It was noted by Mr. James Thursfield in the 1894 edition of The Naval Annual, Lord Brassey, ed., T. Griffin and Co., Portsmouth, that "even in default of an active defence adequately organised and skilfully disposed, torpedo boats were very apt to suppress themselves and to attain a very high rate of extinction in the normal course of their attacks on a powerful and vigilant seagoing adversary. The truth seems that a torpedo boat ought properly be regarded not as an independent seagoing unit of a naval force, but as a peculiar and very destructive kind of projectile …having a considerable liability to be destroyed or intercepted before it attains its mark …to say nothing of its very awkward habit of occasionally mistaking a friend for an enemy."