A main difficulty with the torpedo was how to discharge it. For some while only two methods existed: the first, a mechanism of catapult type which hurled the torpedo into the water; the other, by a crude application of dropping gear, suitable, of course, for launches only. In either case, especially the former, there was a strong element of uncertainty as to the direction the torpedo would take; for one to describe a circle and return to the firer was not unknown.[8] The charge was inconsiderable, and range and speed were both very small. An instrument called the Harvey torpedo was more or less contemporaneous with the Whitehead. It was a very primitive idea, consisting as it did merely in attempting to tow explosives across the course of an enemy. It was too obviously cumbersome to cause disquietude, and with the invention of torpedo tubes passed into oblivion. The advantages of the torpedo tube were quickly recognised; and though the range was still little over a hundred yards or so--at any rate, so far as any probability of hitting was concerned--the torpedo quickly became a part of the armament of all important ships. So much was this the case that the submerged tube was developed with sufficient celerity to be adopted into the equipment of the _Inflexible_, of 1874 design. None the less, however, the possible results of torpedo attack remained uninvestigated till 1874, and even then only came to be inquired into after the _Oberon_ experiments, which were primarily if not entirely brought about by the advent of the observation mine as a practical thing. The mine’s arrival counted for little; the automobile torpedo being at the moment much in the public eye, the point that the _Oberon_ experiments were primarily designed to test the effect of mines got somewhat lost sight of. The essential fact is that by 1874 the fact of other enemies to the ship than the gun was established. For a long time it affected ship design no further than the gradual introduction of an anti-torpedo-boat armament; but this was mainly due to Sir E. J. Reed having in the _Bellerophon_ design endeavoured to anticipate torpedo effect. In 1874, and onward therefrom for some time, the double bottom, combined with water-tight bulkheads, was considered a suitable “reply” to the “new arm,” and it was not for many years that torpedo nets were in any degree appreciated. In the later eighties some torpedo experiments were conducted against the old ironclad _Resistance_, in which the Bullivant net defence system proved altogether superior to the cumbersome old wooden booms which were in use: but, despite this, nothing was done for many a year, and the old pattern was adhered to. _ESTIMATES IN THE ERA._