What was known as an American torpedo-pilot was really a large boat covered from end to end with a curved iron deck, above which was a small pilot-house or look-out chamber, which also served as a ventilator; the boat was propelled by paddle-wheels, and travelled so low in the water as to be practically awash, and towed a mine behind her. Some of these mines or torpedoes contained as much as six barrels of gunpowder. An Englishman named Johnson designed a submarine or diving boat in which he was to have rescued the ex-Emperor Napoleon from Saint Helena, but Napoleon’s death intervened. Various inventions were tried at one time and another, and the misfortune is that in many cases the first experiment proved to be the last, for the contrivances were the inventors’ coffins. Some of these fatalities were unquestionably due to the submarines being made to descend too low, when they gave way under the enormous pressure of the water. The first effective submarine designed for war purposes was a cigar-shaped boat constructed by an American shoemaker named Phillips. The boat was built of iron and carried a colombiad, which could be fired through a port in the iron plating, and also a couple of torpedoes or mines. Numerous experiments with this boat were successful, but Phillips descended once too often. A German named Bauer invented a diving boat, which scared the Danes badly in the war between Denmark and Prussia in 1848-50. At its second voyage it descended too far, but Bauer and his two companions escaped through the scuttle. Thirty-six years later the boat was fished up, and is now in the Naval Museum at Berlin. Failing to get any more money in Germany, and being suddenly dropped in Austria after the Court and Government had given him much encouragement, he came to England, where the Prince Consort became his patron. He designed a submarine, but his plans were altered by some of the leading engineers, ship-builders, and statesmen, who, whatever their skill in surface navigation and diplomacy may have been, knew next to nothing of submarine navigation. The consequence was that his boat as altered to suit their views was a failure, and the discredit was cast upon Bauer. Still believing that he was right, he betook himself to the United States, but the American Government, probably finding that the local supply of inventors and submarines was a long way in excess of the demand, turned a deaf ear to all his suggestions. He went back to Europe, and the Russian authorities authorised him to construct his _Sea Devil_ which, after numerous experiments, was sunk under circumstances never fully explained. He managed, however, in one of his trips with her, to enter Sebastopol harbour, to the great dismay of a Russian sentry who, seeing him gliding by night in a standing position along the surface of the water, took him for a ghost, dropped his rifle, and ran. The loss of his boat has been attributed to an order of the Russian Government that