Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/528

 Submersible Forts to Protect Our Coast

They are conceived as anchored, floating turrets, capable of discharging torpedoes at the enemy's ships

���The turret-shaped submersible fort can be rotated upon a substructure anchored by means of four mushroom anchors. Its only armament is represented by a single torpedo tube

��IT is a short time before sunrise. The sea is fairly calm and reflects in undu- lating patches the gorgeous colors of the sky already visible in fiie East. The rhythmic sound of a whirling propeller is faintly audible. It is still far away, but approaching rapidly.

Fifteen minutes later the graceful yet forbidding form of a warship emerges from the light morning mist. It is an enemy raider headed for the roadway to one of America's important Atlantic ports.

On board the hostile ship the tension is great. There may be mines and sub-

��marines, coast batteries and other de- fences. The deck watches have seen nothing suspicious and cautiously the raider continues its way toward the roadway.

The hostile craft has just passed a few hundred yards from a piece of wreckage, a waterlogged barrel, when the watcher notices a sharpjy defined line of bubbles rapidly approaching the ship.

"Torpedo coming, look out!" he yells with all his might. It is too late. Before the course of the ship can be changed the torpedo strikes amidships. A tremendous explosion makes the water rise like a

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