SUBMARINES: THEIR HISTORY, DEVELOPMENT AND EQUIPMENT.
The aerial flight of the bird and the subaqueous navigation of the fish were always wished-for and dreamed-of activities of human ambition. Science achieved both performances between the years 1900 and 1906, when the actions of the denizens of the air and sea were brought within the practice of mankind by the airplane and submarine. Protracted life and motion within each of the elements has in the last Great War been such a prominent and method ical part of warfare that they are already com monplace to us. But while the performance of the dirigible and heavier-than-air machines has been visible by millions of our populace, the invisibility and secrecy surrounding the sub marine has been maintained, few ever seeing the submersible in action and still fewer hav ing been allowed access to her internal economy. A fairly lengthy description of the °secrets* of the submarine should be of peculiar interest to readers.
Dutchman, Cornelis van Dri bel, in 1624 invented a successful submarine rowboat, and King James of England was pas senger on one in a subaqueous voyage on the river Thames. Contemporaries describe the vessel as an ordinary large rowboat decked over with stout, well-greased leather. About 1652 Le Son, a Frenchman, built a wooden submarine (known as the °Rotterdam Boat') 72 feet long, 12 feet high, with 8 feet beam. It had sharply tapering ends and sloping sides (for defense against projectiles) and iron-tipped legs for resting on the bed of rivers or bottom of the sea. Midships a paddle-wheel propelled the ves sel. In 1747 Symons built a submarine decked rowboat having leather bottles projecting through her bottom; when filled they submerged the boat and by forcing out the water with a lever and fastening the necks the boat rose to the surface. An English mechanic named Day built a boat he could submerge 30 feet, remain ing 24 hours under water in it. He tried the same performance with a 50-ton sloop on a bet in Plymouth Harbor, but the boat failed to rise and he was drowned. In 1776 David Bushnell, a native of Connecticut, invented his submarine, or rather submersible, boat Turtle, so christened because its sides were shaped like the shell of a turtle. When submerged the head of its single passenger remained above the water in a conning tower while he propelled the boat with a bladed tractor forward. Lead ballast kept her submerged. From the rear end of this lense-shaped hull projected an arm steered rudder. Sergt. Ezra Lee operated the craft and when the British fleet entered New York Harbor to capture Manhattan Island Lee tried to attach a mine to one of the men-of war but failed after repeated attempts, barely escaping capture. In 1797 Robert Fulton tried vainly in Paris to interest the French govern ment in his plans for a submarine even after he had built a model and an appointed com mission had given a favorable report; he next a. iealed to the government of Holland. In 1:I I, however, First Consul Napoleon ad vanced 10,000 francs for Fulton to build a sub marine, which was launched and christened Nautilus. It was constructed of copper plates on iron ribs and fish-shaped, 21 feet 3 inches long, 6 feet 3 inches diameter at the widest part. Stability was gained by a heavy keel, above which were water ballast tanks. It was driven by a two-bladed propeller geared to a hand wheel. A dome formed the conning tower. Horizontal planes guided her down wards. Above the surface a sail unfurled itself fanwise on a hinged mast upon pulling a rope. Fulton and another remained submerged, on the trial, 20 minutes in the Seine, extending the period to six hours' submersion later at Brest, aided by a tank of compressed air. He blew up an old ship by attaching an explosive shell to her bottom to prove the practicability of the offensive craft. Failure, however, to injure the English fleet as a proof caused the French government to refuse further negotia tions. Fulton went to England and interested Prime Minister Pitt and he successfully blew up the Dorothea with a time bomb attached to her during his submersion; but within a week Nelson at Trafalgar so injured the morale of the French fleet that England's danger from sea attack was gone and Fulton returned to America, where he again failed to gain gov ernment recognition of the merits of his sub marine. The Confederate torpedo boat David, which could not actually submerge but had to keep her funnel and pilot-house above water, attacked and exploded a spar-torpedo against the iron-plate protected hull of the U.S.S. New Ironsides in Charleston Harbor, October 1863, but did little damage. The Confederate Hundley was a true diving craft with ballast tanks, diving planes and driven by hand power. Each of her five trial trips met with serious accidents and loss of some or all her crew. General Beauregard was still able to 'get vol unteers for another trip and determined this time to make it a practical test against the Northern blockade fleet. On 17 Feb. 1864 the Hundley blew up the U.S.S. Housatonic, a new corvette of 13 guns, in Charleston Harbor, with a spar-torpedo which struck her and ex plo.ded her magazine. But the Hundley went down with her victim. And this was the first success of a submarine's action with a warship and the only one till the late World War. The Stromboli and Spuyten Duyvil, con structed by the United States government, sub merged their hulls only, leaving the upper works (conning tower, ventilators, etc.) above the surface. With the invention by Whitehead (1864) of the fish torpedo and automatic pro pulsion by compressed air, the dpigers of self-immolation of the aggressors in torpedo attack disappeared. (See TORPEDO). William Bauer, a Bavarian, now invented a submarine craft but it was refused by the Halstead's Intelligent Whale (1 ), quite similar to the Nautilus, was supposed to allow i a member of crew (a diver) to emerge and place a torpedo under a ship; experiment ended in failure. In 1863, Captain Bourgois and M. Brun, Frenchmen, built the steel submarine Plongeur, 146 feet long, equipped with an 80 horse-power compressed-air engine; she be haved too unsteadily,_submerged deeply and her engines had insufficient capacity. The French man Olivier Riou (1861) failed in his trial of electricity as the motive power; then his com patriot, Admiral Aube (1886), took up the electric idea and built a small experimental vessel, the Gymnote, on lines laid down by Dupuy de Lome, who had recently died; it was 55 feet long and had 564 battery cells developing 55 horse power. Showing good points, the French government built the larger Gustave Zide, on similar lines but advanced principles. She failed in every respect at first, but after years of experiment and alteration became practical. From 1886 to 1901 the French government was so enthusiastic in adopting the submarine as an arm of the fleet that she built 29, all electric driven. M. Goubel, a Frenchman, experimented with two small elec tric submarines at this time but they were failures. In 1878 the Rev. G. W. Garett, an Englishman, built a submarine which he chris tened Resurgam ("I shall Rise"). Advancing in his calculations he built a second with a steam engine. On submersion the smoke-stack
was closed with a sliding panel and the furnace was shut up tight and the engine under water was run by steam from the reserve tank of hot water. Thorsten Nordenfeldt, Swedish engineer and inventor of the famous gun bear ing his name, took up and improved the Garett system so that his boat ran for 14 miles sub merged. He next got patents for his vertical propeller device which drove the craft deep under the surface. After tests (1886) Greece purchased his first craft and he built larger submarines (Nordenfeldt II and Nordenfeldt III), which Turkey acquired. The first of the latter introduced the novelty of a torpedo-tube in the bow to discharge Whitehead torpedoes. They were shipped to Turkey in parts and one was assembled in Constantinople for tests and acted well on the surface, but under water, with every movement of her crew, she lost her level keel and dived nose down or tail first, whichever part her crew worked. Firing a torpedo she lost her balance badly, but see sawed till her crew got her safely to the sur face. As no other crew could be found to take the risk, she rusted in dock and when the Brit ish attacked the Dardanelles she could take no part in the defense. The Russian Drzewiedd and the Spaniard Feral invented a foot-driven propeller submarine which proved useless. A strange submarine craft indeed was that pro jected by the Russian Apostaloff, whose hull was armed with great °threads° forming a gigantic screw by means of which, the hull re volving, this great propeller would, the inventor claimed, cross the Atlantic at 111 knots an hour. His submerged hull was to have a large cabin suspended by davits above the water. John P. Holland, an Irishman, in 1875 built a 16-feet long, two feet diameter, cigar-shaped submarine vessel in New Jersey (Holland No. 1), which carried a torpedo that was to be attached to the bottom of the enemy ship and then exploded like the plan of Bushnell with his Turtle. The craft was divided into an air chamber fore and aft and two compartments amidships, in one of the latter of which the operator reclined while working pedals with his feet to turn a propeller in the stern. It enabled Holland to practice navigation beneath the Passaic River and neighboring waters. Holland No. 2 was launched in 1877 and stuck in the mud. She was furnished with an outer hull for water ballast and was driven by a four horse-power petroleum engine. A few experiments proved to both inventor and spec tators that she was a failure and he sunk her after salvaging the engine. He persuaded the Fenian Brotherhood to pay for the construc tion of two of his submarines with a view to attacking English men-of-war,. but they do not appear ever to have shown activity. Hol land constructed five more submarines without profit; but in 1893 Congress made an appto priation for constructing an experimental sub marine and invited bids. Holland won against his competitors and in 1897 his Plunger was launched but had so many evident defects she was never finished. Holland No. 8 followed and failed, but Holland No. 9 was built and was the first successful submarine from actual practical viewpoints. She was launched in 1898 and was 53 feet 10 inches long, 10 feet 7 inches deep and porpoise-shape. In 1900 she was placed in commission by the United States navy. Her power was conveyed on the surface by a 50-horse-power gasoline motor and by electric storage batteries when submerged and the combination of the two methods of pro pulsion was the great Holland achievement. Upon filling her water tanks she sank till with die water's surface, then two hori zontal rudders steered her to a depth of 28 feet in five seconds. As periscopes had not been perfected, she had to rise and dip like a porpoise to get an air-glimpse and aim. Re peated tests produced such satisfaction with Admiral Dewey and his fellow-officers that the United States government ordered six sub marines of this type and in 1901 the British Admiralty ordered five. The race was on and all the navies ordered Hollands or paid royal ties to the inventor's patent to build larger or improved craft. But the British Admiralty acquired the master patents, making a purchase of all rights for Great Britain, and has built up England's fleet on Holland lines, making, of course, many changes. The next Holland submarines were built for seagoing purposes were constructed for the United States navy, having 122 tons displacement, 160 horse power gasoline engines for surface and 70 horse-power electric for submersion, making, respectively, eight and one-half and seven knots with 300 miles radius awash. These were termed the Adder class, after which came the Viper class, somewhat larger, and the Octopus. The latter was furnished with twin screws and had 273 tons displacement submerged, surface speed 11 knots, produced by internal combus tion engine of 500 horse power and 10 knots submerged, developed by electricity.. Simon Lake, a Baltimore citizen, built a triangular box-shaped submarine craft, which he named Argonaut Junior, that could sink to the bottom of a river or lake and permit a passenger to emerge through the bottom by an air-lock filled with compressed air. The passenger, equipped with a diving suit, could search the bottom of the river. The strange craft was mounted on three wheels, the front pair was rotated by hand gear, the rear one did the steering. In 1897 Lake built his Argonaut, having cigar shaped hull 36 feet long, on similar principles, but with a 30 horse-power gasoline engine, the fresh air being supplied through a hose con nected with a float on the water's surface (later changed to two tubular masts). For sinking, The Argonaut relied on two anchor weights of over 1,000 pounds attached to cables and raised and lowered by a drum on the vessel. On lowering the weights to the bed of the river. then letting in water to ballast compartments, the weight cables were hauled in till the ves sel rested on her wheels at the bottom of the water, when the weights were hauled into pockets in the keel. In 1898, The Argonaut traveled from Norfolk to New York under her own power. To fulfil the prophetic vision of Jules Verne's Nautilus, The Argonaut cov ered over 1,000 miles submerged. She was lengthened in New York and a superstructure of ship form was built over her, making her a safe sea-going submarine riding waves The Narval, conceived in 1899 by M. Labeuf, was launched in France with its double hull, the outer shell perforated. She used steam on the surface and storage batteries beneath, but absolute silence has been maintained as to advances in French submarines. In 1906, Lake's Protector was built and sent to Russia equipped to run along the bottom of the water and cut through enemy nets, avoid mines, rocks and sandbars. Lake was consulted by the German firm of Krupps, who, he says, agreed to em ploy him as adviser in the building °Lake type) boats and share the profits with him; after parting with his plans and specifications he says Krupps refused to sign the agreement and used his plans on the submarines they built during the World War.