Prepare War, | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 4, 1871

“Prepare War,”

Frightful Torpedoes Sunk in the Dardanelles.

The following article, clipped from the Detroit Post of June 30, shows the huge preparations the Turkish government is making to retain its position among the nations:—

Turkey will have as much to do as her neighbors when the general disarmament commences, and will not only have to lay down her arms, but also to fish a certain number up. The torpedo department at Zeitoun-Bournou, attached to the Tophaneh, under the direction of the Grand Master of Artillery, is, according to the Levant Herald, making rapid progress; but the proceedings are being accomplished so quietly by the American officer who has organized the works that little is known on the subject to the outside public, and the extent and power of these defenses of the sea approaches to Constantinople, will, when they become known, probably cause some surprise. The factories of Zeitoun-Bournou have completed a large number of massive hemispherical iron tanks, each of which will contain from 6,000 to 7,000 pounds of powder, and it is intended to build 200 of these tanks and sink them in suitable parts of the Dardanelles and the Sea of Marmora, at the Black Sea mouth, and in the Bosphorus. They are double riveted, and are made stronger than the strongest steam boilers, as they will when sunk, have to support a pressure of about 70 pounds to the square inch. The tanks are, in short, submarine mines, containing the most terribly destructive charges of powder, lying on the bed of the sea, and explosive at will from the shore by electricity. They will be fitted with an apparatus very durable, but at the same time most delicate and unerring, which indicates at once to the operator at the battery on land the passage of any ship over the spots in which they are sunk. The explosion of one of them in the deep waters of the Bosphorus would annihilate, within a radius of about 200 yards, the largest iron-clad ever built. These submarine mines are destined, of course, only for defensive purposes, but they will also be supplemented by a system of torpedo rams for offensive attacks. Within a week or so two vessels will be destroyed as an experiment at Buyuk Liman, near the Black Sea entrance of the Bosphorus—one by the explosion of a submarine tank, and the other by a ram torpedo attached to a steam launch. Turkish waters are peculiarly adapted for torpedoes, and with the arrangements now in progress at Zeitoun-Bournou, Turkey will soon be in possession of the most extensive and complete system of torpedo defenses in existence.