So also, some of the many failures experienced by the Russians in their numerous torpedo boat attacks, were due in a great measure to an erroneous supposition on the part of the captain of the Russian steamer, _Constantine_ (employed to convoy the torpedo boats), that the Turks had defended the entrance, to a distance of some miles to seaward, of their harbours, etc., and thus the torpedo boats were dispatched to the attack some miles off the entrance, causing them, owing to the darkness, to enter the harbour in which the Turkish vessels were lying, in a very straggling manner. And to a similar reason the failure of the Russians to capture Sulina, in the attack made on that place in October, 1877, was principally owing to their not daring to send their Popoffkas to attack from the sea.
One of the chief points of usefulness of an extensive and systematic employment of submarine mines, will be to minimise the number of vessels necessary for the protection of harbours, etc., thus enabling a far larger number of ships to operate at sea against those of an enemy, this especially applies to countries like England and America possessing a large extent of seacoast, numerous harbours, rivers, etc., which it would be necessary to defend in the event of war.
_Science of Torpedo Warfare._--The science of defensive torpedo warfare may be considered to consist of:--
1.--The arrangement of the mines in positions, such that it would not be possible for a hostile vessel attempting to force a passage into a harbour, etc., defended by such means, to pass more than one line of them, without coming within the destructive radius of some one or other of the remaining mines.
NOTE.--The difficulty of attaining the above effect, lies in the fact that the destructive radius of a submarine mine, is considerably less than the distance that must be maintained between them, to prevent injury by concussion to the cases, circuit closers, electric cables, etc., of such mines on the explosion of an adjacent one.
As an illustration of the above, take the case of a 500 lb. guncotton submarine mine. Now the destructive radius of a sea-mine is found by the formula R = [3rt](32 × C), where R is the destructive radius in feet of a mine moored at its most effective depth, and C is the charge (guncotton) in lbs.