_Thomas._ They write here one Corneilius'[44] son Hath made the Hollanders an invisible eel To swim the Haven at Dunkirk and sink all The shipping there. _Pennyboy._ But how is't done? _Cymbal._ I'll show you, Sir. It's an automa, runs under water With a snug nose, and has a nimble tail Made like an auger, with which tail she wriggles Betwixt the costs[45] of a ship and sinks it straight. _Pennyboy._ A most brave device To murder their flat bottoms! _The Staple of News._ BEN JONSON. "PITT", said the famous Admiral Lord St. Vincent, in the course of an interview with the American inventor Fulton, "is the greatest fool that ever existed, to encourage a mode of war which they who commanded the seas did not want, and which, if successful, would deprive them of it." Truer words were never spoken. Fulton had invented floating mines or torpedoes--"infernals" as they were then called--and even an ingenious form of submarine boat. The French, to whom he first offered them, to their honour be it spoken, would have nothing to do with them even though hard put to it to hold their own against the British fleet. Admiral Decrès reported that Fulton's inventions were "fit only for Algerines and pirates". The Maritime Prefect at Brest refused to allow him to attack an English frigate off the coast with his submarine, "because this type of warfare carries with it the objection that those who undertake it and those against whom it is made will all be lost. This cannot be called a gallant death", he said. Finally, Admiral Pléville le Pelly, the Minister of War, stated that it appeared to him to be "impossible to serve a Commission for Belligerency to men who employ such a method of destroying the fleet of an enemy". It is a sad reflection that after a century of much-boasted "advance in civilization", we none of us appear to have any chivalric scruples of this kind. But, in spite of our tremendous ascendancy at sea, Pitt--being a politician and not a naval officer--was, as St. Vincent said, "fool" enough to listen to Fulton when, repulsed from France, he took the name of Francis and brought his schemes over to this country. Experiments were made in the Downs, and Lieutenant Robinson of the Royal Marines carried out a demonstration before Pitt with some of Fulton's torpedoes, or "carcasses" as they were called, by blowing up a brig anchored off Walmer Castle.