Consider!

I Wasn't Sure How To Start This
 - because I wanted to introduce the torpedo, and knew what I wanted to end up saying, which was "Consider Torpedoes".  I thought of beginning with "Consider Phlebas", which I dredged up from the depths of my memory - aren't I clever! - except this turns out to be a novel by Iain Banks, and there would be angry Banks fans clamouring for my head due to clickbait titles etcetera etcetera.  Mr. Banks being a big name in space opera, you understand.*

Looking pretty smug there, Mister Banks.

     Then there was "Consider Phlebotomy", which got sidelined because it's a term for sticking needles into veins, the better to extract magic human go-juice, and your humble scribe is a massive coward when it comes to merely looking at the process, never mind having to actually endure it <shudders in muted terror>.

Art!  You seething pillock!
<gags>

     "Consider Her Ways" popped up next.  Nope.  Been used before, by John Wyndham, and again I'd have Wyndham fans (though not as many as Mr. Banks) disliking me immensely.  I think at some point in 2018 I've mentioned this collection of short stories, which is code for saying that I did, but cannot be bothered to go look and determine the precise details.
     Here an aside.  Both "Consider Phlebas" and "Consider Her Ways" are quotes, from T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" and Proverbs, Chapter 6 Line 6.  I wouldn't have known that, as I detest poetry almost as much as musicals, and have never read the Bible from cover to cover.

JW's famous baby.

     I couldn't even fall back on "Consider This" with a picture of a torpedo appended, since - well, REM got there before me by many years.  Art?

Michael Stipe I hate you.

     So, before we chase the naked motley with a paintball gun, please -
     Consider the torpedo.

Damn.  The torpedoes.**

The Torpedo
By which I mean the self-propelled self-contained underwater explosive-warhead device, and not a bunch of fish.
     The current iteration of the torpedo has a curious start.  It was invented by a Briton (of course! - naval maliciousness is in our blood magic human go-juice) in the service of the Austro-Hungarian empire, in the later nineteenth century.  By 1900 it had matured into the form we know today, capable of delivering 200 pounds of high-explosive on target at ranges of a mile.

Out of it's element, the poor thing.

     The reason a torpedo strike was deadly was simply because of where it hit - underwater.  They could sink a small ship immediately, or severely damage a larger one, either by blowing a great big hole in the hull, or breaking the keel by exploding directly beneath it.  To you non-naval experts (ahem - like me), you can consider (Do you see what - O you do) the keel to be the ship's backbone; break it and there are dire consequences.

Not a good day for some.

     This made navies around the world sit up and pay attention, for you could now have a small boat armed with torpedo tubes, which would come in at maybe 300 tons displacement, capable of sinking much larger vessels and posing a significant threat even to the dreadnought battleships of the time - which might displace 36,000 tons.
     There you go, an introduction to the introduction of the torpedo.  There is more, which we'll come back to.  Don't want to overwhelm you!

How very tasteless.

Because I Am Thorough
Okay, okay, and a bit of an anorak, I pulled my copy of "Jane's Fighting Ships of World War 1" off the shelves, to check out details about MTBs - Motor Torpedo Boats - in the service of Perfidious Albion, as well as a few details on the Dreadnought-type battleships.  Hence those mass measurements above; I didn't just pull them out of thin air, nor wet water.

An MTB

     Here an aside.  The "Dreadnought" was a battleship launched by Perfidious Albion in 1906, and was a revolutionary all-big-gun design that instantly made every other type of battleship obsolete overnight.  She was not only armed to the teeth, she could whiz along at 26 knots, which is 24 miles per hour.  Not bad for a 20,000 monster.

HMS Dreadnought, being all dreadless.

     Typically, that's not what I wanted to comment on.  O no.  Do try to keep up, it's good mental exercise and it may save your life when the zombie apocalypse happens, or the robots revolt.*** Art?

Thus

     I cannot remember when or where I bought this volume, so these newspaper cuttings were a welcome surprise.  They date back to the early to mid 90's and come from The Times and Daily Telegraph, with a date scrawled upon each in biro.  There turned out to be several more hidden within the leaves, so it may be fruitful if I patiently go page-by-page through the book.  This will take time: it's a very big book.

What Is A "Barguest"?
Yes, another of those words that pop up in my head at random.  Hey, what can I say, my mind is a wild and crazy place at the best of times and even I don't know quite how it works, just that it does.^
     Okay, a Barguest is a supernatural hound of uncanny proportions, that is, it's freaking huge, and you can distinguish it from other big black hounds by virtue of it's glowing red eyes.

Need some eyewash?

     It seems to get up to all sorts of mischief, including presaging the death of people by marching in a funeral procession of dogs, walking around whilst being invisible (though you can hear it's chains rattling), and - eating people.  Notably in the city of York, where it would allegedly gobble up lone travellers, though Conrad reckons this might be the sinister footpads of York doing the deed and blaming barguest.

"Hey, mate, what happened to 'Innocent until found guilty?' "

     Robbing and murdering people and throwing them in the river, that is, not eating people, though you can never be too careful with those furriners over the border in Yorkestershire.



*  I doubt it would get as far as the ICC, but why take the chance?
**  South Canadian Civil War reference there.  Heh.
***  It probably wont. I like to give you hope, though.
^  Mostly.