Note 7 — Chapter VIII · THE ANTIDOTE TO SUBMARINES

“Our preparations for attacking submarines with spar torpedoes fitted to torpedo-boats or destroyers are exciting the ridicule of those foreign nations which from experience know what submarines are like. We claim that our specially rigged spar-torpedo can reach a submarine at a depth of 10 feet below the surface, but why a submarine should run at 10 instead of 30 or 40 feet does not appear. The truth seems to be that if the submarine can be reached at all by the spar-torpedo she could, at least in the vast majority of cases, be reached much more expeditiously and certainly by means of the gun” (W. Laird Clowes, at Institution of Naval Architects, 1902).