The one time that this type of vessel had come prominently into notice was in 1904, when several of them attacked the Russian fleet at Port Arthur, damaging several powerful vessels and practically ending Russian sea power in the Far East. The history of the destroyer, however, goes back much further than 1904. It was created to fulfil a duty not unlike that which it has played so gloriously in the World War. In the late seventies and early eighties a new type of war vessel, the torpedo boat, caused almost as much perturbation as the submarine has caused in recent years. This speedy little fighter was invented to serve as a medium for the discharge of a newly perfected engine of naval warfare, the automobile torpedo. It was its function to creep up to a battleship, preferably under cover of darkness or in thick weather, and let loose this weapon against her unsuspecting hulk. The appearance of the torpedo boat led to the same prediction as that which has been more recently inspired by the submarine; in the eyes of many it simply meant the end of the great surface battleship. But naval architects, looking about for the "answer" to this dangerous craft, designed another type of warship and appropriately called it the "torpedo boat destroyer." This vessel was not only larger and speedier than its appointed antagonist, but it possessed a radius of action and a seaworthiness which enabled it to accompany the battle fleet. Its draft was so light that a torpedo could pass harmlessly under the keel, and it carried an armament which had sufficient power to end the career of any torpedo boat that came its way. Few types have ever justified their name so successfully as the torpedo boat destroyer. So completely did it eliminate that little vessel as a danger to the fighting ships that practically all navies long since ceased to build torpedo boats. Yet the destroyer promptly succeeded to the chief function of the discarded vessel, that of attacking capital ships with torpedoes; and, in addition to this, it assumed the duty of protecting battleships from similar attack by enemy vessels of the same type. It surprises many people to learn that the destroyer is not a little boat but a warship of considerable size. This vessel to-day impresses most people as small only because all ships, those which are used for commerce and those which are used for war, have increased so greatly in displacement. The latest specimens of the destroyer carry four-or five-inch guns and twelve torpedo tubes, each of which launches a torpedo that weighs more than a ton, and runs as straight as an arrow for more than six miles. The _Santa Maria_, the largest vessel of the squadron with which Columbus made his first voyage to America, had a displacement of about five hundred tons, and thus was about half as large as a destroyer; and even at the beginning of the clipper ship era few vessels were much larger.