In the meantime a Spanish engineer, Senor Torres, had been
quietly working out a new idea. He realised the shortcomings of
the prevailing types of airships some eleven years ago, and
unostentatiously and painstakingly set out to eliminate them by
the perfection of a new type of craft. He perfected his idea,
which was certainly novel, and then sought the assistance of the
Spanish Government. But his fatherland was not adapted to the
prosecution of the project. He strove to induce the authorities
to permit even a small vessel to be built, but in vain. He then
approached the French Astra Company. His ambition was to build a
vessel as large as the current Zeppelin, merely to emphasise the
value of his improvement upon a sufficiently large scale, and to
enable comparative data concerning the two designs to be
obtained. But the bogey of expense at first proved insuperable.
However, the French company, decided to give the invention a
trial, and to this end a small "vedette" of about 53,000 cubic
feet displacement was built.
Although an unpretentious little vessel, it certainly served to
emphasise the importance of the Torres idea.
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