Exploding a Whitehead Torpedo (1900) User Reviews

Fun Edison Film

[Michael_Elliott · 6 July 2010]

Exploding a Whitehead Torpedo (1900)

The title pretty much tells you all there is to know about this Edison film. It runs a very brief 27-seconds and shows a torpedo hitting its target and going off. I think the most fascinating thing about this is that we get a pretty close shot of the explosion and its aftermath. It was rather funny seeing this large explosion and especially seeing how long it took for everything that flew up in the air to land back down. There's certainly nothing ground break or Earth shattering here but this is a pleasant little short that shows you something real and not just a CGI effect.

the importance of submarine technology

[kekseksa · 15 December 2015]

Topical views were intended to be informative not "ground-breaking" or "earth-shattering". This is not a stand-alone film (there are two films of the torpedo-firing itself) but part of a whole series shot by James H. White at the Newport Training School for naval cadets in Rhode Island (several of which are available on youtube) and which were obviously intended to be shown together with suitable commentary. Interest in the Whitehead torpedo was already by this time essentially historical. It was, as I am sure the other reviewer is aware, the first self-propelled or "locomotive" torpedo ever developed but back in the 1870s. Nevertheless such scenes of cadet-training and army manoeuvres were very important at this time, when"war preparedness" was already in the air.

The US had embarked on its career as an overseas imperial power in the wake of the war in Cuba and the Philippines and its development of an important naval base at Manila. The role of sea-power (the US now saw itself as the heir to the British command of the seas, particularly in the Pacific) was crucial to this expansionist stage in US history (only now now slowly but inexorably reaching its end) and Teddy Roosevelt had himself been a major figure in promoting the expansionist policy and organising the naval build-up.

These years saw the US facing important new rivals on the seas - Russia, Japan and Germany. It watched the war between Russia and Japan with great interest and some concern and both admired and feared the spectacular naval build-up in Germany under its new young emperor. The US had been something of a pioneer in submarine technology, one of the most important developing areas, but it was increasingly the Germans who would take the lead in this area too. The "sinking of the Lusitania" (by submarine) in 1916 was more than just a "humanitarian" pretext for entering the war; the US was intent on destroying German sea-power (just as in the 1940s it would be intent on destroying Japanese sea-power). These were of course not the only issues but they were ones of crucial importance to the US command of the seas.