The recent trials of the new French submarine boat `Morse'
at Cherbourg are described in Wednesday's Figaro. The 'Morse' is a cigar-shaped screw-driven vessel, into which en- trance is effected through a narrow hatchway, the only free space in the interior being a narrow passage without partitions, 100 ft. long, ti ft. high, and 2 ft. wide. This passage is divided into three sections, the foremost containing the torpedoes, the second the accumulators giving light and power, the third the dynamo which propels the screw. Beneath the floor are a number of water-ballast compart- ments, filled or emptied by electric machinery, according as it is intended to depress or raise the vessel. When she is travelling on the surface the place of the navigating Lieutenant is in a small conning-tower, but when she sinks—an operation performed in seventy seconds as against half-an-hour occupied by earlier types of the Submarine—he takes his stand in the centre of the passage, guiding the boat by a "periscope," a "mysterious )ptical apparatus," the other extremity of which floats on the surface, and gives him a faithful representation of all that is occurring on the water. It is claimed for the Morse' that the crew can remain under water for sixteen hours without strain. It is to be hoped that these trials may cause the Admiralty to abandon their purely watchful at- titude for one of active experimenting. Very possibly the sub. marine is not yet practical, but who knows but that we might make it so if our Admiralty would only devote money and energy to experiments.
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