Robert Fulton the "Nautilus", the first practical submarine in history. Fulton is also credited with inventing some of the world's earliest naval torpedoes for use by the British Royal Navy. Fulton became interested in steam engines and the idea of steamboats in 1777 when he was around age 12 and visited state delegate William Henry of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who was interested in this topic. Henry had learned about inventor James Watt and his Watt steam engine on an earlier visit to England. Robert Fulton was born on a farm in Little Britain, Pennsylvania, on November 14, 1765. He had three sisters –
Naval tactics in the Age of Steam were similar to privateers in the age of sail, because they were employed primarily to destroy the enemy's merchant traffic in an extremely opportunistic sense rather than engage in battle with enemy naval vessels. Individually, submarines were only capable of sinking a small number of ships because of their limited supply of torpedoes and shells. Anti-submarine tactics were in their infancy at the outbreak of the First World War. Surface warships lacked the means to detect submerged submarines or the weapons to attack them. Surface warships were reduced to hoping to sight the periscope of a submerged submarine or the