sith which the French propose to drive the British battleships out of the Channel one of these days. The Gustave Zédé, after several years' experimenting, has succeeded in torpedoing a battleship under way in Hyéres roads. Whether the battleship's Gustave Zedd when she took her Bnal obnick-firing guns would not have sunk the
servation at 500 yards is a question which the trial necessarily leaves unanswered. At any rate, M. Lockroy, is 60 satisfied with. the performance of the Narval, an improved Gustuve Zédé, that he has included six boats of this type in his estimates. The method of working these yessels is distinctly curious. The Gustave Zédé commences operations at 2,000 yards, at which distance she is practically invisible, She makes her course towards her prey, sinks, and, after travelling about 1,000 yards under water rises sufficiently to bring her conning tower above water, She corrects her course, sinks again, travels about -half the remaining range, comes up for a final observation, sinks again and Isunches her torpedo. All this sounds very plausible. The ides an insignificant little craft approaching, a great battleship under water and sending her to the bottom appeals powerfully to the imagination, but all the same the Narval and her sisters are not going to revolutionise naval tactics just yet. As she could not keep afloat for any length of time in the open sea, she is obviously nothing more than a: weapon of coast defence, to be used against a hostile squadron, Small as she is, it is impossible to conceive her getting within 500 yards of a hostile ship by daylight without being either, sunk by quick-firing guns or snapped up by a destroyer; while at night the chances of
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