Macintyre’s operation was on a much smaller scale, but the principles were the same. And the signs were good. Although ramshackle on the outside, inside the shed was spotless. All the tools were neatly ordered, the floors swept, the benches well organised. The brass on the instruments gleamed, the steel was well oiled. Each machine was cared for and well situated. It had all been thought through. And those he employed went about their business with a quiet resolve, talking rarely and then quietly. They knew what they were doing.
“I found them,” he said when I asked, “here and there. Giacomo over there was supposed to be a boatbuilder, but his father died and he could find no master. I noticed him carving a piece of driftwood to sell to passersby. He had such fine control of his hands I knew he was intelligent. He made himself indispensable inside a week. He can set up a machine faster and more accurately than any man I have come across. If he had the technical knowledge to go with his skill, he would be formidable.”
He gestured to another. “Luigi is another. He has more training; I found him in an artist’s studio being trained as a restorer. He has no talent for painting, so he had not much of a career ahead of him. His talent is for drawing, he is an immensely skilled draughtsman, and can take my sketches and turn them into plans. He and Giacomo can then turn them into precise settings on the machinery.”
“And that one?”
“Ah, Signor Bartoli. A man of all tasks. He is the general, all-purpose worker. He helps one or the other of the two and knows how to follow his instructions perfectly. If something needs doing, he will do it, faster and better than you hoped.”
“You are more fortunate than Mr. Cort in your choice of labour, then.”
“I am a better judge of men, more like. And more able to command them. When I see Mr. Cort at work, I feel like grabbing him by the neck and giving him a good shake.”
He snorted in disgust, in a way which spoke volumes. Macintyre was thinking what he would have accomplished if he had had the advantages of Cort’s birth and opportunities. There are many such men in our industries; I have made it my business to find them and give them their chance.
“Yet you assisted him the other week?”
“Oh, that. That was nothing. It took no time at all, and I was getting heartily sick of listening to his despair. At least he has decided to take my advice. He is even prepared to contemplate blowing the column out with explosives. There may be a man of sense in there after all. His trouble is that he has been trained to do things the way they are done, not the way they should be done.”
“Are you going to tell me what that great thing is over there?” I called out to him. He had wandered over to Luigi, and was discussing some problem, my presence perfectly forgotten. A strange way of talking he had, as well. A sort of pidgin English with smatterings of Italian thrown in. It was the lingua franca of the workshop, where conversations were conducted half in words, half in gestures and mime. All the technical words were in English, not surprisingly perhaps as none of the three Italians knew any of them before they came to Macintyre, and he did not know the Italian equivalents, even when they existed. The grammar was Italian, and the rest was a mixture of the two, with a lot of grunting thrown in to fill up space.
I had to wait for an answer; whatever the problem was it took some sorting and ended with Macintyre on his knees before the machine—some sort of drill, as far as I could discern—like a penitent at prayer, slowly twisting knobs to make fine adjustments, measuring distances with calipers, repeating the operation several times before an outburst of grunting suggested the problem was resolved.
“What was that?” he asked when he returned to my side.
“Your plumbing.”
“Ha!” He turned and led the way back to the lone machine lying clamped on a solitary workbench. “What do you think it is?”
I looked carefully at the machine before me. It was a thing of some elegance, essentially a steel tube with wing-like projections along its length, tapering at the back and ending with a small three-winged propeller in shiny brass. At the other end, it stopped abruptly and opened to the air, but a little way away was a continuation which obviously bolted on to the end to give a rounded shape.
“It obviously is designed to go through the water,” I said. I walked around and peered into the nose of the machine. It was empty. “And this clearly holds something. Most of its length is taken up with machinery, which I take to be the engine, although there is no funnel, and no boiler. This empty piece must hold the cargo.” I shook my head. “It looks a bit like a very big shell with a propeller attached.”
Macintyre laughed. “Very good! Very good! A shell with a propeller. That is precisely what it is. A torpedo, to be precise.”
I was puzzled. A torpedo, I knew, was a long pole pushed from the front of a ship to impale an opponent, then explode. Hardly useful in the days of ironclads and ten-inch guns.
“Of course,” he continued, “I merely borrow the word as I could think of nothing better. This is an automobile torpedo. A charge of explosive there,” he pointed at the nose, “and an engine capable of propelling it in a straight line there. Aim it at the opposing ship, set it off and that’s that.”
“So the front will be full of gunpowder.”
“Oh, no. Gunpowder is too susceptible to damp. And something which goes underneath the surface of the water is liable to get wet, however well it is made. So I will use guncotton. And, of course, I can make it myself; one part cotton wool in fifteen parts of sulphuric and nitric acids. Then you wash it, dry it. Look.”
He gestured to a series of boxes in the corner that rested on top of several vats.
“That’s the guncotton?”
“Yes. Over the past few months I’ve made several hundredweight of the stuff.”
“Isn’t it dangerous to have it lying around?”
“No, no. It’s quite safe, if it’s prepared properly. If it’s not cleaned and dried as it should be, then it can easily go off all on its own. But this is perfectly safe. To make it explode, it will have to be compressed, then set off with a detonator made of mercuric fulminate. At the moment you could jump up and down on it all day and come to no harm. That’s the dangerous stuff over there.” He pointed to another corner.
“What’s that?”
“Gunpowder. I bought it before I realised it wouldn’t do. It’s useless now; I’m going to use it on Cort’s pillar, if he can make up his mind what he wants.”
“So the explosive is in the front, it hits the ship and—bang.”
“Bang. Precisely,” he said approvingly.
“What size bang? I mean, how much explosive will you need to sink a battleship?”
“That will be determined by experiments.”
“You’re going to fire off torpedoes at passing battleships until one sinks?”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” he said, with the air of one who would have loved nothing more. “Detonating explosives against plates of armour will do.”
“I’m almost disappointed,” I said. “But isn’t a gun more reliable? Less chance of something going wrong, and less chance of the other ship getting out of the way? And cheaper?”
“Possibly so, but to send a shell of equivalent power on its way you need a gun weighing some sixty tons. And for that you need a very large ship. Which has to be armour-plated, and carry a large crew. With a few of these, a corvette of three hundred tons and a crew of sixty will be a match for the largest battleship in the world.”
“The Royal Navy will thank you for that, I’m sure,” I said ironically.
Macintyre laughed. “They won’t. This will neutralise every navy in the world! No one will dare send their capital ships to sea, for fear of losing them. War will come to an end.”
I found his optimism touching, if misplaced. “That would kill off demand for your invention, would it not? How many of these could you sell?”
“I have no idea.”
I did. If it worked, and he could
persuade one navy to buy them, then he would sell them to every navy in the world. Admirals are as discerning as housewives in a department store. They must have what everyone else is having.
“Does it work?”
“Of course. At least, it will work, when one or two problems are ironed out.”
“Such as?”
“It has to go in a straight line, as I say. That is quite straightforward. But it also has to propel itself at a constant depth, not rising and falling. Through the water, not over the top of it.”
“Why?”
“Because ships are plated above the waterline, but not so heavily below it. Shells burst when they hit the water, so there is rarely direct damage under sea level, and so little need to protect the hulls so far down.”
“How much does it cost to make these?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“And how much will you try to sell them for?”
“I haven’t thought about that.”
“Where would you manufacture them? You could hardly do it here.”
“I don’t know.”
“How much have you spent on developing it so far?”
All of a sudden the boyish look of enthusiasm which had animated his face since he began talking about his machine faded. He looked his age and more so, careworn and anxious.
“Everything I have, or had. And more.”
“You are in debt?” He professed to like direct questions. Normally I do not, except where money is concerned. There I desire absolute and unambiguous precision.
He nodded.
“How much?”
“Three hundred pounds. I think.”
“At what rate of interest?”
“I don’t know.”
I was appalled. However skilled Macintyre was as an engineer, he was no businessman. In that department he was as naïve as a newborn babe. And someone, I could tell, was taking advantage of that.
I do not object to such practises. Macintyre was an adult and far from stupid. He had entered into an agreement fully conscious of what he was doing. If he did so, that was his fault, not the fault of the person who was so exploiting his unworldly nature. It turned out, so he told me, that he had needed money, both to pay the wages of his men, and to buy the material necessary for his great machine, and had assumed he would be able to pay it off with a job he had taken on designing the metalwork for a new bridge to be thrown across the Grand Canal. But that project had collapsed, so no payment was forthcoming, and the debts had mounted up.
“I arrived in Venice with enough money, so I thought, to live in definitely. But this machine has been more difficult than I could ever have imagined. The problems to be solved! You cannot believe it. Building the case and ensuring it is watertight, designing the engine, the detonator, coming up with an entirely new device to regulate depth. It takes time and money. More money than I have.”
“So you are heavily in debt, with no assets to draw on, paying what I imagine is a high rate of interest. How long before you are unable to continue?”
“Not long. My creditors are pressing. They are insisting that the torpedo be tried out and quickly, otherwise they will call in their debts.”
“Can you do that?”
“I’m going to give a demonstration soon. If it works, I will be allowed to borrow more. But it is too early; much too early.”
He did not continue, and had no need to.
“I think you need a bookkeeper as much as you do a draughtsman or a machinist,” I said. “Money is as important a component as steel.”
He shrugged, plainly uninterested. “They’re thieves,” he said. “They’d steal my invention and leave me with nothing unless I was careful.”
“I hate to say it, but you are not being careful.”
“Oh, everything will be just fine next week. When the test is done.”
“Are you sure?”
He looked weary. “Any sort of calculation in engineering I can do. But show me a contract, or a page of accounts…”
“With me, it is the precise opposite. Listen. If you wish, I could look through that side of things, see what the situation is precisely, and tell you—in words even an engineer could understand—how you stand at the moment. Only if you wish. I do not want to interfere in any way.”
I was very reluctant to make this offer, as it is generally unwise to give financial advice unbidden. But the look of hopelessness on his face as he talked of his debts was beguiling. And my mind was racing. An entirely new class of weapon could be formidably profitable—witness Mr. Maxim’s rapid-fire gun, which, from small beginnings, rapidly became more or less obligatory equipment for every army in the world.
And the beauty of Macintyre’s machine was that it was so wasteful. Unlike a cannon, which was (so to speak) a fixed investment, with the cost of employment quite low—only the amount needed to buy the shell and the gunpowder—the torpedo could be employed once only. Once sent on its way, the whole thing would have to be replaced. The potential for replacement orders was considerable and (if I knew my sailors) in a conflict they would fire them off like rockets on Guy Fawkes night.
Regular orders from an organisation with bottomless pockets. The prospect was enticing. Not least because I was fairly certain that Macintyre’s aim, of eliminating war by making destruction certain, was as unlikely as it was noble. No weapon has ever made war less likely; they merely end wars more quickly by killing people at higher speeds. Until the mind of man invents something capable of killing everyone, that will not change.
But it seemed that the chances of Macintyre ever succeeding with his device were small to nonexistent. He barely had the resources to finish one, so what chance had he of producing them in bulk? Who would provide the capital to fit out a factory, hire a workforce? Who would run it, ensure that the machines were properly made, sold and delivered? Macintyre had no idea of any of this, nor did he even know how to find those who did.
The whole situation was full of possibilities. If the machine worked.
CHAPTER 8
He did not buy me lunch, or even share a meal with me, but I was quite content as I walked back to my apartment, taking diversions here and there, so that it was early evening by the time I finally returned. It had been a most interesting day, and my spirits were further buoyed by three messages that awaited my return. One from the Marchesa, saying that I should dine with her the following week, as she had a delightful entertainment for me; the next from Mr. Macintyre, containing a bundle of papers and a curt note, saying that here were his accounts, if I wished to look at them. And the last was from Mrs. Cort, saying that her husband had given his permission for her to guide me around the city. We could begin tomorrow, if I wished.
My stay in Venice was settling down to being remarkably enjoyable, and no small part of it was due to the surroundings. The quiet of the place has a wonderful appeal if you are receptive to it, the more so because it is so unnoticed. The effect of the light also really cannot be put into words. It is not the peace of an English Sunday, for example, when the quiet is almost total but there is always the knowledge of what came before and what will come the next day. There is always the faintest haze in Venice, suggesting to the mind that the moment will continue forever, that there never will be a tomorrow. It is hard to occupy yourself with the concerns of the world, for concerns are always about what will happen in the future, and in Venice the future will never come, and the past will never disappear. I find that I have only a small recollection of buildings and scenery from that time; I have no strong memories of views or vistas. I had reached a stage where I hardly noticed any of it; some of the greatest works of art and architecture made no conscious impression on me at all. The effect, however, was total and overwhelming. It was like being in a different world, where everything fitted together. An old woman sitting on a step, a palace, a waiter setting out tables, washing on a line, boats crossing the lagoon, islands hazy in the morning mist, seagulls in the sky, all of these were part of this whole,
relating perfectly to each other and to my mood, which moved rapidly from dream to purposeful activity seamlessly.
I became a Venetian that afternoon, walking to a spot on the Riva with a book. I had intended to view something, but I do not even remember what, as I never got there. I sat down on the steps of a bridge, and watched the boats go by. A pretty girl was selling pears fresh from the tree. I wanted one, but had no money on me. But they were so luscious, so fat and juicy-looking, some bruised already and oozing sweet sticky liquid in the basket. And eventually, I leaned over, and took one, biting into it before she even noticed what I had done. Then she turned, and I shook my head. I couldn’t help it, my glance said. The girl, dark-haired and bright-eyed, smiled at my pleasure, then laughed and offered me another. Take, take, she said. Take what you want. And I did; I took another, bowing in acknowledgement, and not feeling in the slightest bit embarrassed about offering nothing in return. She waved her hand anyway. Don’t worry, you will pay later, was the sense of her smile. Everything is paid for, eventually.
That evening, I settled down to read Mr. Macintyre’s accounts. Some may consider this a dull way of spending time, even an anticlimax after a day such as I had just enjoyed. I know that it is an unusual pleasure and that account books are a byword for spiritless, mechanical drabness, but that is said by those who do not understand them. In truth, a set of accounts can be as full of drama and passion as any novel. A whole year, more than that, of human endeavour is abbreviated, compressed down into a page of hieroglyphics. Add understanding, and the story bursts forth, rather as dried fruit expands when water is added to it.
Macintyre’s accounts were a particular challenge because they were so sloppy, and did not conform to any rules of accountancy that I had ever come across. What Italians consider expenditure or income is very different. For some items there seemed to be no fixed definitions at all; had they been deliberately designed to confuse, then they could not have been better constructed.
But eventually I teased out their secrets. Macintyre had run out of money about a year previously, and had had to prepare approximate accounts of the previous few years’ endeavours to back his application for a loan. These showed that he had started with £1,300; and he had spent it at about £500 a year. Since taking the loan, he had spent a further £300, which, with accumulated (and unpaid) interest, meant he was now £427 in debt. That is, he was paying interest at about 37 per cent a year, which was quite enough to sink any project.