Page:Walker - An Unsinkable Titanic (1912).djvu/161

AN UNSINKABLE TITANIC to a point of efficiency in range, speed, and destructive power which has rendered it perhaps the most dreaded of all the weapons of naval warfare. The modern torpedo carries in its head a charge of over 200 pounds of guncotton and has a range of 10,000 yards. Ordinarily, it is set to run at a depth of 10 to 12 feet below the water; and should it get home against the side of a ship, it will strike her well below the armour belt and upon the relatively thin plating of the hull.

Most destructive of all weapons for underwater attack, however, is the mine, which sent to the bottom many a good ship during the Russo-Japanese war. The more deadly effects of the mine, as compared with the torpedo, are due to its heavy charge of high explosive, which sometimes reaches as high as 500 pounds. Contact, even with a mine, is not necessarily fatal; indeed the notable instances in which warships have gone to the bottom immediately upon striking a mine have been due to the fact that the mine exploded immediately under, or in close proximity to the ship's magazines, which, being set off by the shock, tore the ship apart and caused her to go down within a few [ 141 ]