"Torpedo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they. "They've discovered a young torpedo in Ray. He's quite good and they'll probably get into the final. But we needn't be afraid. They've a weak string in Johnson, while we haven't a weakness anywhere. However, we'll take no risks." And so they started a savagely ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... electricities. 'Is it right,' he seemed to ask, 'to call this agency which I have discovered electricity at all? Are there perfectly conclusive grounds for believing that the electricity of the machine, the pile, the gymnotus and torpedo, magneto-electricity and thermo-electricity, are merely different manifestations of one and the same agent?' To answer this question to his own satisfaction he formally reviewed the knowledge of that day. He added to it new experiments of his own, ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... an experimental ship. This ship, the Turbinia, after a considerable amount of trial and modification, attained the unprecedented speed of 341/2 knots an hour, and His Majesty's navy has possessed, in the Turbinia's younger and greater sister, the Viper, now unhappily lost, a torpedo-destroyer capable of 41 miles an hour. There can be little doubt that the sea speeds of 50 and even 60 miles an hour will be attained within the next few years. But I do not think that these developments ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... normal shell. Everything thinner has been punctured, and now an eighty-ton gun, to cost sixty thousand pounds, is getting ready to perforate that. There must be a stopping-point for all this somewhere. Perhaps the fate of armor afloat may soon be settled finally by the torpedo, as its efficiency on land was disposed of by the bullet, and the men-at-arms of the sea no longer lord it over hosts of wooden yeomanry. Happy the nation that can look on with its hands firmly in its pockets while others lavish their treasure in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... Holland, lacking evidence as to the perpetrator of the crime, would have had to swallow this denial but for an accident which furnished her with the missing proof. One of the Tubantia's small boats drifted ashore. In the boat was a fragment of a Schwarzkopf torpedo—a type manufactured and used only by Germany. This fragment was forwarded to Berlin, with another and more urgent demand for ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... thing would disturb him for hours, and his friends were never sure of his equanimity. I was present once when a blundering friend trod unwittingly on his favorite prejudice, and Landor went off instanter like a blaspheming torpedo. There were three things in the world which received no quarter at his hands, and when in the slightest degree he scented hypocrisy, pharisaism, or tyranny, straightway he became furious, and laid about ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... we now hear of nothing but smokeless powder and small bore rifles, heavy ironclads and swift cruisers, torpedo boats and dynamite guns. Europe seems hastening on to that time foretold by General Grant when, worn out by a fatal and ruinous policy, she will bow to the supremacy of peace-loving America, and learn anew from her the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... invention for use at night against torpedo and aeroplane attacks. From that mortar Armand has shot half a dozen bombs of phosphide of calcium which are hurled far into the darkness. They are so constructed that they float after a short plunge and are ignited on contact by the action of the ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... the poor man would have shot himself: we had to gather ourselves together, and show a smooth front to it,—which happily, though difficult, was not impossible to do. I began again at the beginning, to such a wretched, paralyzing torpedo of a task as my hand ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... explosion at Bemerhaven, and people began to talk about coal torpedoes. Then I knew as in all probability I'd carried the man who managed the business, and I gave word to the police, but they never could make anything of it. You know what a coal torpedo is, don't you? Well, you see, a cove insures his ship for more than its value, and then off he goes and makes a box like a bit o'coal, and fills it chock full with dynamite, or some other cowardly stuff of the sort. He drops ...
— The Cabman's Story - The Mysteries of a London 'Growler' • Arthur Conan Doyle
... on toward a meeting place. The ship moved a trifle faster, because it was climbing. The speeds would match exactly when they met. The small torpedo-shaped shining ship and the bulging glowing metal satellite floated with a seeming vast deliberation in emptiness, while the most gigantic of possible round objects filled all the firmament beneath them. They were 200 miles apart. ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... a dandy," said Jim, after the boys had shaken hands and made a few formal inquiries about the interval which had elapsed since last they met. As Jim spoke, his eye roamed over the long torpedo body ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... THE torpedo, in capital letters and italics with a line under the word. I've invented one that would ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... that Germany were one big ship and all the Germans on board, and I had a torpedo big enough to blast them ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... ascendency, thorough intellect and character, to win deference from all—wise enough to see always the supreme end, to know what each instrument was fit for, and to bring all forces to bear in the right way—a man of consummate adroitness, to sail in torpedo-sown waters without exciting an explosion, though conducting wires of local prejudice, class sensitiveness, and personal foible on every hand led straight down to magazines of wrath which might shatter the cause in a moment—a man having resources of his own to ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... disappeared from the Midwest. But on April 19, the same object—or else a similar one—appeared over West Virginia. Early that morning the town of Sisterville was awakened by blasts of the sawmill whistle. Those who went outside their homes saw a strange sight. From a torpedo-shaped object overhead, dazzling searchlights were pointing downward, sweeping the countryside. The thing appeared to be about two hundred feet long, some thirty feet in diameter, with stubby wings and red and green lights along the sides. For almost ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... but the voice of no man upon earth echoed to the voice of my conscience. "I called aloud; but there was none to answer; there was none that regarded." To me the whole world was unhearing as the tempest, and as cold as the torpedo. Sympathy, the magnetic virtue, the hidden essence of our life, was extinct. Nor was this the sum of my misery. This food, so essential to an intelligent existence, seemed perpetually renewing before me in its fairest colours, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... must in the end submit. But after five months of fruitless negotiations the patience of the Government at Tokio was exhausted. On Feb. 8, 1904, the Japanese fleet made a sudden descent upon Port Arthur. This act, so audaciously planned, resulted in the destruction of battle-ships, cruisers, torpedo-boats—nine in all—to which were added the day following two more ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... too feel that this can't last. We sit here talking, and leave everything to Mangan and to chance and to the devil. Think of the powers of destruction that Mangan and his mutual admiration gang wield! It's madness: it's like giving a torpedo to a badly brought up child to ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... seemed merged, rocks did not look the same, whirlpools had a different vortex, islands of stone had a new configuration. As they sped on, lurching, jumping, piercing a broken wall of wave and spray like a torpedo, shooting an almost sheer fall, she came to rely on a sense of intuition rather than memory, for night had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... notes, however, and their descriptions varied from a black pear-shaped globe which had hovered for minutes before descending behind the mountains into the lake, to detailed word pictures of a silvery, torpedo-shaped vessel of space with portholes and flaming rockets and an unknown flag ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... royal highness the Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein; Mr. Gladstone, in marble and bronze; G. F. Watts, in bronze, for the 'Permanent Manchester Art Exhibition'; Mr. Peter Brotherhood, inventor of a torpedo engine, in marble and bronze, which held the place of honor at the Royal Academy the year of its exhibition; Princess Henry of Prussia, in marble; her highness Princess Helena of Saxe-Altenburg; his excellency the Baron ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... foot of each of the numerous hills which occurred along the route. Very thick bush had to be cut through, and at first but slow progress was made. The road, as is generally known, took a direction towards the Inyezane. Whilst out on one occasion, the road party saw a torpedo explosion which took place about three miles from where the party was working. It had been accidentally fired by Kaffirs, who were unaware of the clangers connected with the implement, and it is ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... Navy; a Captain and two Commanders were joined by the Naval Attache of a great neutral Power on his way to visit the Fleet. An Engineer Commander and a Naval Instructor shared a luncheon basket with a Sub-Lieutenant and a volunteer Surgeon. Two Clerks, a Midshipman and a Torpedo Gunner found themselves thrown together, and at the last moment a Chaplain ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... And its concealment is mischievous because, first, it leads people to imagine all sorts of horrors in a document which contains nothing worse than any record of the squabbles of two touchy idlers; and, second, it is clearly a monstrous thing that Douglas should have a torpedo launched at him and timed to explode after his death. The torpedo is a very harmless squib; for there is nothing in it that cannot be guessed from Douglas's own book; but the public does not know that. By the way, it is rather a humorous ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... at 80 deg. to 100 deg. C. decomposes slowly, and sunlight causes it to undergo a slow decomposition. It can, however, be preserved for years without undergoing any alteration. It is very susceptible to explosions by influence. For instance, a torpedo, even placed at a long distance, may explode a line of torpedoes charged with gun-cotton. The velocity of the propagation of the explosion in metallic tubes filled with pulverised gun-cotton has been found to be from 5,000 to 6,000 mms. per second in tin tubes, ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... brutal age, ministered to by hard-fisted men, and we had put it a hundred decent years behind us when—it all comes back again! To-day there are no prisons for the crews of merchantmen, but they can go to the bottom by mine and torpedo even more quickly than their ancestors were run into Le Havre. The submarine takes the place of the privateer; the Line, as in the old wars, is occupied, bombarding and blockading, elsewhere, but the sea-borne traffic must ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... conducting it. If this instance stood alone, some explanation, some disavowal by the German Government, some evidence of criminal mistake or wilful disobedience on the part of the commander of the vessel that fired the torpedo might be sought or entertained; but unhappily it does not stand alone. Recent events make the conclusion inevitable that it is only one instance, even though it be one of the most extreme and distressing instances, of the spirit and method ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... arrived at my house in a case of samples last July. The samples went up from right to left in order of importance, each in his own little bed—until you got to Torpedo Jimmy at the end, who had a double bed to himself. Starting with Cabajo fino in the right-hand corner, the prices ranged from about nine a penny to five pounds apiece, the latter being the approximate charge for T. James ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... hundred million meteorites enter our atmosphere and are cremated, every day. Most of them weigh only an ounce or two, and are invisible. Some of them weigh a ton or more, but even against these large masses the air acts as a kind of "torpedo-net." They generally burst into fragments and fall ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... as mounted on a torpedo launch and ready for action. The shell or projectile is fired by compressed air, admitted from an air reservoir underneath by a simple pressure of the gunner's finger over the valve. The air passes up through the center of the base, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... a certain point on the border, the order is known in Mexico before it is executed. It is the same with coded communications to Foreign Powers. The movements of our fleet are known to foreign naval attaches even before the maneuvers are carried out. The whereabouts of the smallest torpedo boat and submarine is no secret—to any but ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... of vessel, to which the above odd name has been given by its inventor, M. Donato Tommasi, of Paris, France, is a combination of a boat wholly submerged with a raft: a connecting link, to borrow the naturalist's expression, between the submerged torpedo boat and the monitor. The advantages which are expected to be realized from this hybrid craft, the inventor describes as follows: "It is evident that a vessel, plunged several yards below the surface of the sea, is no longer influenced ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... of China has ordered the construction of two more torpedo boats at the German port ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... officers and men alike should be kept as much as possible on blue water, for it is there only they can learn their duties as they should be learned. The big vessels should be manoeuvred in squadrons containing not merely battle ships, but the necessary proportion of cruisers and scouts. The torpedo boats should be handled by the younger officers in such manner as will best fit the latter to take responsibility and meet the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... in a dream, she hears the talk Of mine, torpedo, bomb and gun— She shudders, but her thoughts are all Encradled with her ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... batteries would redouble their fire. Might better have saved their powder and let us run into the fields and be blown to bits, you will say. Not at all. They would consider that a waste of good mines. Nobody wants to waste a whole mine on a poor little torpedo boat destroyer — and twenty to forty men. There's no profit ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... pains of maternity as an unmeaning blot on the scheme of things, that I have none left for a more genial emotion. Altogether, I am disappointed in myself as a father. I seem to have no imagination, and at present I would rather touch a loaded torpedo than my son.' ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was upon me before I had thought to execute these instructions, I straightened myself out rigidly, and lo! I shot in like a torpedo on the very top of the billow, holding the point of the board up, yelling like a Comanche Indian. So fast, so straight did I go, that it was all I could do to swerve in the shallow water and not be hurled with force on ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... the bridge surpassed in heroism young Osmond Kelly Ingram, who threw overboard the explosives on the American destroyer Cassin in order that the German submarine's torpedo should not detonate them and destroy his ship—and gave his life for his comrades and his country in doing so. Ingram sought danger instead of fleeing it. He might have saved his life without discredit. But he did not think of his ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... Fulton came home to begin her construction. Since his luckless experience with the French Institute he had tested a steamer on the Seine; failed to interest Napoleon; tried, without success, to get the British Government to adopt his torpedo; tried and failed again with the American Government at Washington. Fulton's thoughts seemed to have been riveted on his torpedo; but Livingston was confident of the future of the steamboat, and had ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... with increasing enthusiasm, "Marston will come! and Elphinstone of the torpedo! and the gallant Bloomsbury, and Billsby the brave, and all our friends of the Baltimore Gun Club! And we shall receive them with all the honors! And then we shall establish projectile trains between the Earth and the Moon! Hurrah for ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... effect, a claim to torpedo at sight, without regard to the safety of the crew or passengers, any merchant vessel under any flag. As it is not in the power of the German Admiralty to maintain any surface craft in these waters, the attack can only be delivered ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... ravenous man-eaters scent blood from an enormous distance, and their prominent upper fin, which is generally out of the water as they go along at a tremendous pace, may be seen at a great distance, and they can swim at the rate of a mile a minute. A shark somewhat reminds me of the torpedo of the present day, and in my humble ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... branching nerve-cell, or "soul-cell," from the brain of an electric fish (Torpedo), magnified 600 times. In the middle of the cell is the large transparent round nucleus, one nucleolus, and, within the latter again, a nucleolinus. The protoplasm of the cell is split into innumerable fine threads (or ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... as they passed through Palace Yard on their way to the House shuddered as they observed a long, black, wicked-looking motor-car, shaped like a torpedo. In this machine Mr. PEMBERTON-BILLING, the new Air-Member for East Herts, had done most of his electioneering. Now he had arrived to take his seat and, rumour said, to make his maiden speech. Would the Front ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... arrangements sailed in secret, and the news was known in American cities scarcely any sooner than it was in France, so careful had the military authorities been not to give the lurking German submarines a chance to torpedo the transports. ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... up to Newport with me at five-thirty," were his first words. "Katy's all ready, and means to sit up till the boat gets in at two-thirty, keeping a little supper hot and hot for you. The Torpedo Station is in its glory just now, and there's going to be a great explosion on ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... the harbor: yachts and cat-boats were out in numbers; schooners and barges sped up the bay, their sails shining against the green Island shores; row-boats and steam-tugs were crossing and recrossing between the city and the Fort and Torpedo Station. A sharp double whistle announced the "Eolus" just started on her up trip, with a long wake of creamy foam behind her. Fleets of white clouds were drifting across the sky, which was bluer than the sea, like ships of heaven, simulating and repeating the movements ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... grappling-iron at its extremity, kept afloat by pieces of cork. This grappling-iron, it was intended, should hook itself to the cable of the vessel it was to destroy, and thus swing the catamaran alongside. It was, indeed, on a larger scale, though with less destructive power, something like Harvey's torpedo of the ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... his hat, shook off the dust from his disordered clothes, and went his way without a word. Barndale went his way also. The band crashed out again, and the crowd once more began its circle. When a torpedo is lowered into the sea, the wound it makes in the water is soon healed. But the torpedo goes on and explodes by-and-by, ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... ask questions, but she sat like one in a dream, taking in with wide-open eyes all the details of the charming view,—the shores, broken by red-roofed villas and cottages rising from clouds of leafy greenery; the Torpedo Island with its tall flag-staff and floating banner over the dwelling of the Commandant; Fort Adams, whose steep glacis seemed powdered with snow just then from the multitude of daisies in bloom upon them; the light-houses; the soft rises of hill; and beyond, the shimmering ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... "The Socratic dialectics, clearing away," says Grote, [Footnote: Grote, part ii. ch. 68; Maurice, Ancient Philosophy, p. 119.] "from the mind its mist of fancied knowledge, and, laying bare the real ignorance, produced an immediate effect like the touch of the torpedo; the newly created consciousness of ignorance was humiliating and painful, yet it was combined with a yearning after truth never before experienced. Such intellectual quickening, which could never commence ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... away toward Fort Powell and Cedar Point. Yet as from her after deck they saw the same exploit, at the same murderous cost, repeated by the Brooklyn and another and another great ship and their consorts, while not a torpedo did its work, they tearfully called the hour "glorious" and "victorious" for the Tennessee and her weak squadron, that still fought on. So it seemed to them even when more dimly, as distance and confusion grew and rain-clouds gathered, they saw a wooden ship ram the Tennessee, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... thing. A lot of cruisers and torpedo boats were down in the harbor and up the Hudson, and we could see their ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... "a naval architect named DUNKIN claims to have constructed a new style of vessel, impervious to rams, shell, or shot." Now, then, where is our friend, Captain ERICSSON? The Captain has a torpedo which he is anxious to explode, near a strong vessel belonging to somebody else. He says it will blow up anything. DUNIN says nothing can blow up his vessel. A contest between these very positive inventors ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... modern heavy rifled guns into maritime warfare, and if they are not put in an efficient condition we may easily be subjected to humiliation by a hostile power greatly inferior to ourselves. As germane to this subject, I call your attention to the importance of perfecting our submarine-torpedo defenses. The board authorized by the last Congress to report upon the method which should be adopted for the manufacture of heavy ordnance adapted to modern warfare has visited the principal iron and steel works in this country and in Europe. It is hoped ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... of oil consumption; I have had her up to 180 miles. Her steaming radius is about 50,000 miles, depending upon the speed. She carries twelve 16-inch guns, twenty-two 6-inch guns, sixteen 4-inch anti-aircraft guns, eight 3-pounders, four rapid-fire guns, six aerial torpedo tubes, and six bomb droppers, which can simultaneously discharge tons of explosives. She has a complement of 1400 officers and men. She required three years and eight months to build at a cost of $10,000,000. In action her entire ship's ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... the latter aim they certainly succeeded. Sunday night was the end of the organised opposition to their movements. After that no body of men would stand against them, so hopeless was the enterprise. Even the crews of the torpedo-boats and destroyers that had brought their quick-firers up the Thames refused to stop, mutinied, and went down again. The only offensive operation men ventured upon after that night was the preparation of mines and pitfalls, and even in that their ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... not tell. But those that took it full gave us an idea of how we were behaving. "Let her have it and see how she'll do," said the skipper, and Howe, who was at the wheel—with his clothes good and dry again—let her have it full. With everything on and tearing through the water like a torpedo-boat, one puff rolled her down till she filled herself chock up between the house and rail, but she kept right on going. Some vessels can't sail at all with decks under, but the Johnnie never stopped. "She's all right, this one," said ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... the ocean; saw a big passenger liner the victim of torpedo fire; saw babies tossed into the water by distracted mothers who jumped in after them to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... Hampshire as she sank? I tried to trace those boats. I traveled up there and interviewed people who had seen them. I got no good from it. But it kept coming to me that it was not a mine that had sunk the ship, that it was a torpedo from a German submarine, and that Kitchener was on one of the boats that put off and that he had been taken prisoner by the enemy. God knows why that thought persisted—there were reasons against it—it was a boy's theory. But it persisted; I couldn't ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... along the shores of Pelham Bay, how many mint-juleps it had seen drunk on the veranda of the country club, how many kisses it had interrupted; and whether it would rather pry into people's private affairs or look for torpedo-boats and night attacks in time of war. But most of all he wondered why it spent so much of its light on space, sweeping the heavens like a fiery broom with indefatigable zeal. There were no lovers or torpedo-boats up there. Even the birds were in bed, and the Wright brothers were known ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... volunteers, including two of Krsto's own relatives, had gone to Russia's aid. Otherwise "Portartur" would never have fallen. Krsto's cousin was engineer on one of Rozhdjestvcnski's ships. Every one believed England had tried to Sink them by concealing Japanese torpedo boats among the fishing fleet. They, however, kindly absolved me from complicity in the affair, mainly because ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... hellebore, nightshade, belladonna, henbane, aconite; banewort[obs3], bhang, ganja[obs3], hashish; Upas tree. [list of poisonous substances(on-line)] Toxline. rust, worm, helminth[Med], moth, moth and rust, fungus, mildew; dry rot; canker, cankerworm; cancer; torpedo; viper &c. (evil doer) 913; demon &c. 980. [Science of poisons] toxicology. Adj. baneful &c. (bad) 649; poisonous &c. (unwholesome) 657. phr. bibere ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... torpedo-shaped bodies carried by wings of soft brown and dull red—floated about, sipping where and when and as long as they liked. Sometimes the sphinx has almost an aggressive tone In his flight—hasty, important, brooking no ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... convenient place of departure for other more interesting sites, though there is some picturesqueness of costume and situation about it; and the Englishman is pleased to see many ships with the national flag, and to know that one of the great industries of the place is the Whitehead torpedo factory. The Tarsia, as the Rjeka was called, gave the name of Tarsatica to the ancient Liburnian city. The Romans built a castle on the bank of the stream to rein in the ferocious Gepids. Round this castle the ancient Tarsatica grew up. ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... "coast aeroplane" could fly out 30 or 40 miles from land, and rising to a great height, descry any hostile ships on the distant horizon, observe their number, strength, formation and direction, and return within two hours with a report to obtain which would require several swift torpedo-boat destroyers and a much greater time. The question as to whether it would be practicable to bombard an enemy on land or sea with explosive bombs dropped or discharged from flying machines or airships, is one which is much ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... ill as against the normal percentage of 99.31416. As Mr. Wilson had requested that no fuss should be made over his visit, things was kept down as much as possible, so that, on leaving Calais, the President's boat was escorted by only ten torpedo-boat destroyers, a couple battle-ships, three cruisers, and eight-twelfths of a dozen assorted submarines. There was also a simple and informal escort of about fifty airy-oplanes, the six dirigible balloons having been cut out ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... the weather, so the farmer may know whether or not to prepare to plow, and the Sunday school whether to arrange or to postpone its picnic tomorrow; airships mount the heavens, steamships plough the ocean's bosom, submarine torpedo boats undermine the deep with missiles of death, while photography turns one inside out, and doctors no longer guess at the location of a bullet. All these things have come to pass within my life-time. What may the young before me expect in ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... lost his footing and would have been sucked under by a comber had not Captain Holt grapped him by the collar and landed him on his feet again. Now and then a roller more vicious than the others would hurl a log of wood straight at the cart with the velocity of a torpedo, and swoop back again, the log missing its mark ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... TORPEDO. A cartilaginous fish allied to the rays, furnished with electrical organs, by means of which it is able to give powerful shocks. Also, a contrivance for blowing up ships of war by means ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... hundreds of yards from its goal, the protective mirror was punctured and the freight of high explosive let go, with a silent, but nevertheless terrific, detonation. But now another torpedo was on its way, and another, and another; boring on ruthlessly toward the smaller sphere. Fighting simultaneously three torpedos and the giant globe, the enemy began dodging, darting hither and thither with a stupendous acceleration; but the tiny pursuers could not be shaken off. ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... noticed two British torpedo boat destroyers, one to starboard, the other on the port bow, apparently keeping pace with the Volhynia. They were still there at noon, subjects of speculation among the passengers; and at tea-time their number was increased to five, the three new destroyers appearing ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... and in these disaster-filled times, when men tax their ingenuity to build increasingly powerful aggressive weapons, it was possible that, unknown to the rest of the world, some nation could have been testing such a fearsome machine. The Chassepot rifle led to the torpedo, and the torpedo has led to this underwater battering ram, which in turn will lead to the world putting its foot down. At ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... known merely to a few friends as a clever young engineer, the next his name was on the lips of the civilised world. His first success was followed by a series of remarkable feats, of which his flight above the Atlantic, his race with the torpedo-boat-destroyers across the North Sea, and his sensational display during the military man[oe]uvres on Salisbury Plain, impressed his name and personality firmly upon the fickle mind of the public, and explains the tremendous excitement caused by his inexplicable disappearance during ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... turned out the typical German soldier, in like manner through other molds they have turned out according to pattern the German secret service man. He is a kind of spy-destroyer performing in his sphere the same service that the torpedo-boat destroyer does in its domain. This man was the German reincarnation of Javert, the police inspector who hung so relentlessly upon the flanks of Jean Valjean. In his stolid silence I read an iron determination to "get" me, and in that flickering ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... There's a torpedo-boat at the Havre at this moment. A telegram from me will bring her to the Needle ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... France held Tunis, France held Bizerta. Tunis and Bizerta would shield temporarily the remains of Serbia. From the end of November, 1915, the smaller French ships, torpedo boats, trawlers and transports made the trip from Durazzo to San Giovanni di Medua to embark the Serbian Army. Great steamers, such as the Natal, Sinai, and Armenie, and a flotilla of armored cruisers followed them. Thirteen thousand men ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... and you'll see," said Rob, and he went on with his task, which was the preparation of something in the fashion of a torpedo, for about a pound of powder had been transferred from their keg to a small tin canister, in whose lid they drove a hole, and passed through it a slow match, made by rubbing a strip of rag with moistened gunpowder, which dried up at once in the hot evening sunshine. At the bottom ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... experienced before. For twenty minutes our shells flayed the German front line, and under this arch of shrieking explosives the battle party crawled right up to the rim of the bombardment. What wire remained uncut was blown to fragments by a torpedo, and when the barrage lifted and came down behind, the raiders jumped into the enemy's trench and set to work. For twenty minutes they bombed and destroyed, cleared dug-outs, pulled down machine guns, barricaded communication trenches, and handed prisoners ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... such a one out of sight, as an insignificancy and worm, start ceiling-high (balkenhoch), and thence fall shattered and supine, to be borne home on shutters, not without indignation, when he proved electric and a torpedo!' ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... temper. In the wooing days everyone is a lamb, and only becomes the howling wolf after marriage. Circumstances that ruffle the temper in the presence of the intended are but like the harmless squib, but would become like the explosive torpedo in his or her absence or in after-marriage. Quarreling caused by matrimonial differences is the most frequent cause of infelicity, and most of it is caused by an innate irate temper of ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... mine fields zigzagged their venomous coils across the channel. The strong, unchanging current of the Dardanelles, flowing steadily south, carried with it all floating mines dropped in the upper reaches. Torpedo tubes ranged on the shore discharged their missiles halfway across the Straits. Before warships could enter these waters a lane had to be swept and kept. Daily, therefore, the minesweepers steamed ahead of the ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... was among the very finest. In this were our boy friends from Chelton, and as they lined up the admiration expressed was unstinted. The Sprint was another splendid speed boat, built with torpedo stern and a queer spray hood at the bow. This was being run by a girl—a young lady noted for her skill at any sort ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... that one of McClellan's shells struck during the first day's bombardment, and split it into fragments. At Gloucester Point, across the York river, the great guns of the Merrimac were planted, it is said, and a fleet of fire-rafts and torpedo-ships were moored in the stream. By all accounts, there could have been no less than five hundred guns behind the Confederate entrenchments, the greater portion, of course, field-pieces, and, as the defending army was composed of one hundred thousand men, we must add that number ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... more anon. Lying in the still waters of the dock, alongside the comparatively big grey cruiser, were the trim little hulls of a numerous flotilla of 20-knot motor launches, newly arrived from Canada, with wicked-looking 13-pounder high-angle guns, stumpy torpedo-boat masts and brand-new White Ensigns and brass-bound decks. These were the advance guard of a fleet of over 500 similar craft, to the command of which many of the officers being trained would, after a period of practical experience at sea, ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... warships, built at a cost of millions of dollars and tenanted by hundreds of hardy sailors, are torn and rent by shot and shell and at times sent to the bottom with all on board by the explosion of torpedoes beneath their unprotected lower hulls. The torpedo boat, the submarine, with other agencies of unseen destruction, have come into play to add enormously to the horrors of naval warfare, while the bomb-dropping airships, letting fall its dire missiles from the sky, has come to add to the dread terror ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... the further advantage of rendering it easier to put the port of Havre quickly in defense. A certain number of floating batteries, anchored behind the breakwaters and protecting the advances of torpedo boats by means of their firing, would make a formidable defense. Not having to perform any evolutions, they might without danger be invested with armor plate thicker than that of ordinary ironclads. In order to complete ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... unusual strength and we would have given it more serious attention had not our eyes been smitten with the sight of a veritable marvel. It might have been the white swan of Lohengrin there on the stony margin of the road, or the green dragon of Whantley, or the Holland submarine torpedo boat; but it was none of these. It ...
— The Surrender of Santiago - An Account of the Historic Surrender of Santiago to General - Shafter, July 17, 1898 • Frank Norris
... Venetian boy-scout on the Lido Had sighted a hostile torpedo, So he cried, "Don't suppoge You can blow up the Doge; You must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... turn the crank of the propeller shaft by hand until the target had been reached. When this primitive craft was closed for diving there was only sufficient air to support life for half an hour. Since the torpedo was attached to the boat itself there was no chance of escape. The only hope was to reach and destroy the enemy vessel before the crew ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... you may look very fetching, if you are nineteen, and the right sex for the adjective. Miss Sally did, being both, and for our own part we think it was inconsiderate and thoughtless of cook. Sally was sprung upon that young man like a torpedo on a ship with no guards out, saying with fascinating geniality through a smile (as one interests oneself in a civility that means nothing) that Mr. Fenwick had just gone out, and she didn't know when he would be back. But why not ask ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... them with a shout of, 'By your leave there, by your leave!' from the unseen porter behind. Mark drew Vincent sharply aside, and then saw Caffyn coming quickly towards them through the crowd, and forgot the torpedo his uncle was doing his best to launch: he felt that with Caffyn came safety. Caffyn, who had evidently been hurrying, gave a sharp glance at the clock: 'Sorry to be late,' he said, as he shook hands. 'Binny fetched me a hansom with a wobbling old animal in it that ran down like a top when we'd ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... besides many billions of indirect expense. The colossal European war just beginning as these pages go to press bids fair to cost immeasurably more aintenance of armies upon a peace-footing-the feeding and clothing of the men, the building and maintenance of barracks and forts, of battleships and torpedo boats, of guns and ammunition, automobiles, aeroplanes, and the increasing list of expensive modern military appurtenances. Europe spends nearly two billion dollars a year in times of peace on its armies and navies-money enough to build ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... describe the nature of another kind of fish. Perhaps the crews of the aforesaid ships have been benumbed into idleness by the touch of a torpedo, by which the right hand of him who attacks it is so deadened—even through the spear by which it is itself wounded—that while still part of a living body it hangs down benumbed without sense or motion. I think some such misfortunes must have happened ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... and there attacked by a submarine. Germany admits that it was a German submarine. The submarine deliberately fired a torpedo at the GREER, followed later by another torpedo attack. In spite of what Hitler's propaganda bureau has invented, and in spite of what any American obstructionist organization may prefer to believe, I tell ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... clouds form almost a solid flooring, one feels very much at sea, and wonders if one is in the navy instead of aviation. The diminutive Nieuports skirt the white expanse like torpedo boats in an arctic sea, and sometimes, far across the cloud-waves, one sights an enemy ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... all his weight and muscle on the left rein. The team and cart swerved that way and crashed like a torpedo into the pillar. The men on the cart went flying like skittles. The driver's strap burst, the pillar rang with the shock, and John Byrnes fell on the car track with a broken shoulder twenty feet away, while Erebus—beautiful, raven-black, best-loved ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... the thirty seconds which brought no response, "let's see you make good! Will you fire a torpedo, or one of the ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... she saw Walter! He was in a beautiful, brand new little two-seater, which was shaped very much like a torpedo and came smartly close to ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr |
