one simple operation, that only of firing with reasonable attention. Should the harpooner miss the ship, he can save his Torpedo and return to the attack. While I was with the British blockading fleet off the coast of Boulogne in 1804 and 1805, I acquired some experience on the kind of row-boat best calculated for active movements, and which I now believe well adapted to a harpooning and Torpedo attack; hence I propose clinker-built boats, each twenty-seven feet long, six feet extreme breadth of beam, single banked, and six long oars; one blunderbuss, on a swivel, on the larboard and one on the starboard bow; one ditto on the larboard and one on the starboard quarter, total four, for which cartridges should be prepared, each containing twelve half-ounce balls. To work the blunderbusses, in case of need, two mariners should be placed in the bow, two in the stern; each of those men to be provided with a horse-pistol and cutlass, and each oarsman a cutlass, in case of coming to close quarters with a boat of the enemy. _Total of boat's crew_ 1 Harpooner. 1 Bowman. 4 Marines. 6 Oarsmen. Total 12 Men. Such boats would be active well armed, and, if good men, may be said to be strong handed, and well prepared to make good a retreat, or act on the defensive, in case of encountering the enemy's boats. Fig. 2 A, is a bird's eye view of a vessel at anchor; B, her cable; EE, two Torpedoes; CD, is their coupling line, about 120 feet long; it is here represented touching the cable collapsing, and the Torpedoes driving by the tide under the vessel. This is the manner in which the _Dorothea_ in Walmer roads, and the brig in New-York harbour, were blown up. [Illustration: PLATE V. _Fig. 1._ _Fig. 2._ _Fig. 3._] PLATE V. Fig. 1 A, shews a Torpedo, with the harpoon-line fixed to the centre of its end; when the line is thus fixed, the tide cannot drive the Torpedo under a vessel, for the pressure of the current being equal on both sides, it will hang perpendicular to its suspending box of cork C, Fig. 2, and remain as at B, where, exploding, it would blow the water perpendicular to C, and up the side of the ship; the lateral movement of the water from B to E would give her a sudden cant to one side, but do her no injury. This has been proved by the following practice.