THE STORY OF THE SUBMARINE
[Illustration:
Courtesy of the Electric Boat Company.
U. S. Submarine _M-1_.]
THE STORY OF
THE SUBMARINE
BY
FARNHAM BISHOP
Author of “Panama, Past and Present,” etc.
_ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS
AND DRAWINGS_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1916
Copyright, 1916, by
THE CENTURY CO.
_Published, February, 1916_
To
MY MOTHER
PREFACE
This book has been written for the nontechnical reader--for the man or
boy who is interested in submarines and torpedoes, and would like to
know something about the men who invented these things and how they
came to do it. Much has been omitted that I should have liked to have
put in, for this is a small book and the story of the submarine is much
longer than most people realize. It is perhaps astonishing to think
of the launching of an underseaboat in the year the Pilgrims landed
at Plymouth Rock, or George Washington watching his submarine attack
the British fleet in 1776. But are these things as astonishing as the
thought of European soldiers wearing steel helmets and fighting with
crossbows and catapults in 1916?
The chapter on “A Trip in a Modern Submarine” is purely imaginative.
There is no such boat in our submarine flotilla as the _X-4_. We ought
to have plenty of big, fast, sea-going submarines, with plenty of big,
fast sea-planes and battle-cruisers, so that if an invading army ever
starts for this country we can meet it and smash it while it is cooped
up on transports somewhere in mid-ocean. There, and not in shallow,
off-shore waters, cumbered with nets and mines, is the true battlefield
of the submarine.
The last part of this book has a broken-off and fragmentary
appearance. This is almost unavoidable at a time when writing history
is like trying to make a statue of a moving-picture. I have tried to do
justice to both sides in the present war.
I wish to express my thanks to those whose kindness and courtesy have
made it possible for me to write this book. To Mr. Kelby, Librarian of
the New York Historical Society, I am indebted for much information
about Bushnell’s _Turtle_, and to Mrs. Daniel Whitney, of Germantown,
Pa., a descendant of Ezra Lee, for the portrait of her intrepid
ancestor. Both the Electric Boat Company and Mr. Simon Lake have
supplied me most generously with information and pictures. The Bureau
of Construction, United States Navy, E. P. Dutton & Company, publishers
of Mr. Alan H. Burgoyne’s “Submarine Navigation Past and Present”;
the American Magazine, Flying, International Marine Engineering,
the _Scientific American_, and the _New York Sun_ have cheerfully
given permission for the reproduction of many pictures of which they
hold the copyright. Albert Frank & Company have given the cut of the
advertisement of the last sailing of the _Lusitania_. Special thanks
are due to Mr. A. Russell Bond, Associate Editor of the _Scientific
American_, for expert advice and suggestion.
Some well-known pictures of submarines are herein credited for the
first time to the man who made them: Captain Francis M. Barber,
U. S. N. (retired). This officer published a little pink-backed
pamphlet on submarine boats--the first book devoted exclusively to this
subject--in 1875.
“The last time I heard of that pink pamphlet,” writes Captain Barber
from Washington, “was when I was Naval Attache at Berlin in 1898.
Admiral von Tirpitz was then head of the Torpedo Bureau in the Navy
Department, and he was good enough to say that it was the foundation
of his studies--and look what we have now in the terrible German
production.”
FARNHAM BISHOP.
New York,
January, 1916.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I IN THE BEGINNING 3
II DAVID BUSHNELL’S “TURTLE” 12
III ROBERT FULTON’S “NAUTILUS” 26
IV SUBMARINES IN THE CIVIL WAR 36
V THE WHITEHEAD TORPEDO 43
VI FREAKS AND FAILURES 56
VII JOHN P. HOLLAND 69
VIII THE LAKE SUBMARINES 82
IX A TRIP IN A MODERN SUBMARINE 100
X ACCIDENTS AND SAFETY DEVICES 124
XI MINES 139
XII THE SUBMARINE IN ACTION 156
XIII THE SUBMARINE BLOCKADE 177
XIV THE SUBMARINE AND NEUTRALS 189
INDEX 207
List of Illustrations
PAGE
U. S. Submarine _M-1_ _Frontispiece_
Cornelius Van Drebel 5
The _Rotterdam Boat_ 8
Symons’s Submarine 10
The Submarine of 1776 13
The Best-known Picture of Bushnell’s _Turtle_ 16
Another Idea of Bushnell’s _Turtle_ 19
Ezra Lee 21
The _Nautilus_ Invented by Robert Fulton 28
Destruction of the _Dorothea_ 33
Views of a Confederate _David_ 37
C. S. S. _Hundley_ 38
Cross-section of a Whitehead Torpedo 51
Davis Gun-torpedo After Discharge, Showing Eight-inch Gun
Forward of Air-flask 53
Effect of Davis Gun-torpedo on a Specially-constructed Target 54
The _Intelligent Whale_ 58
_Le Plongeur_ 59
Steam Submarine _Nordenfeldt II_, at Constantinople, 1887 62
Bauer’s Submarine Concert, Cronstadt Harbor, 1855 65
Apostoloff’s Proposed Submarine 67
The _Holland No. 1_ 70
The _Fenian Ram_ 73
U. S. S. _Holland_, in Drydock with the Russian Battleship
_Retvizan_ 77
John P. Holland 80
Lake 1893 Design as Submitted to the U. S. Navy Department 83
The _Argonaut Junior_ 84
_Argonaut_ as Originally Built 87
_Argonaut_ as Rebuilt 90
The Rebuilt _Argonaut_, Showing Pipe-masts and Ship-shaped
Superstructure 93
Cross-section of Diving-compartment on a Lake Submarine 94
Cross-section of the _Protector_ 97
Mr. Simon Lake 98
U. S. Submarine _E-2_ 101
A Submarine Cruiser, or Fleet Submarine (Lake Type) 105
Auxiliary Switchboard and Electric Cook-stove, in a U. S.
Submarine 107
Forward Deck of a U. S. Submarine, in Cruising Trim 109
Same, Preparing to Submerge 110
Depth-control Station, U. S. Submarine 113
Cross-section of a Periscope 114
Forward Torpedo-compartment, U. S. Submarine 117
Fessenden Oscillator Outside the Hull of a Ship 120
Professor Fessenden Receiving a Message Sent Through Several
Miles of Sea-water by His “Oscillator” 121
Side-elevation of a Modern Submarine 127
One Type of Safety-jacket 131
The _Vulcan_ Salvaging the _U-3_ 134
Fulton’s Anchored Torpedoes 140
Sinking of the U. S. S. _Tecumseh_, by a Confederate Mine, in
Mobile Bay 143
A Confederate “Keg-torpedo” 144
First Warship Destroyed by a Mine 145
A Confederate “Buoyant Torpedo” or Contact-mine 146
Modern Contact-mine 150
U. S. Mine-planter _San Francisco_ 153
English Submarine Rescuing English Sailors 157
Engagement Between the _Birmingham_ and the _U-15_ 159
Sinking of the _Aboukir_, _Cressy_, and _Hogue_ 163
Tiny Target Afforded by Periscopes in Rough Weather 167
Photograph of a Submarine, Twenty Feet Below the Surface,
Taken from the Aeroplane, Whose Shadow Is Shown in the
Picture 173
German Submarine Pursuing English Merchantman 182
British Submarine, Showing One Type of Disappearing Deck-gun
Now in Use 190
THE STORY OF THE SUBMARINE
CHAPTER I
IN THE BEGINNING
If you had been in London in the year 1624, and had gone to the
theater to see “The Staple of News,” a new and very dull comedy by
Shakespeare’s friend Ben Jonson, you would have heard, in act III,
scene i, the following dialogue about submarines:
THOMAS
They write hear one Cornelius’ son
Hath made the Hollanders an invisible eel
To swim the haven at Dunkirk and sink all
The shipping there.
PENNYBOY
But how is’t done?
GRABAL
I’ll show you, sir,
It is an automa, runs under water
With a snug nose, and has a nimble tail
Made like an auger, with which tail she wriggles
Betwixt the costs of a ship and sinks it straight.
PENNYBOY
Whence have you this news?
FITTON
From a right hand I assure you.
The eel-boats here, that lie before Queen-hythe
Came out of Holland.
PENNYBOY
A most brave device
To murder their flat bottoms.
The idea of submarine navigation is much older than 1624. Crude diving
bells, and primitive leather diving helmets, with bladders to keep the
upper end of the air tube afloat on the surface of the water, were
used as early as the fourteenth century. William Bourne, an Englishman
who published a book on “Inventions or Devices” in 1578, suggested the
military value of a boat that could be sailed just below the surface
of the water, with a hollow mast for a ventilator. John Napier, Laird
of Merchiston, the great Scotch mathematician who invented logarithms,
wrote in 1596 about his proposed “Devices of sailing under the water,
with divers other devices and stratagems for the burning of enemies.”
But the first man actually to build and navigate a submarine was a
Dutchman: the learned Doctor Cornelius Van Drebel.[1] He was “a native
of Alkmaar, a very fair and handsome man, and of very gentle manners.”
Both his pleasing personality and his knowledge of science--which
caused many to suspect him of being a magician--made the Netherlander
an honored guest at the court of his most pedantic Majesty, King James
I of England.
Van Drebel was walking along the banks of the Thames, one pleasant
evening in the year 1620, when he “noticed some sailors dragging
behind their barques baskets full of fish; he saw that the barques
were weighed down in the water, but that they rose a little when the
baskets allowed the ropes which held them to slacken a little. The idea
occurred to him that a ship could be held under water by a somewhat
similar method and could be propelled by oars and poles.”[2]
[Illustration: Cornelius Van Drebel.
Reproduced from “Submarine Navigation, Past and Present” by Alan H.
Burgoyne, by permission of E. P. Dutton & Company.
]
Lodged by the king in Eltham Palace, and supplied with funds from the
royal treasury, Van Drebel designed and built three submarine boats,
between 1620 and 1624. They were simply large wooden rowboats, decked
over and made water-tight by a covering of thick, well-greased leather.
Harsdoffer, a chronicler of the period, declared that
“King James himself journeyed in one of them on the Thames. There were
on this occasion twelve rowers besides the passengers, and the vessel
during several hours was kept at a depth of twelve to fifteen feet
below the surface.”
Another contemporary historian, Cornelius Van der Wonde, of Van
Drebel’s home town, said of him:
“He built a ship in which one could row and navigate under water from
Westminster to Greenwich, the distance of two Dutch miles; even five
or six miles or as far as one pleased. In this boat a person could see
under the surface of the water and without candle-light, as much as
he needed to read in the Bible or any other book. Not long ago this
remarkable ship was yet to be seen lying in the Thames or London river.”
The glow of phosphorescent bodies, suggested by the monk Mersenne for
illuminating the interior of a submarine, later in the seventeenth
century and actually so used by Bushnell in the eighteenth, might have
furnished sufficient light for Bible- and compass-reading on this
voyage. But how did King James--the first and last monarch to venture
on an underwater voyage--the other passengers, and the twelve rowers
get enough air?
“That deservedly Famous Mechanician and Chymist, Cornelius Drebell ...
conceived, that ’tis not only the whole body of the air but a certain
Quintessence (as Chymists speake) or spirituous part that makes it fit
for respiration ... so that (for aught I could gather) besides the
Mechanicall contrivance of his vessel he had a Chymicall 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 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.”[3]
Did Van Drebel anticipate by one hundred and fifty years the discovery
of oxygen: the life-giving “Quintessence” of air? Even if he did, it
is incredible that he should have found a liquid, utterly unknown to
modern chemistry, capable of giving off that gas so freely that a few
gallons would restore the oxygen to a confined body of air as fast
as fifteen or twenty men could consume it by breathing. Perhaps his
“Chymicall liquor” instead of producing oxygen directly, increased the
proportion of it in the atmosphere by absorbing the carbonic acid gas.
The Abbé de Hautefeullie, who wrote in 1680 on “Methods of breathing
under water,” made the following shrewd guess at the nature of the
apparatus:
“Drebel’s secret was probably the machine which I had imagined,
consisting of a bellows with two valves and two tubes resting on the
surface of the water, the one bringing down air and the other sending
it back. By speaking of a volatile essence which restored the nitrous
parts consumed by respiration, Drebel evidently wished to disguise his
invention and prevent others from finding out its real nature.”
[Illustration:
Courtesy of the Scientific American.
The _Rotterdam Boat_.]
It is a very great pity that we know no more about these earliest
submarines. Cornelius Van Drebel died in 1634, at the age of sixty-two,
without leaving any written notes or oral descriptions. We must not
think too hardly of this inventor of three centuries ago, unguarded
by patent laws, for making a mystery of his discoveries. He had to
be a showman as well as a scientist, or his noble patrons would have
lost all interest in his “ingenious machines,” and mystery is half
of the showman’s game. Besides his “eel-boats,” Van Drebel is said
to have invented a wonderful globe with which he imitated perpetual
motion and illustrated the course of the sun, moon, and stars; an
incubator, a refrigerator, “Virginals that played of themselves,” and
other marvels too numerous to mention. Half scientist, half charlatan,
wholly medieval in appearance, with his long furred gown and long, fair
beard, Cornelius Van Drebel marches picturesquely at the head of the
procession of inventors who have made possible the modern submarine.
Eighteen years after Van Drebel’s death, a Frenchman named Le Son
built a submarine at Rotterdam. This craft, which is usually referred
to as the _Rotterdam Boat_, was 72 feet long, 12 feet high, and of 8
foot beam. It was built of wood, with sharply tapering ends, and had
a superstructure whose sloping sides were designed to deflect cannon
balls that might be fired at the boat while traveling on the surface,
while iron-shod legs protected the hull when resting on the sea bottom.
A single paddle-wheel amidships was to propel the boat,--just how, the
inventor never revealed. Like so many other submarines, the _Rotterdam
Boat_ was built primarily to be used against the British fleet. But it
failed to interest either the Dutch or French minister of marine, and
never went into action.
The earliest known contemporary picture of a submarine vessel appeared
in the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” in 1747. It showed a cross section of an
underwater boat built and navigated on the Thames by one Symons. This
was a decked-over row-boat, propelled by four pairs of oars working
in water-tight joints of greased leather. To submerge his vessel,
Symons admitted water into a number of large leather bottles, placed
inside the hull with their open mouth passing through holes in the
bottom. When he wished to rise, he would squeeze out the water with a
lever and bind up the neck of each emptied bottle with string. This
ingenious device was not original with Mr. Symons, but was invented by
a Frenchman named Borelli in 1680.
Submarine navigation was a century and a half old before it claimed
its first victim. J. Day, an English mechanic, rebuilt a small boat so
that he was able to submerge it in thirty feet of water, with himself
on board, and remain there for twenty-four hours with no ill effect.
At the end of this time, Day rose to the surface, absolutely certain
of his ability to repeat the experiment at any depth. But how could he
turn this to practical account?
[Illustration: Symons’s Submarine.]
It was an age of betting, when gentlemen could always be found to risk
money on any wager, however fantastic. Day found a financial backer in
a Mr. Blake, who advanced him the money to buy a fifty-ton sloop and
fit it with a strong water-tight compartment amidships. Ten tons of
ballast were placed in the hold and twenty more hung outside the hull
by four iron rods passing through the passenger’s compartment. When the
rest of the boat was filled with water, it would sink to the bottom,
to rise again when the man inside released the twenty tons of outer
ballast.
Shut in the water-tight compartment of this boat, Day sank to the
bottom of Plymouth Harbor, at 2 P.M., Tuesday, June 28, 1774, to decide
a bet that he could remain twelve hours at a depth of twenty-two
fathoms (132 feet). When, at the expiration of this time, the submarine
failed to reappear, Mr. Blake called on the captain of a near-by
frigate for help. Bluejackets from the warship and workmen from the
dockyard were set to work immediately to grapple for the sunken craft
and raise her to the surface, but to no avail. The great pressure
of water at that depth--150 feet is the limit of safety for many
modern submarines--must have crushed in the walls of the water-tight
compartment without giving Day time enough to release the outer ballast
and rise to safety.