THE EVOLUTION OF THE SUBMARINE
Many are the fables which the Germans have done their best to pass off
for truth among the spectators of the present War; but not one is more
wilfully and demonstrably false, than their account of the origin of
the submarine. According to the story which they have endeavoured to
spread among the unthinking public in neutral countries, the under-sea
boat--the arm with which they claim to have revolutionised naval
warfare--is the product of German ingenuity and skill. The French, they
say, had merely played with the idea; their submarines were costly
toys, dangerous only to those who tried to navigate them. The Americans
had shown some promise half a century ago; but having since become a
pacifist race of dollar-hunters, they had lost interest in war, and
their boats would be found useless in practice. As for the British, the
day of their naval power was past; they had spent their time and money
upon the mania for big ships, and neglected the more scientific vessel,
the submarine, which had made the big ships obsolete in a single year’s
campaign. The ship of the future, the U-boat, was the national weapon
of Germany alone.
The claim was unjustified; but, so far, it was not--to an uninstructed
neutral--obviously unjustified. The Americans were not yet at war; the
submarines of France and Britain were hardly ever heard of. Our boats
had few targets, and their operations were still further restricted by
the rules of international law, which we continued to keep, though our
enemies did not. Moreover, whatever our Service did achieve was done
secretly; and even our successes were announced so briefly and vaguely
as to make no impression. The result was that the Germans were able
to make out a plausible title to the ‘command of the sea beneath the
surface’; and they even gained a hearing for the other half of their
claim, which was unsupported by any evidence whatever. The submarine
is not, in its origin, of German invention; the idea of submarine war
was not a German idea, nor have Germans contributed anything of value
to the long process of experiment and development by which the idea has
been made to issue in practical under-water navigation. From beginning
to end, the Germans have played their characteristic part. They have
been behind their rivals in intelligence; they have relied on imitation
of the work of others; on discoveries methodically borrowed and
adapted; and when they have had to trust to their own abilities, they
have never passed beyond mediocrity. They have shown originality in one
direction only--their ruthless disregard of law and humanity. These
statements are not the outcome of partisanship, but of a frank study of
the facts. They are clearly proved by the history of submarine war.
That history may be said to begin with the second half of the sixteenth
century, when the two main principles or aims of submarine war were
first set forth--both by English seamen. Happily the records remain.
Sir William Monson, one of Queen Elizabeth’s admirals, in his famous
‘Naval Tracts,’ suggests that a powerful ship may be sunk much more
easily by an under-water shot than by ordinary gunfire. His plan is
‘to place a cannon in the hold of a bark, with her mouth to the side
of the ship: the bark shall board, and then to give fire to the cannon
that is stowed under water, and they shall both instantly sink: the man
that shall execute this stratagem may escape in a small boat hauled the
other side of the bark.’
This is the germinal idea from which sprang the submarine mine or
torpedo; and the first design for a submarine boat was also produced
by the English Navy in the same generation. The author of this was
William Bourne, who had served as a gunner under Sir William Monson.
His invention is described in his book of ‘Inventions or Devices’
published in 1578, and is remarkable for its proposed method of solving
the problem of submersion. This is to be achieved by means of two
side-tanks, into which water can be admitted through perforations, and
from which it can be blown out again by forcing the inner side of each
tank outwards. These false sides are made tight with leather suckers,
and moved by winding hand-screws--a crude and inefficient mechanism,
but a proof that the problem had been correctly grasped. For a really
practical solution of this, and the many other difficulties involved
in submarine navigation, the resources of applied science were then
hopelessly inadequate. It was not until after more than three hundred
years of experiment that inventors were in a position to command a
mechanism that would carry out their ideas effectively.
The record of these three centuries of experiment is full of interest;
for it shows us a long succession of courageous men taking up, one
after another, the same group of scientific problems and bringing them,
in spite of all dangers and disasters, gradually nearer to a final
solution. Many nations contributed to the work, but especially the
British, the American, the Dutch, the French, the Spanish, the Swedish,
the Russian, and the Italian. The part played by each of them has been,
on the whole, characteristic. The British were the first, as practical
seamen, to put forward the original idea, gained from the experience of
their rivalry with Spain. They have also succeeded, at the end of the
experimental period, in making the best combined use of the results of
the long collaboration. A Dutchman built the first practical submarine,
and achieved the first successful dive. The Americans have made the
greatest number of inventions, and of daring experiments in earlier
wars. The French have shown, as a nation, the strongest interest in
the idea, and their navy was effectively armed with submarines ten
years before that of any other Power. To them, to the Dutch, and to
the Italians, the credit belongs of that indispensable invention, the
optic tube or periscope. The Swedes and Russians have the great names
of Nordenfelt and Drzewiecki to their credit. The Germans alone, among
the eight or nine nations interested in the science of naval war, have
from first to last contributed almost nothing to the evolution of the
submarine. The roll of submarine inventors includes about 175 names,
of which no less than 60 belong to the English-speaking peoples, but
only six to Germany. Among these six, the name of Bauer is remembered
as that of a courageous experimenter, persevering through a career of
repeated failures; but neither he, nor any of his fellow countrymen,
advanced the common cause by the suggestion of a single idea of value.
Finally, when the German Admiralty, after the failure of their own
Howaldt boat, decided to borrow the Holland type from America, it was
no German, but the Franco-Spanish engineer d’Equevilley, who designed
for them the first five U-boats, of which all the later ones are
modifications. The English Admiralty were in no such straits. They were
only one year before the Germans in adopting the Holland type; but
the native genius at their disposal has enabled them to keep ahead of
their rivals from that day to this, in the design, efficiency, size,
and number of their submarine vessels. And this result is exactly what
might have been expected from the history of submarine invention.
The construction of a workable submarine depends upon the discovery and
solution of a number of problems, the first five of which may be said
to be the problems of--
1. Submersion.
2. Stability.
3. Habitability.
4. Propulsion and Speed.
5. Offensive Action.
If we take these in order, and trace the steps by which the final
solution was approached, we shall be able to confirm what has been said
about the work contributed by successive inventors.
1. _Submersion._--We have seen that for submersion and return to the
surface, Bourne had at the very beginning devised the side-tank to
which water could be admitted, and from which it could be ‘blown out’
at will. Bushnell, a remarkable inventor of British-American birth,
substituted a hand-pump in his boat of 1771, for the mechanism proposed
by Bourne. In 1795, Armand-Maizière, a Frenchman, designed a steam
submarine vessel to be worked by ‘a number of oars vibrating on the
principle of a bird’s wing.’ Of these ‘wings,’ one lot were intended
to make the boat submerge. Nothing came of this proposal, and for more
than a century tanks and pumps remained the sole means of submersion.
In 1893 Haydon, an American, invented a submarine for the peaceful
purpose of exploring the ocean bed. Its most important feature was the
method of submersion. This was accomplished by means of an interior
cylindrical tank, with direct access to the sea, and fitted with two
powerfully geared pistons. By simply drawing the pistons in, or pushing
them out, the amount of water ballast could be nicely regulated, and
the necessity for compressed air or other expellants was avoided. This
device would have given great satisfaction to William Bourne, the
Elizabethan gunner, whose original idea, after more than two centuries,
it carried out successfully. Finally, in 1900, the American inventor,
Simon Lake, in his _Argonaut II._, introduced a new method of diving.
For the reduction of the vessel’s floatability he employed the usual
tanks; but for ‘travelling’ between the surface and the bottom, he
made use of ‘four big hydroplanes, two on each side, that steer the
boat either down or up.’ Similar hydroplanes, or horizontal rudders,
appeared in the later Holland boats, and are now in common use in all
submarine types.
Lake was of British descent, his family having emigrated from Wales to
New Jersey; but he owed his first interest in submarine construction,
and many of his inventive ideas, to the brilliant French writer,
Jules Verne, whose book ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea’ came
by chance into his hands when he was a boy ten years old, and made a
lasting impression upon him.
2. _Stability._--Next to the power of submersion, the most necessary
quality in a submarine is that of stability under water. The most
obvious method of securing this is by water ballast, which was probably
the first means actually employed. Bushnell, in 1771, substituted a
heavy weight of lead, as being more economical of space and better
suited to the shape of his boat, which resembled a turtle in an upright
position. The leaden ballast, being detachable at will, also acted as
a safety weight, to be dropped at a moment of extreme urgency. In the
_Nautilus_, built in 1800 by the famous engineer, Robert Fulton, an
American of English birth and education, the leaden weight reappeared
as a keel, and was entirely effective. The inventor, in a trial at
Brest in 1801, dived to a depth of 25 feet, and performed successful
evolutions in different directions for over an hour. Bauer, fifty years
later, returned to the ballast principle, and used both a water-tank
and a safety weight in the same boat. The results were disastrous.
His first submarine sank at her first trial in Kiel harbour, and was
never refloated. His second was built in England; but this, too, sank,
with great loss of life. His third, _Le Diable Marin_, after several
favourable trials at Cronstadt, fouled her propeller in a bed of
seaweed, and the releasing of the safety weights only resulted in
bringing her bows to the surface. The crew escaped with difficulty, and
the vessel then sank.
Three years later, in 1861, Olivier Riou designed two boats, in both of
which stability was to be preserved automatically by the device of a
double hull. The two cylinders which composed it, one within the other,
were not fixed immovably to one another, but were on rollers, so that
if the outer hull rolled to the right the inner rolled to the left.
By this counterbalancing effect, it was estimated that the stability
of the vessel would be absolutely secured; but nothing is recorded of
the trials of these boats. The celebrated French inventors, Bourgois
and Brun, reintroduced the principle of water-tanks combined with a
heavy iron ballast keel. But in 1881, the Rev. W. Garrett, the English
designer of the Nordenfelt boats, invented a new automatic mechanism
for ensuring stability. This consisted of two vertical rudders with
a heavy pendulum weight so attached to them that, if the boat dipped
out of the horizontal, the pendulum swung down and gave the rudders
an opposite slant which raised the vessel again to a horizontal
position. This arrangement, though perfect in theory, in practice
developed fatal defects, and subsequent types have all returned to the
use of water-tanks, made to compensate, by elaborate but trustworthy
mechanism, for every loss or addition of weight.
3. _Habitability._--For the habitability of a submarine the prime
necessity is a supply of air capable of supporting life during the
period of submersion. The first actual constructor of a submarine,
Cornelius van Drebbel, of Alkmaar, in Holland, was fully aware of
this problem, and claimed to have solved it, not by mechanical but by
chemical means. His improved boat, built in England about 1622, carried
twelve rowers, besides passengers, among whom King James I. is said to
have been included on one occasion, and was successfully navigated for
several hours at a depth of ten to fifteen feet. ‘Drebbel conceived,’
says Robert Boyle, in 1662, ‘that ’tis not the whole body of the air,
but a certain Quintessence (as Chymists speake) or spirituous part of
it that makes it fit for respiration, which being spent, the grosser
body or carcase (if I may so call it) of the Air, is unable to cherish
the vital flame residing in the heart: so that (for aught I could
gather) besides the Mechanical contrivance of his vessel he had a
Chymical liquor, which he accounted the chief secret of his Submarine
Navigation. For when from time to time, he perceived that the finer and
purer part of the Air was consumed or over-clogged by the respiration
and steames of those that went in his ship, he would, by unstopping a
vessel full of the liquor, speedily restore to the troubled air such a
proportion of vital parts as would make it again for a good while fit
for Respiration.’
Drebbel, who was a really scientific man, may possibly have discovered
this chemical secret. If so, he anticipated by more than 200 years
a very important device now in use in all submarines, and in any
case he was the originator of the idea. But his son-in-law, a German
named Kuffler, who attempted after Drebbel’s death to exploit his
submarine inventions, was a man of inferior ability, and either
ignorant of the secret or incapable of utilising it. For another
century and a half, submarine designers contented themselves with the
small supply of air which was carried down at the time of submersion.
Even the _Turtle_--Bushnell’s boat of 1776, which has been described
as ‘the first submarine craft which really navigated under serious
conditions’--was only built to hold one man with a sufficient supply
of air for half an hour’s submersion. This was a bare minimum of
habitability, and Fulton, twenty-five years later, found it necessary
to equip his _Nautilus_ with a compressed air apparatus. Even with
this, the crew of two could only be supplied for one hour. In 1827,
the very able French designer, Castera, took out a patent for a
submarine life-boat, to which air was to be supplied by a tube from
the surface, protected by a float, from which the whole vessel was
suspended. The danger here was from the possible entry of water through
the funnel, and the boat, though planned with great ingenuity, was
never actually tried. Bauer, in 1855, fitted his _Diable Marin_ with
large water-tubes, running for thirty feet along the top of the boat
and pierced with small holes from which, when desired, a continual
rain could be made to fall. This shower-bath had a purifying effect on
the vitiated air, but it had obvious disadvantages; and there is no
record of its having been put into actual use before the unfortunate
vessel sank, as before related. In the same year, a better principle
was introduced by Babbage, an English inventor, who designed a naval
diving-bell, fitted with three cylinders of compressed air. His method
was followed by Bourgois and Brun, whose boats of 1863-5 carried
steel reservoirs with compressed air, at a pressure of at least 15
atmospheres. The principle was now established, and was adopted in
Holland and Lake boats, and in all subsequent types, with the addition
of chemical treatment of the vitiated air.
4. _Propulsion._--The various solutions of this problem have naturally
followed the successive steps in the development of machinery. Drebbel
made use of oars. Bushnell, though he speaks of ‘an oar,’ goes on
to describe it as ‘formed upon the principle of the screw--its axis
entered the vessel, and being turned one way rowed the vessel forward,
but being turned the other way rowed it backward: it was made to be
turned by the hand or foot.’ Moreover, he had a similar ‘oar’ placed
at the top of the vessel, which helped it to ascend or descend in the
water. The conclusion seems unavoidable that to this designer belongs
the honour of having invented the screw propeller, and also of having
put it into successful operation. Fulton adopted the same method of
propeller and hand-winch in his _Nautilus_; but his huge vessel,
the _Mute_, built in 1814 to carry 100 men, was driven by a silent
steam-engine. He died during the trials of this boat, and further
experiment with it seems to have been abandoned, possibly owing to the
great interest excited by his first war steamer, which was building at
the same time. A regrettable set-back was thus caused. For forty years
no one experimented with any kind of propulsory engine. Bauer, in 1855,
could devise no better method of working his propeller than a system
of 7-foot wheels, turned by a pair of men running on a treadmill. At
the same moment, however, a more fruitful genius was at work. A French
professor, Marié-Davy, designed a submarine in which the propeller
was driven by an electro-magnetic engine placed in the stern of the
ship, with batteries forward. The idea was a valuable one, with a
great future before it, though for the moment it achieved no visible
success. A year later, in 1855, the famous British engineer, James
Nasmyth, designed a ‘submerged mortar,’ which was in reality a ram
of great weight and thickness, capable of being submerged level with
the surface, and driven at a speed of over 10 knots by a steam-engine
with a single high-pressure boiler. But in spite of the simplicity
and power of this boat, it was finally rejected as being neither
invisible nor invulnerable to an armed enemy; and in their desire
to obtain complete submersion, the French inventors of the next few
years--Hubault, Conseil, and Masson--all returned to the hand-winch
method of propulsion. Riou, however, in 1861, adopted steam for one of
his boats, and electric power for the other; and in 1883 the American
engineer, Alstitt, built the first submarine fitted with both steam
and electricity. Steam was also used in the _Plongeur_ of Bourgois and
Brun, which was completed in the same year.
The American Civil War then gave a great opportunity for practical
experiments in torpedo attack; but the difficulty of wholly submerged
navigation not having been yet solved, the boats used were not true
submarines, but submersibles. Their propulsion was by steam, and their
dimensions small. A more ambitious invention was put forward in 1869
by a German, Otto Vogel, whose design was accepted by the Prussian
Government. His submersible steamship was to be heavily armed, and
was ‘considered the equal of a first-class iron-clad in defensive and
offensive powers.’ These powers, however, never came into operation.
Inventors now returned to the designing of true submarines; and after
the Frenchman, Constantin, the American, Halstead, and the Russian,
Drzewiecki, had all made the best use they could of the hand-winch or
the pedal for propulsion, three very interesting attempts were made in
1877-8 to secure a more satisfactory engine. Olivier’s boat, patented
in May 1877-8, was to be propelled by the gases generated from the
ignition of high explosives, the massed vapours escaping through a tube
at the stern. This ingenious method was, however, too dangerous for
practical use. Surman’s design of 1878 included a propeller, rotated
by compressed air. But the English boat of the same date, Garrett’s
_Resurgam_, was much the most noteworthy of the three, and introduced
a method which may in the future be brought to perfection with great
results. In this boat, the motive force was steam, and propulsion under
water, as well as on the surface, was aimed at and actually attained.
In her trials, the vessel showed herself capable of navigating under
water for a distance of 12 miles, by getting up a full head of steam
in a very powerful boiler, with the aid of a blower, before diving;
then by shutting the fire-door and chimney, and utilising the latent
heat as long as it would last. When the heat was exhausted, it was,
of course, necessary to return to the surface, slow up the fire
again and recharge the boiler with water. The vessel was remarkably
successful, and had the great merit of showing no track whatever when
moving under water. She was lost by an accident, but not until she had
impressed Nordenfelt, the Swedish inventor, so strongly that he secured
the services of her designer, Garrett, for the building of his own
submarine boats. The first of these appeared in 1881.
In the same year were patented Woodhouse’s submarine, driven by
compressed air, and Génoud’s, with a gas-engine worked by hydrogen,
which is said to have attained a speed of between four and five
knots. Blakesley, in 1884, proposed to use steam raised in a fireless
boiler heated by a chemical composition. In 1884, too, Drzewiecki
produced the fourth of his ingenious little boats, driven this time
not by pedals but by an electric motor. His example was followed by
Tuck of San Francisco shortly afterwards, and by Campbell and Ash in
their _Nautilus_, which in 1886 underwent very successful trials in
the West Indian Docks at Tilbury, near London. In 1886 D’Allest, the
celebrated French engineer, designed a submarine fitted with a petrol
combustion engine. But the question of propulsion may be said to have
been finally settled, within a few months after this, in favour of the
electro-motor. For Gustave Zédé’s famous _Gymnote_, which was actually
put on the stocks in April 1887, attained in practice a surface speed
of 10 knots, and a maximum of 7 to 8 under water. This success saved
future designers the trouble of further experiments with ingenious
futilities.
5. _Offensive Action._--We have so far been considering the development
of the submarine as a vessel navigable under water, without reference
to the purpose of offence in war. But this purpose was from the first
in view; and with almost all the inventors recorded, it formed the main
incentive of their efforts. The evolution of the submarine weapon has
been much simpler, and more regular, than that of the vessel which was
to use it; but it has been equally wonderful, and the history of it is
equally instructive. Briefly, the French, in this department as in the
other, have shown the most imaginative enthusiasm, the Americans the
greatest determination to achieve results--even with crude or dangerous
means--while the English have to their credit both the earliest
attempts in actual war, and the final achievement of the automobile
torpedo. Of the Germans, as before, we must record that they have
contributed nothing of any scientific value.
Sir William Monson’s device of a bark, with an under-water cannon and
an accompanying boat was soon developed by the English navy into the
more practicable mine, self-contained and floating, to be towed by boat
or submarine. In January, 1626, the King gave a warrant to the Master
of the Ordnance, ‘for the making of divers water-mines, water-petards,
and boates to goe under water.’ In June of the same year, the Duke of
Buckingham, then commanding the naval expedition for the relief of La
Rochelle, issued a warrant ‘for the delivery of 50 water-mynes, 290
water-petards, and 2 boates to conduct them under water.’ Pepys in
his ‘Diary’ for March 14, 1662, mentions a proposal by Kuffler of an
‘engine to blow up ships.’ He adds, ‘We doubted not the matter of fact,
it being tried in Cromwell’s time, but the safety of carrying them in
ships;’ and probably this distrust of Drebbel’s German subordinate
proved to be justified, for nothing more is heard of the design. The
attempt referred to as made ‘in Cromwell’s time’ may have been Prince
Rupert’s attack on Blake’s flagship, the _Leopard_, in 1650. The engine
then used was not a submarine one but an infernal machine, concealed
in an oil-barrel, brought alongside in a shore boat by men disguised as
Portuguese, and intended to be hoisted on board the ship and then fired
by a trigger and string. A more ingenious ‘ship-destroying engine’
was devised by the Marquess of Worcester in 1655. This was evidently
a clock-machine, for it might be affixed to a ship either inside, by
stealth, or outside by a diver, ‘and at an appointed minute, though a
week after, either day or night, it shall infallibly sink that ship.’
The clock machine was actually first tried in action in 1776 by
Bushnell, or rather by Sergeant Lee, whom he employed to work his
_Turtle_ for him. The attack by this submarine upon the _Eagle_,
a British 64-gun ship lying in the Hudson River, was very nearly
successful. The _Turtle_ reached the enemy’s stern unobserved,
carrying a mine or magazine of 150 lbs. of powder, and provided with a
detachable wood-screw which was to be turned until it bit firmly on the
ship’s side. The mine was then to be attached to it, and the clockwork
set going. The wood-screw, however, bit upon some iron fittings instead
of wood, and failed to hold; the tide also was too strong for Lee, who
had to work the wood-screw and the propeller at the same time. He came
to the surface, was chased by a guard-boat, and dived again, abandoning
his torpedo, which drifted and blew up harmlessly when the clockwork
ran down. Lee escaped, but the _Turtle_ was soon afterwards caught and
sunk by the British. Bushnell himself, in the following year, attacked
the _Cerberus_ with a ‘machine’ consisting of a trigger-mine towed
by a whale-boat. He was detected, and his mine captured by a British
schooner, the crew of which, after hauling the machine on deck,
accidentally exploded it themselves, three out of the four of them
being killed.
In 1802 Fulton’s _Nautilus_, in her trials at Brest, succeeded in
blowing up a large boat in the harbour. In 1814 his submersible, the
_Mute_, was armed with ‘columbiads,’ or immensely strong under-water
guns, which had previously been tried with success on an old hulk.
Similar guns were tried nearly fifty years later by the Spanish
submarine designer Monturiol. But the offensive weapon of the period
was the mine, and the ingenuity of inventors was chiefly directed
to methods of affixing it to the side or bottom of the ship to be
destroyed. One of these was the use of long gloves of leather or
rubber, protruding from the interior of the submarine, invented by
Castera in 1827, and adopted by Bauer, Drzewiecki, and Garrett in
succession. But the device was both unhandy and dangerous; there would
often be great difficulty in manœuvring the boat into a position in
which the gloves would be available, and they could not be made thick
enough to withstand the pressure of any depth of water. Practical
military instinct demanded a method of launching the mine or torpedo
against the target, and the first attempts were made by placing a
trigger-mine at the end of a spar carried by the nose of the attacking
boat. In October, 1863, during the American Civil War, the forts
of Charleston were in danger from the accurate fire of the Federal
battleship _Ironsides_, and Lieut. Glassell was ordered to attack her
in the submarine _David_. He had no difficulty in getting near his
enemy and exploding his torpedo, but he had misjudged his distance, and
only succeeded in deluging the _Ironsides_ with a column of water. The
submarine was herself severely injured by the explosion and had to be
abandoned. A second _David_, commanded by Lieut. Dixon, in February,
1864, attacked the _Housatonic_, off the same harbour, and in spite
of the greatest vigilance on the part of Admiral Dahlgren’s officers,
succeeded in reaching the side of the battleship, where she lay for
the space of a minute making sure of her contact. The mine was then
fired: the _Housatonic_ rose on a great wave, listed heavily, and sank
at once. The _David_, too, disappeared, and it was found three years
afterwards that she had been irresistibly sucked into the hole made in
her enemy’s side. After this, experiments were made with drifting and
towing mines, and with buoyant mines to be released at a depth below
the enemy’s keel; but by 1868 the invention of the automobile torpedo
by the English engineer, Whitehead, of Fiume, solved the problem of the
submarine offensive in the most sudden and conclusive manner.
_The Torpedo._--Whitehead’s success arose out of the failure of an
enterprising Austrian officer, Captain Lupuis, who had been trying to
steer a small fireship along the surface of the water by means of ropes
from a fixed base either on shore or in a parent ship. The plan was a
crude one and was rejected by the Austrian naval authorities; it was
then entrusted to Whitehead, who found it incapable of any practical
realisation. He was, however, impressed with Lupuis’ belief in the
value of a weapon which could be operated from a distance, and though
he failed in designing a controllable vessel, he conceived the idea of
an automobile torpedo, and, after two years’ work, constructed it in a
practical form. It has been spoken of as ‘the only invention that was
perfect when devised,’ and it certainly came very near perfection at
the first attempt, but it was erratic and could not be made to keep
its depth. In 1868, however, Whitehead invented the ‘balance-chamber,’
which remedied these defects, and brought two finished torpedoes to
England for trial. They were fired by compressed air from a submerged
tube, and at once proved capable of averaging 7½ to 8½ knots up to 600
yards and of striking a ship under way up to 200 yards. The target, an
old corvette in the Medway, was sunk on to the mud by the first shot,
at 136 yards, and immediately after the trials the British Government
bought the secret, and other rights. Imitations were, of course, soon
attempted in other countries, and a type, called the Schwartzkopf,
was for some years manufactured in Berlin and used in the German and
Spanish navies; it was also tried by the Italians and Japanese, but it
failed in the end to hold its own against the Whitehead.
The automobile torpedo was at first used only for the armament of
ordinary war-ships; it was not until 1879 that an American engineer
named Mortensen designed a submarine with a torpedo-tube in the bows.
His example was followed by Berkeley and Hotchkiss in 1880, by Garrett
in his first Nordenfelt boat of 1881, and by Woodhouse and by Lagane
in the same year. Even after this Drzewiecki, Tuck, and D’Allest
designed their submarines without torpedo-tubes, but they were, in
fact, indispensable, and the use of the Whitehead torpedo has been for
the last twenty years assumed as the main function of all submarines
designed for war.
_The Submarine in War._--The difficulties of construction, propulsion,
and armament having now been solved, the submarine at last took its
place among the types of war-ships in the annual lists. From the first
England and France held a marked lead, and in Brassey’s Naval Annual
for 1914 the submarine forces of the chief naval Powers were given
as follows:--Great Britain, 76 vessels built and 20 ordered; France,
70 and 23; the U.S.A., 29 and 31; Germany, 27 and 12. The technical
progress of the four services was probably more equal than their merely
numerical strength; but it was not altogether equal, as may be seen
by a brief comparison of the development of the British and German
submarine types between 1904 and 1914. The eight British A-boats of
1904 had a displacement of 180 tons on surface/207 tons submerged;
the German U1 of 1904-6 was slightly larger (197/236) but in every
other respect inferior--its horse-power was only 250 on surface/100
submerged, as against 550/150, its surface speed only 10 knots against
11·5, and it was fitted with only a single torpedo-tube instead of the
A-boat’s two. This last deficiency was remedied in 1906-8, but the
German displacement did not rise above 210/250 nor the horse-power
above 400/150, while the British advanced to 550/660 and 1200/550.
By 1913 the Germans were building boats of 650/750 displacement and
1400/500 horse-power, but the British were still ahead with 725/810 and
1750/600, and had also a superiority in speed of 16/10 knots to 14/8.
The last German boats of which any details have been published are
those of 1913-14, with a displacement of about 800 tons on the surface
and a maximum speed of 18/7 knots. The British F-boats of the same date
are in every way superior to these, with a displacement of 940/1200, a
speed of 20/12 knots, and an armament of six torpedo-tubes against the
German four. The comparison cannot be carried, in figures, beyond the
date of the outbreak of war, but it is well known among the allies of
Great Britain that the superiority has been amply maintained, and, in
certain important respects, materially increased.
The four years of conflict have, however, afforded an opportunity
for a further, and even more important, comparison. The problems of
submarine war are not all material problems: moral qualities are needed
to secure the efficient working of machinery, the handling of the ship
under conditions of danger and difficulty hitherto unknown in war, and
the conduct of a campaign with new legal and moral aspects of its own.
In two of these departments, those of efficiency and seamanship, the
Germans have achieved a considerable show of success, though it could
be, and in time will be, easily shown that the British naval service
has been more successful still. But in the domain of policy and of
international morality, the comparison becomes no longer a comparison
but a contrast; the new problems have been dealt with by the British in
accordance with the old principles of law and humanity; by the Germans
they have not been solved at all, the knot has simply been cut by the
cruel steel of the pirate and the murderer. The methods of the U-boat
campaign have not only brought successive defeats upon Germany, they
will in the end cripple her commerce for many years; and, in addition
to her material losses, she will suffer the bitter consequences of
moral outlawry.
Of the general efficiency of the German submarines it is too soon to
speak, but it may be readily admitted that they have done well. We
know, of course, many cases of failure--cases in which boats have
been lost by defects in their engines, by running aground through
mishandling in shoal waters, or by inability to free themselves from
British nets. On the other hand, the German patrol has been kept up
with a degree of continuity which, when we remember the dislocation
caused by their severe losses, is, at least, a proof of determination.
But the British submarine service has to its credit a record of work
which, so far as can be judged from the evidence available, is not
only better but has been performed under more difficult and dangerous
circumstances. In the North Sea patrolling has been carried out
regularly, in spite of minefields and of possible danger from the
British squadrons, which must, of course, be avoided as carefully as if
they were enemies. The German High Seas Fleet has been, for the most
part, in hiding, but on the rare and brief occasions when their ships
have ventured on one of their furtive raids British submarines have
done their part, and the only two German Dreadnoughts which have risked
themselves outside Kiel since their Jutland flight were both torpedoed
on the same day. Better opportunities, as we shall see later, were
found in the Baltic, where British submarines, in spite of German and
Swedish nets, ice-fields, and the great distance of bases, succeeded
in establishing a complete panic, by torpedoing a number of German war
vessels and the cargo ships which they were intended to safeguard.
But it was in the Gallipoli campaign that the conditions were most
trying and most novel. The British submarines detailed for the attack
in Turkish waters had to begin by navigating the Dardanelles against a
very rapid current, setting strongly into a succession of bays. They
had to pass searchlights, mines, torpedo-tubes, nets and guard-boats;
and in the Sea of Marmora they were awaited by a swarm of cruisers,
destroyers, and patrol-boats of all kinds. Yet, from the very first,
they were successful in defeating all these. Boat after boat went up
without a failure, and maintained herself for weeks at a time without
a base, returning with an astonishing record of losses inflicted on
the enemy. These records will be given more fully in a later chapter;
but that of E. 14, Lieut.-Commander Courtney Boyle, may be quoted here
as an example, because it is no exceptional instance but merely the
earliest of a number, and set a standard which was well maintained by
those who followed. The passage of the narrows was made through the
Turkish mine-field, and its difficulty may be judged by the fact that
E. 14, during the first 64 hours of the voyage, was diving for 44
hours and 50 minutes. After she began her patrol work, there was more
than one day on which she was under fire the whole day, except when
she dived from time to time. The difficulty of using her torpedoes was
extreme; but she succeeded in hitting and sinking two transports, one
of which was 1,500 yards distant and escorted by three destroyers.
Finally when, after twenty-two days’ patrolling, she began her return
voyage, she was shepherded by a Turkish gunboat, a torpedo-boat, and
a tug, one each side of her and one astern, and all hoping to catch
her in the net; but by deep and skilful diving she escaped them, and
cleared the net and the mine-field at a speed of 7 knots.
Her second patrol extended over twenty-three days. This time the
tide was stronger, and the weather less favourable. The total number
of steamers, grain dhows and provision ships, sunk on this patrol,
amounted to no less than ten, and the return voyage was successfully
accomplished, the boat tearing clean through an obstruction off Bokali
Kalessi.
The third patrol was again twenty-two days. An hour after starting,
E. 14 had her foremost hydroplane fouled by an obstruction which jammed
it for the moment, and threw the ship eight points off her course.
After a quick scrape she got clear, but found afterwards that her guard
wire was nearly cut through. On this trip the wireless apparatus was
for a time out of order, but was successfully repaired; eight good
ships were burnt or sunk, one of them being a supply ship of 5,000
tons. The return voyage was the most eventful of all. E. 14 came full
against the net at Nagara, which had apparently been extended since
she went up. The boat was brought up from 80 feet to 45 feet in three
seconds, but broke away uninjured, with her bow and periscope standards
scraped and scored.
The efficiency of the boat and her crew were beyond praise. Since
leaving England E. 14 had run over 12,000 miles and had spent nearly
seventy days at close quarters with the enemy in the Sea of Marmora;
she had never been in a dockyard or out of running order; she had
had no engine defects except such as were immediately put right by
her own engine-room staff. Yet she made no claim to be better than
her consorts. Nor did she make any boast of her humane treatment of
captured enemies; she merely followed the tradition of the British Navy
in this matter, and the principles of law as accepted by all civilised
nations. The commander of a submarine, whether British or German, has
to contend with certain difficulties which did not trouble the cruiser
captain of former wars. He cannot spare, from his small ship’s company,
a prize crew to take a captured vessel into port; he cannot, except
in very rare cases, hope to take her in himself; and, again, if he is
to sink her, he cannot find room in his narrow boat for more than one
or two prisoners. What he can do is to see that non-combatants and
neutrals, at least, shall be exposed as little as possible to danger or
suffering; he can give them boats and supplies and every opportunity
of reaching land in safety. No one needs to be told how the Germans,
either of their own native cruelty or by the orders of a brutal and
immoral Higher Command, have in such circumstances chosen to deal with
their helpless fellow-men, and even with women and children, and with
the wounded and those attending them. But it may be well to put in
evidence some of the brief notes in which a typical British submarine
commander has recorded as a matter of course his own method on similar
occasions. ‘May 8. Allowed two steamers full of refugees to proceed.’
‘June 20. Boarded and sank 3 sailing dhows; towed crew inshore and gave
them some biscuit, beef, and rum and water, as they were rather wet.’
‘June 22. Let go passenger ship. 23. Burnt two-master and started to
tow crew in their boat, but had to dive. Stopped 2 dhows: crews looked
so miserable that I only sank one and let the other go. 24. Blew up 2
large dhows; saw 2 heads in the water near another ship; turned and
took them up exhausted, gave them food and drink and put them on board
their own ship.’ ‘July 30. Burnt sailing vessel with no boat and spent
remainder of afternoon trying to find a craft to get rid of her crew
into. Found small sailing boat and got rid of them.’ ‘August 3. Burnt
large dhow. Unfortunately, 9 on board, including 2 very old men, and
their boat was small, so I had to take them on board and proceed with
them close to the shore--got rid of them at 9.30 P.M.’
As for the hospital ships, there were numbers of them coming and going;
but, empty or full, it is inconceivable that the British Navy should
make war upon hospital ships. Victory it will desire, but not by
villainy; defeat it will avoid strenuously, but not by the destruction
of the first law of human life. The result is none the less certain:
in the history of submarine war, as in that of all naval war, it will
inevitably be seen that piracy and murder are not the methods of the
strong.