 In 1864, Union Navy Lieutenant William B. Cushing fitted a steam launch with a spar torpedo to attack the Confederate ironclad .Also the same year the Union launched , a purpose-built craft with a number of technical innovations including variable ballast for attack operations and an extensible and reloadable torpedo placement spar.A prototype self-propelled torpedo was created by a commission placed by Giovanni Luppis, an Austrian naval officer from Rijeka, then a port city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Robert Whitehead, an English engineer who was the manager of a town factory.