"Torpedo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Bramhall's find?" said 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 severe system ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... almost against his plate and both hands and both feet manipulating controls, hurled the first torpedo. Propelling rockets viciously aflame, it twisted and looped around the incandescent rods of destruction so thickly and starkly outlined, under perfect control; unaffected by the hideous distortion of all ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... twin, toy torpedo boats—mere streaks of red and black upon the water, with Italy's flag at the taffrail. But the little ships were no toys and Assunta hated them, for the strange craft told of the ceaseless battle waged by authority against the mountain smugglers and ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... and fro with the ebb and flow of the tide at the entrance of Mobile Bay, is a buoy which marks the spot of a deed of purest heroism. A few fathoms below that buoy lies the monitor Tecumseh, sunk by a torpedo at the beginning of the battle, as we have seen, and the buoy commemorates, not the sinking of the ship, but the self-sacrifice of her commander, Tunis ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... Russian Black Sea fleet ran into the Breslau and the Hamidieh and damaged them both in a running fight. A week later Russian torpedo boats sank several Turkish supply boats ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... There's a torpedo-boat at the Havre at this moment. A telegram from me will bring her to the ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... with shipping and the shore lined with warehouses where the stevedores were already busily engaged in lading or discharging cargoes. On each side of the Moltke, little more than a stone's throw away, lay gray battleships, cruisers, torpedo boats, destroyers, and ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... virtues and graces of the proprietor of one of these life-absorbing organs. When they touch us, virtue passes out of us, and we feel as if our electricity had been drained by a powerful negative battery, carried about by an overgrown human torpedo. ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... submarine, which was thrown into the struggle in increasing numbers, represented an entirely new development, for the submarine is a vessel which can travel unseen beneath the water and, while still unseen, except for a possible momentary glimpse of a few inches of periscope, can launch a torpedo at long or short range and with deadly accuracy. In these circumstances it became imperative to organize the Admiralty administration to meet new needs, and to press into the service of the central administration a large number of officers charged with the sole duty ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... off and they were in the middle of the canal. The Mungana had passed it. It was in a line with Alan's head. Oh Heavens! a sudden smother of foam, a rush like that of a torpedo, and set low down between two curving waves, a flash of gold. Then a gurgling, inhuman laugh and a weight upon his back. Down ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... regarding him anxiously. That decided him. With a crashing bellow of rage and a sweep of his powerful tail he darted at the inoffensive head. But it vanished instantly, and a sudden tremendous turmoil, developing into a wake that lengthened out with the speed of a torpedo-boat, showed him the hopelessness of pursuit. Turning abruptly, he swam back to the shore and sulkily withdrew into the thickets to seek ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the plans of the Committee somewhat after the manner of a submarine torpedo. They had everything in readiness for Monday, and the newspapers, which had also got wind of their intentions, had already announced to the public unequivocally that a restricted bond market would be started on that day. With ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... had the "Dodger's" hawsers been cast aboard than the submarine torpedo boat headed out. It was a get-away swift enough—-almost to take the breath of ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... reenforcement. She therefore decided to dispatch a fighting fleet from her home forces. Accordingly on the 29th of April, Admiral Cervera left the Cape Verde Islands and sailed westward with one fast second-class battleship, the Cristobal Colon, three armored cruisers, and two torpedo boat destroyers. It was a reasonably powerful fleet as fleets went in the Spanish War, yet it is difficult to see just what good it could accomplish when it arrived on the scene of action. The naval superiority in the West Indies would still be in the hands of the concentrated American Navy, ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... conception of its import. They did not even realize that war had actually burst upon the serenity of their peaceful lives. Each transport vessel was placed in command of a naval officer, and guarded in its passage across the channel by light cruisers and torpedo destroyers. The transport of the whole Expeditionary Army was completed within ten days, without the loss of a man and with a precision worthy of all military commendation. But such secrecy was maintained that the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... explosion gave evidence of even greater blast effects than in Hiroshima. Total destruction spread over an area of about 3 square miles. Over a third of the 50,000 buildings in the target area of Nagasaki were destroyed or seriously damaged. The complete destruction of the huge steel works and the torpedo plant was especially impressive. The steel frames of all buildings within a mile of the explosion were pushed away, as by a giant hand, from the point of detonation. The badly burned area extended for 3 miles in length. The hillsides up ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... wounded monster seemed in sore distress. This was Rojestvensky's flag-ship, and the enemy made it one of their chief targets, sweeping its decks until the great ship became a veritable shambles. Admiral Rojestvensky, wounded and his ship slowly settling under him, was transferred in haste to a torpedo-boat destroyer, and as evening came on the huge ship, still fighting desperately, turned turtle and vanished beneath the waves. As for the admiral, the destroyer which bore him was taken and he fell ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... strong to see the most striking objections to such a revelation. From the little we know of the structure of the human understanding, we must be convinced that an overpowering conviction of this kind, instead of tending to the improvement and moral amelioration of man, would act like the touch of a torpedo on all intellectual exertion and would almost put an end to the existence of virtue. If the scriptural denunciations of eternal punishment were brought home with the same certainty to every man's ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... made to the effect that, next to the Zeppelin air ship, M. Santos Dumont's balloon was probably attracting most of the attention of experts. The account given of this air vessel by the Daily Express was somewhat startling. The balloon proper was compared to a large torpedo. Three feet beneath this hangs the gasoline motor which is to supply the power. The propeller is 12 feet in diameter, and is revolved so rapidly by the motor that the engine frequently gets red hot. The only accommodation for the traveller is a little bicycle ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... send the fleet each winter to the Caribbean Sea for manoeuvres, which lasted about four months. In December, 1907, the Atlantic fleet, comprising sixteen battle-ships and a flotilla of torpedo-boats, began a cruise around the world. President Roosevelt steadily adhered to the plan in the face of the most extravagant denunciation on the part of those who declared that it could be considered only ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... make the fleet ready for war, it must be carried out with the fleet in its war composition. All the different elements, battleships, cruisers, torpedo craft, and the rest, must be fully represented, otherwise the admiral would be practising in peace with a different instrument from that with which he would need to ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... 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
... he muttered; "his old brag and ostentation have caught these fools! I wonder where his vessel is? If I could fire a torpedo under it and send them all where young Jack and the other boy have gone to, I shouldn't have a dull moment for the rest of ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... don't know what we've got here, but it's not a natural body. Could be anything from a torpedo on up." ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... follows: "A queer thing has happened here. A cruiser which had come in for repair was due to go out this morning. She was ready for sea the night before, the officers and crew had all come back from short leave, and the working parties had cleared out. Then in the middle watch, when the torpedo lieutenant was testing the circuits, it was discovered that all the cables leading to the guns had been cut. Dawson has been called in, and bids me say that, if you can come down, now is the chance of your life. I will put ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... prove what a mighty factor would have to be reckoned with in the martial aeroplane. Curtiss without any practice at all hit a mimic battle ship fifteen times out of twenty-two shots. His experiment has convinced the military and naval authorities of this country that the aeroplane and the aerial torpedo constitute a new danger against which there is no existing protection. Aerial offensive and defensive strategy is now a problem which demands ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... dozen giant craft, torpedo-shaped and steel-incased, the scarlet fire of their gas blasts holding them poised steady in their fifty-mile-long line. From curious swellings that broke the clean lines of their under-bodies black spheres were dropping in steady streams. ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... before the orthodox Cambridge dons! I like Lubbock's paper very much: how well he writes. (119/3. Sir John Lubbock's paper was a review of Leydig on the Daphniidae. M'Donnell's was "On the Homologies of the Electric Organ of the Torpedo," afterwards used in the "Origin" (see Edition VI., page 150).) M'Donnell, of course, pleases me greatly. But I am very curious to know who wrote the Protozoa article: I shall hear, if it be not a secret, from Lubbock. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... madder lion than Tom never lived. It was cruel enough to be lassoed and disgrace enough to be "hog-tied," as Jim called it, but to be thrust down into a bag and packed on a horse was adding insult to injury. Tom frothed at the mouth and seemed like a fizzing torpedo about to explode. The lioness being considerably longer and larger, was with difficulty gotten into the other pannier, and her head and paws hung out. Both lions ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... the stream all I could think of was that there were a million German submarines with a torpedo on each, across the warhead of which was inscribed my ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... word in aeronautical development is what might be called, for want of a better term, an aerial submarine. I refer to seaplanes carrying in clips beneath the fuselage specially constructed 18-inch torpedoes. In the under side of this type of torpedo is an opening. When the torpedo is dropped into the sea the water, pouring into this opening, sets the propelling mechanism in motion and the projectile goes tearing away on its errand of destruction precisely as though fired from the torpedo-tube of a submarine. ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... much interested in the things about me. Forward, the torpedo-discharge tubes and other apparatus about the little doors in the vessel's nose made it look somewhat like the shield used in boring a ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... 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 will do more than delay the advent of the "explosive" ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... 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 ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... whose duty it was to 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 ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... of eyes swept the horizon, and the intervening spaces of tossing, blue-grey water, for the sight of a sinister periscope, or for the smudge of a friendly cruiser, and when night fell, a thousand pairs of ears listened with strained intentness for the impact of the deadly torpedo or for the ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... 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
... 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
... Torpedo Boat, recently built at Bristol, R. I., for the British Government. The novelties in the placing of the screw, etc. The Peculiar Boiler. 4 figures.—Improved Hopper Steam Dredger. 2 figures.—The St. Gothard Tunnel.—The Beacon Tower of Lavezzi. ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... grey beneath the great brown hood of his duffle—a face so youthful, yet with the knowledge of the command of men writ plain thereon. The propellers have swirled faithfully and unceasingly; the good ship in consequence has cleft the passive waves. But who knows what hideous lurking peril of mine or torpedo we have not survived, what baleful eye has not glowered at us, itself unseen, and retired again to its foul underworld, baulked of its ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... admiral that I was leaving the ship and would like to pay my respects. Sampson is a thin man with a gray beard. He looks like a college professor and has very fine, gentle eyes. He asked me why I meant to leave the ship, and I said I had heard one of the torpedo boats was going to Key West, and I thought I would go with her if he would allow it. He asked if I had seen the cable from Long, and I said I had heard of it, and that I was really going so as not ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... Navy Journal thinks the problem of a torpedo boat capable of firing rapidly and with certainty, has at length reached a ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... shivering as in an ague fit. No man is brave in presence of an earthquake, or a bursting boiler, or an exploding torpedo. I could not be expected to feel much courage in presence of the fearful fate that appeared ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... blood on the Gallipoli beach. For the Southland incident was duplicated in almost every particular on the Ballarat in April, 1917. This story was enacted in the waters of the English Channel, and there were no casualties, for the work of rescue by torpedo-boats was made easy as each man calmly waited his turn and enlivened the monotony meanwhile with ragtime, and again and again did the strains of "Australia Will Be There!" ring out over the waters. As they sang "So Long, Letty," many substituted other ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... knees, examining a queer specimen of purplish moss which had drawn his eye. The eternal scientist in the man could not be downed. Mado had come out armed with one of the bulky kalbite torpedo-projectors and was looking ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... including a powerful pivot-gun, 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 ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... last April, should have given the enemy matter for reflection. Although allowed an hour's time for consideration, the soldiers refused to surrender, and opened fire with their rifles on the battleships. Then, before the Kinshu Maru was blown in two by a torpedo, a number of the Japanese officers and men performed harakiri.... This strong display of the fierce old feudal spirit suggests how dearly a Russian ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... and so they are bluff and slow. Our Admiralty declined to allow a race between these and the French launches in Paris, else, no doubt, the superior speed of the French boats would have astonished John Bull. All this has lately changed, so that launches and torpedo boats in England can steam twenty ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... mishap. Of course each box was provided with a lid, and the plates were so closely packed that a fair amount of shaking would not affect them; the only danger was the spilling of the acid. Mr. Crohne had remarked that a torpedo boat of that size would have 100 indicated horse power, but then the whole boat would be filled with machinery. What might be done with electricity they had, as yet, no idea of. At present, they could only get 33,000 foot pounds from 1 lb. of lead and acid, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... immediately, revealing her periscope for a minute as she took her observations. Then she launched a torpedo at a big German supply-ship not more than a ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... "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 would be a positive luxury—to those who had nothing to risk. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... each session authorized the building of one or more vessels, and the Secretary of the Navy presents an earnest plea for the continuance of this plan. He recommends the authorization of at least one battle ship and six torpedo boats. ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... greedy dog could have invented if it had wanted money instead of food. I know his clumsy typewriters and bungling locomotives and tedious bicycles: they are toys compared to the Maxim gun, the submarine torpedo boat. There is nothing in Man's industrial machinery but his greed and sloth: his heart is in his weapons. This marvellous force of Life of which you boast is a force of Death: Man measures his strength by his destructiveness. ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... rode along, I found the column turned out of the main road, marching through the fields. Close by, in the corner of a fence, was a group of men standing around a handsome young officer, whose foot had been blown to pieces by a torpedo planted in the road. He was waiting for a surgeon to amputate his leg, and told me that he was riding along with the rest of his brigade-staff of the Seventeenth Corps, when a torpedo trodden on by his horse had exploded, killing the horse and literally blowing off all the flesh from one of his legs. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... does not rust and wear out like cheap tin-plate, and weighs but a fraction of other substances. It is largely replacing brass and copper in all departments of industry — especially where dead weight has to be moved about, and lightness is synonymous with economy — for instance, in bed-plates for torpedo-boat engines, internal fittings for ships instead of wood, complete boats for portage, motor-car parts and boiling-pans for confectionery and in chemical works. The British Admiralty employ it to save weight in the Navy, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the 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 escadrille, moving ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... the observer helped him into his cumbersome, heavily-padded armor. They checked his instruments, making sure that the protective devices of the suit were functioning at full efficiency. Then all three went out to the flitter. A tiny speedster, really; a torpedo bearing the stubby wings and the ludicrous tail-surfaces, the multifarious driving-, braking-, side-, top-, and under-jets so characteristic of the tricky, cranky, but ultra-maneuverable breed. But this one had something that the ordinary speedster or flitter did not carry; spaced around the needle ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... suspected of being the cause of all the trouble. He, too, wishes to cancel his engagements for the graduating ball, and thinks something ought to be done to those young idiots of yearlings who set off the torpedo. "Nothing could have gone wrong but for them," says he; but the wise heads of the class promptly snub him into silence. "You've simply got to do as we say in this matter, Billy. You've done enough mischief already." And so it results that the message he sends by Uncle Jack is: "Tell mother and ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... torpedo, in capital letters and italics with a line under the word. I've invented one that ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... hitherto been but potter's clay in her hands, and she had no misgivings now; but she felt that the love of Le Gardeur was a thing she could not tread on without a shock to herself like the counter-stroke of a torpedo to the naked foot of an Indian who rashly steps upon it as it ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... boat hit shore just then, and Phil, caught off his guard, took a header and landed astride one of the gasoline cans. "I wonder if that was a torpedo," he grunted as he ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... will be associated in my mind with the ceaseless ring and din of riveting-hammers, where, day by day, hour by hour, a new fleet is growing, destroyers and torpedo boats alongside monstrous submarines—yonder looms the grim bulk of Super-dreadnought or battle cruiser or the slender shape of ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... to see that it ain't his last!" advised Mickey. "There's no use growing morgue lines on your mug; with all May running wild just to please you and the man in the moon; loosen up, if you have to tickle your liver with a torpedo to start you!" ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the human race, and that in its practice explosives are largely used. To "blow-up" effectively, whether in a literal or figurative sense, is difficult. To improve this power in war, and in the literal sense, I set myself to work. I invented a torpedo, which seemed to me better than any that had yet been brought out. To test its powers, I made a miniature fortification, and blew it up. I also blew up ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... the chance which was offered for Turkey to get back some of what her inveterate Russian enemy had seized in the course of a century and her inveterate British friend had pocketed as the price of her protection. On 29 October a horde of Bedouins invaded the Sinai Peninsula while Turkish torpedo boats raided Odessa, and on 1 November the British ambassador departed from Constantinople. The two Central Empires had enlisted their first ally, and the war had taken another stride ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... had it been taken from him, or had he himself passed it on into another's keeping? There were a few incidents that strengthened the possibility of the latter theory. After the torpedo struck the ship, in the few moments during the launching of the boats, Danvers was seen speaking to a young American girl. No one actually saw him pass anything to her, but he might have done so. It seems to me quite likely that he entrusted ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... Roumann again. "I have studied it all out, and I think the projectile, shaped somewhat like a great shell, such as they use in warfare, or, more properly speaking, built like a cigar or a torpedo, is the only feasible means of reaching Mars. We shall go in a projectile, two hundred feet long, and ten feet in diameter at the largest point. That will offer the least resistance to the atmosphere of the earth, though when we get within the ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... thing happened which shocked and startled them with all the force of a torpedo from a U-boat, and left ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... [poisonous plants] hemlock, 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 venenum ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... forts, and cover the landing. Admiral Porter ordered Colonel Ellet to go in advance, with a boat of his ram fleet, to remove the obstructions the Rebels had placed in the river, under the guns of the fort. A raft was attached to the bow of the ram, and on the end of the raft was a torpedo containing a half ton ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... here—possibly till April—people will talk. You know how ready they are. There is also the fact that I have only hired the skis for three weeks. Also—a minor point, but one that touches me rather—that I shall want my hair cut long before March is out. Thomas, imagine me to be a torpedo-destroyer on the Maplin Sands, and tell me what on earth ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... than any other man," Bill declared promptly. "Positively! Everybody ought to know that. He invented a device so that they could smell a German submarine half a mile away, and they could tell when a torpedo was fired. Another invention turned a ship about with her prow facing the torpedo, so that it would be most likely to go plowing and not hit her, as it would with broadside on. I guess that saved many a ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... punctilio; but the consequences were immediate. Buck Malone, of the Mulberry Hills, with a Dewey-like swiftness, got an eight-inch gun swung round from his hurricane deck. But McManus's simile must be the torpedo. He glided in under the guns and slipped a scant three inches of knife blade between the ribs of the Mulberry Hill cruiser. Meanwhile Brick Cleary, a devotee to strategy, had skimmed across the lunch counter and thrown the switch of the electrics, leaving the combat to be waged by the light of ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... faces of the passengers as they stampeded for their life-belts, though there was no panic. Nobs rose with a low growl. I rose, also, and over the ship's side, I saw not two hundred yards distant the periscope of a submarine, while racing toward the liner the wake of a torpedo was distinctly visible. We were aboard an American ship—which, of course, was not armed. We were entirely defenseless; yet without warning, ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... on an Antoinette monoplane, to carry off the prize of L1000 offered by the proprietors of the Daily Mail. On the first occasion he fell in mid-Channel, owing to the failure of his motor, and was rescued by a torpedo-boat. His machine was so badly damaged during the salving operations that another had to be sent from Paris, and with this he made a second attempt, which was also unsuccessful. Meanwhile M. Bleriot had arrived on the scene; and on 25th July he crossed the Channel from Calais ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... regular electric cannon. It fires a solid ball, weighing about twenty-five pounds, but instead of powder, which would hardly do under water, and instead of compressed air, which is used in the torpedo tubes of the Government submarines, we use a current of electricity. It forces the cannon ball out with ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... here everything depends upon accurate aim, so that the heavy projectile may hit the right place. For this purpose clever manoeuvring is everything. Moreover, the battles round Port Arthur show us the importance of the torpedo and the mine. The Russian fleet has met with its heaviest losses owing to the clever manoeuvring and the superior torpedo tactics of the Japanese. It looks as if in modern naval battles artillery would prove altogether ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... Russian War the Japanese gave orders that a Russian admiral, who was a wounded prisoner of war on board a Japanese torpedo boat, was to be shot if any attempt was made by the Russians to ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... while helping him. After two or three days in bed Fulton went to his foundry to inspect the battery's machinery causing a relapse from which he died. This resulted in some delay in completing the machinery and stopped work on the Mute, an 80-foot, manually propelled, torpedo boat that Fulton was having built ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle
... the Edison and Sim's torpedo is also driven by an electric motor. In this case the current is conveyed from the ship or fort which discharges the torpedo by an insulated conductor running off a reel carried by the torpedo, the "earth" or return half of ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... destruction; a hideous crash followed, a terrible rending, breaking, smashing, concatenation of noises, succeeded by frightful detonations, as through the gaping hole torn in the great battleship by the deadly torpedo, the water rushed upon the heated boilers, the explosion of which in turn ignited the magazines. By that deadly underwater thrust of the enemy the battleship was reduced in a few moments to a disjointed, disorganized, sinking mass ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Kaiser went to Wilhelmshafen to warn submarine commanders to be careful and that submarines will hunt in pairs, one standing ready to torpedo while the other warns. The German losses at Verdun are small as artillery fire annihilated enemy first. I think an attack will be made now in another part ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... nights which he had spent in them he heard close at hand the sepulchral voices of howling monkeys and the roaring of the jaguars; he saw gigantic serpents coiled like lianas on trees; he knew those slumbering forest lakes full of torpedo-fish and swarming with crocodiles; he knew under what a yoke man lives in those unexplored wildernesses in which are single leaves that exceed a man's size ten times,—wildernesses swarming with blood-drinking mosquitoes, tree-leeches, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... resourceful friend, its swift and irresistible helper in its serious need, and an indulgent minister to its lighter fancies. Be it whim or emergency, the modern laboratory is equally at the service of romance, equally ready to gratify mankind with a torpedo or ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... the Home-Secretary, "I do not think you would find much difference between oakum-picking and sentry-go, and a plank-bed and a hammock on board a torpedo-boat have each great claim to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... said Fuller, "let's decide what shape we want to use. As designer, I'd like to point out that a sphere is the strongest, a cube easiest to build, and a torpedo shape the most efficient aerodynamically. However, we intend to use it in space, ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... 1864 a Confederate ironclad ram, the Albemarle, appeared on the waters of Albemarle Sound. As no Union war ship could harm her, Commander W. B. Gushing planned an expedition to destroy her by a torpedo. On the night of October 27, with fourteen companions in a steam launch, he made his way to the ram, blew her up with the torpedo, and with one other man escaped. His adventures on the way back to the fleet read like fiction, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... Torpedo Destroyer behind us, and I wrapped the reins around my wrist, in case Parsifal should get uneasy and want to print horseshoes ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... courageous, he thought, and looked at Mary closely; but her eyes wandered from him to the phantom-shapes that loomed out of a pale, wintry mist: tramps thrashing their way to the North Sea: a vast, distant liner with tiers of decks one above the other: a darting torpedo-destroyer which flashed by like a ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... so later and the entire convoy, guarded by United States torpedo destroyers, were steaming ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... for firing at torpedo-boats or any hostile craft which might be discovered close to a vessel, were now brought to bear upon the crab, and ball after ball was hurled at her. Some of these struck, but glanced off without penetrating her ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... employed in the capture of fresh water fish,[16] but the most common is a torpedo-shaped trap of bamboo (Fig. 19). Stone conduits lead the water from streams into the open ends of these traps, thus carrying in fish and shrimps. The funnel-shaped opening has the sharpened ends set close together so that it is quite impossible for the prisoners ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... Torpedo, n. a fish, well known elsewhere, and also called elsewhere, the Numb-fish and Cramp fish. For the Australian ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... consists of three ships moored one astern of the other, and that not one of them is the old Excellent, she having been removed. Our friend invited us to accompany him on board an old frigate moored a little way up the harbour, from which we could see some interesting torpedo experiments. ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... shop window, and bagged a whole trayful of suburban engagement rings. As it happened, the police had taken up a wrong scent before they got on the right one. But had the watchdogs come along a few minutes earlier they would have found their way blocked effectively. One of the thieves had fired a torpedo in the road just behind the G.-G. to scare the chauffeuse (one of those big, fat torpedoes motorists and bicyclists sometimes use to frighten dogs) and so had secured a clear road to the nearest ferry. The policemen found the fragments of the torpedo ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... Treasury; the use of appropriations for the purchase of subsistence stores without waiting for the beginning of the fiscal year for which the appropriation is made; for additional appropriations for the collection of torpedo material; for increased appropriations for the manufacture of arms; for relieving the various States from indebtedness for arms charged to them during the rebellion; for dropping officers from the rolls ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... "Arcadian." Hot and bright. Dead calm sea. Last night a dense fog during which a Turkish Torpedo boat sneaked down the Straits and torpedoed the Goliath. David and his sling on the grand scale. No details yet to hand. ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... their limitations as to beauty and to brains. Immediately behind her slipped in Mrs. Cripps. The doctor abstained, conscious of having put a match to the fuse which had exploded yesterday's astounding homiletic torpedo. The whole affair irritated him to the point of detestable ill-temper. Still, if only to throw dust in the public eye, the house of Cripps must be represented. He therefore deputed the job—like so many another ungrateful one—to his forlorn-looking and red-eyed spouse. This vote of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Flag Captain, who, on learning his antecedents, recommended the blushing Reginald for the post of batman to the Senior Wireless Officer. Here his talents showed to such advantage that in a little over a year he received a commission as technical officer, and was placed in charge of an experimental Torpedo School, well away from the storms and tempests that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... The torpedo talker is of the rapid fire explosive variety. He bursts into a conversation. He scatters labials, dentals, and gutturals in all directions. He is a war-time talker,—boom, burst, bang, roar, crash, ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... 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 transformed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... she's 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
... conscious of a superiority. No neighbour mind serves as a mirror to reflect the generous confidence he felt within himself; and perhaps the man never yet existed, who could maintain his enthusiasm to its full vigour, in the midst of this kind of solitariness. He is touched with the torpedo of mediocrity. I believe that nothing which Mary produced during this period, is marked with those daring flights, which exhibit themselves in the little fiction she composed just before its commencement. ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... morning. Of course, it mayn't be intended to be a likeness of you, skipper, but it's got a pith helmet on, which the up-country nigger doesn't generally add to portraits of himself; and moreover, it's wearing a neat torpedo beard on the end of its chin, delicately ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... Dartmouth, heading the list at the passing-out exam, and so at once gaining the rating of midshipman; doing equally well afloat during the subsequent three years and a half, qualifying for Gunnery, Torpedo, and Navigating duties, serving for six months aboard a destroyer, and everywhere gaining the esteem and goodwill of my superiors, here was I, Paul Swinburne, at the age of seventeen and a half, an outcast kicked out of ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... torpedo sending a ship straight up like that are enormous. And one would have heard two explosions—which nobody did. Besides, the one man who was picked up has luckily been able to talk a little already. I am certain there was ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... Aristide to leap into the middle of the road. He looked ahead, and there, in a cloud of dust, a thing like a torpedo came swooping down. He held up both his arms, the signal of a motorist in distress. The torpedo approached with slackened speed, and stopped. It was an evil-looking, drab, high-powered racer, and two bears with goggles sat in the midst thereof. ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... 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 ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... water line are a serious menace to the vessels carrying them, and they should not be so carried by vessels other than torpedo boats. ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... invaluable help, and if sent in sufficient numbers would undoubtedly save a situation which is manifestly critical. But they are required now and in as great numbers as possible. There is no time for delay. The present method of submarine attack is almost entirely by torpedo with the submarine submerged. The gun defense of merchant ships keeps the submarine below the surface but does no more; offensively against a submerged submarine it is useless, and the large majority of the ships torpedoed ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... the Camino in December, 1914, and in the same month Kansas sent the Hannah loaded with flour contributed by the millers of the state. In January and March, 1915, two Massachusetts relief ships, the Harpalyce (sunk by torpedo or mine on a later relief voyage) and Lynorta, sailed. Oregon and California together sent the Cranley in January, 1915, loaded with food and clothing, and several other similar state ships were sent at later dates. ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... Radcliffe Thorpe. One week 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 ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... also carried a small torpedo-like boat, fitted in a groove along the top, so that it could be entered from the Nautilus by opening a panel, and, after that was closed, the boat could be detached from the submarine, and would then bob upwards to the surface like a cork. The importance ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... 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 Erebus—lay whickering in his ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... excepting the few eyeless deaf persons who have lost both taste and smell in some complete paralysis. The use of Morse's telegraph is by no means confined to the small clique who possess or who understand electrical batteries. It is not only the torpedo or the Gymnotus electricus that can send us messages from the ocean. Whales in the sea can telegraph as well as senators on land, if they will only note the difference between long spoutings and short ones. And they can listen, too. If they will only note the difference ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... pursuit came on apace, and soon the two vessels were yard-arm to yard-arm engaged in mortal combat. For a while the confusion was so great that it was impossible to say what would be the upshot. But a fortunate torpedo sent the pirate craft to the bottom, and of all her crew, only the skipper survived. He was brought (loaded with chains) before ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... could creep alongside the schooner and do it to her; but that there gunboat's got heavy steel plates right round her, going ever so deep, and they'd be rather too much for my tools. They'd spoil every auger I've got. The skipper hasn't got a torpedo aboard, has he? One of them new 'uns that you winds up and sets a-going with a little screw-propeller somewheres astern, and a head full of nitro— what-d'ye-call-it, which ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... majority of the displays represented scenes of the war,—such as an engagement between Japanese infantry and mounted Cossacks, a night attack by torpedo boats, the sinking of a battleship. In the last-mentioned display, Russian bluejackets appeared, swimming for their lives in a rough sea;—the pasteboard waves and the swimming figures being made to rise and fall by the pulling of a string; while the crackling of quick-firing ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... could. The widening and deepening of the canal system so as to shift boats from the Baltic to the Volga had been considered in the time of the Tzar. It was considered and dismissed as impracticable. Once, indeed, they did try to take two torpedo-boats over, and they lifted them on barges to make the attempt. Well, we said that as the thing could be planned, it could be done, and the canals are deepened and widened, and we took through them, under their own power, seven big destroyers, six small destroyers and four submarine ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome |
