Automobile and other early torpedoes

[Grey Havoc]

In 1866, Robert Whitehead designed the first “automobile” torpedo that was self-propelled. It was designed to attack the enemy rather than wait for the enemy. His torpedo design was the point where all other concept designs would begin. The first Whitehead torpedo used a two-cylinder, compressed air engine capable of traveling up to 6.5 knots for a distance of 200 yards.

In 1869, the Navy established a torpedo station at Newport, Rhode Island, where they built and designed torpedoes based on Whitehead’s ideas, although the first torpedo never left the testing phase because the air flask and hull did not maintain watertight integrity. The engine was also flawed. Only two torpedoes were ever developed at the torpedo station before the program was terminated in 1874.

The first successful torpedo program by the U.S. Navy began in 1870. Lieutenant Commander John A. Howell created a torpedo that was driven by a 132-pound flywheel that spun to 10,000 revolutions per minute. A steam turbine housed on the torpedo tube spun the flywheel before it launched. The Navy produced about 50 of the Howell torpedoes for tactical use. Eventually, the U.S. would go to the Whitehead and Bliss-Leavitt torpedoes that would make up the U.S. arsenal until 1910. The Whitehead Mk 5 could go about 4,000 yards at speeds up to 27 knots.

https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/exploration-and-innovation/navy-torpedoes.html
It is interesting that among other things they don't really mention spar torpedoes.

 

[Grey Havoc]

Regarding 'harpoon torpedoes':

In late 1806, despairing of success in Europe, Fulton returned to the United States where he quickly found new champions, including President Thomas Jefferson. In July 1807 Fulton wrote a lengthy letter to the president urging the adoption of “torpedoes” and described two methods of deploying them. Fulton first described “anchored torpedoes” similar to a floating mine, secured by a line or chain 100 feet long and eight to ten feet below the water invisible to an enemy. These mines were to remain buoyant on cork float. His second technique was to use an eighteen inch long harpoon placed in the bow of a large rowboat to fire a “single bolt of iron two feet long with an eye and barbed point” into the wooden hull of a moving ship which could then be detonated by the operator in a boat pulling a lanyard. He concluded his description by detailing the potential cost savings and appealing to Jefferson’s well-known aversion to large and expensive navies.6 Jefferson response was enthusiastic. “I consider your Torpedo’s as a very valuable means of the defense of harbors & I have no doubt we should adopt them to a considerable degree, not that I go the whole length (as I believe you do) of considering them as solely to be relied on…”7 The president then assured the inventor that he would refer the project on to the Navy Department.

In December 1807 Fulton approached Robert Smith, who was the Secretary of the Navy at the time, and requested that a test be authorized at the Washington Navy Yard. Fulton specifically asked that the Navy fabricate copper harpoon torpedoes and provide small boats manned with gunner’s mates and boat crews. He envisioned a limited trial on the feasibility of sinking a small sloop.8 The trial was never funded and a perplexed and exasperated Fulton complained to Jefferson about the naval establishment.9


6 Robert Fulton to Thomas Jefferson 28 July 1807 Library of Congress, Thomas Jefferson Papers, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/P?mtj:5:./temp/~ammem_DaX3: accessed 22 August 2014.
7 Hutcheon, p. 99.
8 Robert Smith to Thomas Tingey, 11 December 1807, RG [Record Group] 45/M125 NARA [National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC].
9 Tingey to Smith; 16 December 1807, and Hutcheon, p. 103.

https://www.history.navy.mil/conten...habetically/t/torpedo-war-rodgers-fulton.html
Anchored torpedoes, in other words moored sea mines (later joined by command detonated seabed ones), would be eventually adopted by the U.S. Navy as what would come to be called 'obstruction torpedoes'.