Victorian Strangeness: The man who fired a torpedo down a High Street

[dipsydoodle]

Europe goes to the polls next week, but election fever sometimes seems in short supply. Maybe that's not such a bad thing. Author Jeremy Clay tells the tale of a 19th Century election rally and the drunken inventor who fired a torpedo down his own High Street.

The man they came to know as "Wild" Cunningham gazed ruefully down the main street of his home town at a scene of devastation. Wrecked buildings. A flattened shop. Debris littered all around. And a smoke trail, like an accusing finger, leading right back to where he stood.

Perhaps, on reflection, he had gone too far.

Patrick Cunningham was an inventor who had built a torpedo for the US Navy. It was 17ft long, and packed with enough explosive to do serious damage to a ship. Or, as it turned out, a High Street.

The damage was done at the tail end of October 1896, on the cusp of the presidential election, as the political hoopla came rolling into the Massachusetts whaling town of New Bedford.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-27440191

[Xipe Totec]

1. I told the buildings to get out of the way but did they listen? Hell no. nt

[chknltl]

2. They just don't write stuff like this anymore:

"With the flamboyant stupidity of a man who knew it all, except when to stop, Cunningham hurried to his workshop and loaded the invention that came to be known as the Flying Devil on to a wagon and brought it to a suitably unsuitable spot. "

[malthaussen]

4. Ain't dat da trut.

One of the reasons I love old history books is that the authors were happy to make firm, declarative judgements rather than the wishy-washy consensual kind of writing that has become so prominent in the past generation. It's nice to see someone call a rascal a rascal, a coward a coward, and a fool, foolish. These days you only seem to get that from extremist sources, and the judgement there is so impaired by ideology as to be worthless.

-- Mal

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. Wonderful story...

I cannot understand why no one was killed, since it reportedly demolished blocks of buildings.

"The torpedo then exploded, shattering several blocks of houses in the vicinity."

[malthaussen]

5. Maybe because everybody ran screaming when they saw it coming?

I agree, it would be a much less funny story if the idiot had killed someone.

-- Mal

[chknltl]

6. This is just too cool a story to let drift away so KnR. nt