernal.” He sent a couple of negroes and one of his seamen in Portuguese dress alongside the _Leopard_ in a shore boat. They carried with them what purported to be a barrel of oil, but the barrel really held an infernal machine to be fired by a pistol attachment, the trigger of which could be pulled by a string passing through the bung. The story goes that one of the crew of the boat, finding the lower deck ports closed, “uttered an exclamation” in English. This betrayed them, but Blake refused to take vengeance on them, though the trick was one he would himself have scorned to play on his adversary. During the war between Great Britain and the United States in 1812 H.M.S. _Ramilies_ of seventy-four tons, was so unfortunate as to be the object of attack both by a diving vessel carrying torpedoes and by a powder-ship. The _Ramilies_ was lying off New London at anchor and maintaining the blockade. As she was known to be short of provisions the Americans fitted out a schooner and filled the hold with powder, covering it over in the hatchways with barrels of flour. By means of an ingenious piece of clockwork attached to a gunlock and a train leading to the powder its explosion was ensured at the intended time. The _Ramilies_ suspecting nothing, but thanking Heaven for the gift, captured the vessel and the crew escaped to land. By some extraordinary chance (or was it destiny?) the schooner was ordered to anchor near another prize some distance from the _Ramilies_, so that when the clockwork reached the fatal hour, 2.30, the charge exploded and blew up, not the _Ramilies_ with her captain, Sir Thomas Hardy, and crew of six hundred men, but only the prize crew who were in the schooner.