ROBERT FULTON’S “NAUTILUS”
Robert Fulton was probably the first American who ever went to Paris
for the purpose of selling war-supplies to the French government.
Unlike his compatriots of to-day, he found anything but a ready market.
For three years, beginning in 1797, Fulton tried constantly but vainly
to interest the Directory in his plans for a submarine. Though a
commission appointed to examine his designs reported favorably, the
minister of marine would have nothing to do with them. Fulton built a
beautiful little model submarine of mahogany and exhibited it, but with
no results. He made an equally fruitless attempt to sell his invention
to Holland, then called the Batavian Republic. Nobody seemed to have
the slightest belief or interest in submarines.
But Fulton was a persistent man or he would never have got his name
into the history books. He stayed in Paris, where his friend Joel
Barlow was American minister, and supported himself by inventing and
exhibiting what he called “the pictures”: the first moving pictures
the world had ever seen. These were panoramas, where the picture was
not thrown on the screen by a lantern but painted on it, and the long
roll of painted canvas was unrolled like a film between two large
spools on opposite sides of the stage. Very few people remember that
Robert Fulton invented the panorama, though only a generation ago the
great panorama of the battle of Gettysburg drew and thrilled as large
audiences as a film like “The Birth of a Nation” does to-day. Fulton
painted his own panoramas himself, for he was an artist before he was
an engineer. He made three of them and had to build a separate little
theater to show each one in. The Parisians were so well pleased with
this novelty that they made up a song about the panoramas, and the
street where the most popular of the three was shown is still called
“La Rue Fulton.” The picture that won the inventor this honor was a
panorama of the burning of Moscow--not the burning of the city to
drive out Napoleon, for that came a dozen years later, but an earlier
conflagration, some time in the eighteenth century.
Napoleon overthrew the Directory and became First Consul and absolute
ruler of France in 1800. He appointed three expert naval engineers to
examine Fulton’s plans, and on their approval, Napoleon advanced him
10,000 francs to build a submarine.
Construction was begun at once and the boat was finished in May, 1801.
She was a remarkably modern-looking craft, and a great improvement on
everything that had gone before. She was the first submarine to have a
fish-shaped, metal hull. It was built of copper plating on iron ribs,
and was 21 feet 3 inches long and 6 feet 5 inches in diameter at the
thickest point, which was well forward. A heavy keel gave stability and
immediately above it were the water-ballast tanks for submerging the
vessel. Two men propelled the boat when beneath the surface by turning
a hand-winch geared to the shaft of a two-bladed, metal propellor.
(Fulton called the propellor a “fly,” and got the idea of it from the
little windmill-shaped device placed in the throat of an old-fashioned
fireplace to be revolved by the hot air passing up the chimney and used
to turn the roasting-spit in many a French kitchen for centuries past.)
The third member of the crew stood in the dome-shaped conning-tower
and steered, while Fulton himself controlled the pumps, valves, and
the diving-planes or horizontal rudders that steered the submarine up
and down. Instead of forcing his boat under with a vertical-acting
screw, like Bushnell and Nordenfelt (see pages 16 and 62), Fulton,
like Holland, made her dive bow-foremost by depressing her nose with
the diving-planes and shoving her under by driving her ahead. Fulton
was also the first to give a submarine separate means of propulsion
for above and below the surface. Just as a modern undersea boat uses
oil-engines whenever it can and saves its storage batteries for use
when submerged, Fulton spared the strength of his screw by rigging
the _Nautilus_ with a mast and sail. By pulling a rope from inside
the vessel, the sail could be shut up like a fan, and the hinged mast
lowered and stowed away in a groove on deck. Later a jib was added to
the mainsail, and the two combined gave the _Nautilus_ a surface speed
of two knots an hour. She is the only submarine on record that could go
faster below the water than above it, for her two-man-power propellor
bettered this by half a knot.
[Illustration: The _Nautilus_, Invented by Robert Fulton.
A-B, Hull; C-D, Keel; E-E, Pumps; F, Conning Tower; G, Bulkhead;
H, Propellor; I, Vertical Rudder; L, Horizontal Rudder
(diving-plane); M, Pivot attaching horizontal to vertical
rudder; N, Gear controlling horizontal rudder; O, “Horn of the
_Nautilus_;” P, Torpedo; Q, Hull of vessel attacked; X, Anchor;
Y, Mast and sail for use on surface.
]
Her method of attack was the same as the _Turtle’s_. Up through the
top of the conning-tower projected what Fulton called the “Horn of the
Nautilus.” This was an eyeleted spike, to be driven into the bottom of
a hostile ship and left there. From a windlass carried in a water-tight
forward compartment of the submarine, a thin, strong tow-rope ran
through the eyehole in the spike to the trigger of a flintlock inside
a copper case nearly full of gunpowder, which was not carried on deck,
as on the _Turtle_, but towed some distance astern. As soon as this
powder-case came to a full stop against the spike, the tow-rope would
pull the trigger.
Robert Fulton felt the lack of a distinctive name for such an
under-water charge of explosives, till he thought of its likeness to
the electric ray, that storage battery of a fish that gives a most
unpleasant shock to any one touching it. So he took the first half of
this creature’s scientific name: _Torpedo electricus_. Fulton had a
knack for picking good names. He called his submarine the _Nautilus_
because it had a sail which it opened and folded away even as the
beautiful shellfish of that name was supposed to furl and unfurl its
large, sail-like membrane.
On her first trial on the Seine at Paris, in May, 1801, the _Nautilus_
remained submerged for twenty minutes with Fulton and one other
man on board, and a lighted candle for them to navigate by. This
consumed too much air, however, so a small glass window was placed
in the conning-tower, and gave light enough instead. Four men were
then able to remain under for an hour. After that, Fulton made the
first compressed-air tank, a copper globe containing a cubic foot
of compressed air, by drawing on which the submarine’s crew could
stay under for six hours. This was in the harbor of Brest, where the
_Nautilus_ had been taken overland. A trial attack was made on an old
bulk, which was successfully blown up. The submarine also proved its
ability either to furl its sails and dive quickly out of sight, or to
cruise for a considerable distance on the surface. Once it sailed for
seventy miles down the English Channel.
Fulton had planned a submarine campaign for scaring the British navy
and merchant marine out of the narrow seas and so bringing Great
Britain to her knees, more than a century before the German emperor
proclaimed his famous “war zone” around the British Isles. In one of
his letters to the Directory, the American inventor declared that:
“The enormous commerce of England, no less than its monstrous
Government, depends upon its military marine. Should some vessels of
war be destroyed by means so novel, so hidden, and so incalculable, the
confidence of the seamen will vanish and the fleet will be rendered
useless from the moment of the first terror.”
To a friend in America, Fulton wrote from Paris on November 20, 1798:
“I would ask any one if all the American difficulties during this war
are not owing to the naval systems of Europe and a licensed robbery
on the ocean? How then is America to prevent this? Certainly not by
attempting to build a fleet to cope with the fleets of Europe, but if
possible by rendering the European fleets useless.”
Fulton began his campaign by an attack on two brigs, the nearest
vessels of the English blockading fleet. But whenever the _Nautilus_
left port for this purpose, both brigs promptly stood out to sea and
remained there till the submarine went home. Unknown to Fulton, his
actions were being closely watched by the English secret service, whose
spies were always able to send a timely warning to the British fleet.
During the day time, when the _Nautilus_ was about, the warships were
kept under full sail, with lookouts in the crosstrees watching with
telescopes for the first glimpse of its sail or conning-tower. At
night, the frigates and ships-of-the-line were guarded by picket-boats
rowing round and round them, just as modern dreadnoughts are guarded by
destroyers.
Disappointed by the lack of results, the French naval authorities
refused either to let Fulton build a larger and more efficient
submarine, or to grant commissions in the navy to him and his crew. He
wanted some assurance that in case they were captured they would not
be hanged by the British, who then as now denounced submarine warfare
by others as little better than piracy. To guarantee their own safety,
Fulton proposed that the French government threaten to retaliate by
hanging an equal number of English prisoners, but it was pointed out
to him that this would only lead to further executions by the British,
who had many more French prisoners of war than there were captive
Englishmen in France.
Napoleon had lost faith in the submarine, nor could Fulton interest
him in a steamboat which he now built and operated on the Seine, till
it was sunk by the weight of the machinery breaking the hull in two.
So Fulton quit France and crossed over to England, where Mr. Pitt, the
prime minister, was very much interested in his inventions.
Fulton succeeded in planting one of his torpedoes under an old empty
Danish brig, the _Dorothea_, in Deal Harbor, in front of Walmer Castle,
Pitt’s own residence, on October 15, 1805. The prime minister had had
to hurry back to London, but there were many naval officers present,
and one of them declared loudly that he would be quite unconcerned
if he were sitting at dinner at that moment in the cabin of the
_Dorothea_. Ten minutes later the clockwork ran out and the torpedo
exploded, breaking the brig in two amidships and hurling the fragments
high in the air. The success of this experiment was not entirely
pleasing to the heads of the British navy. Their opinion was voiced by
Admiral Lord St. Vincent, who declared that:
“Pitt was the greatest fool that ever existed, to encourage a mode
of war which they who command the seas did not want and which if
successful would deprive them of it.”
[Illustration: Destruction of the _Dorothea_.
From a woodcut by Robert Fulton.]
Six days after the destruction of the _Dorothea_, the sea-power of
France was broken by Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar. Napoleon now
gave up all hope of gaining the few hours’ control of the Channel that
would have enabled him to invade England, and broke up the camp of
his Grand Army that had waited so long at Boulogne. With this danger
gone, England was no longer interested in submarines and torpedoes. So
Fulton returned to America, to build the _Clairmont_ and win his place
in history. But to him, steam navigation was far less important than
submarine warfare. In the letter to his old friend Joel Barlow, dated
New York, August 22, 1807, in which he described the first voyage of
the _Clairmont_ up the Hudson, Fulton said:
“However, I will not admit that it is half so important as the torpedo
system of defense or attack, for out of this will grow the liberty of
the seas--an object of infinite importance to the welfare of America
and every civilized country. But thousands of witnesses have now seen
the steamboat in rapid movement and they believe; but they have not
seen a ship of war destroyed by a torpedo, and they do not believe. We
cannot expect people in general to have knowledge of physics or power
to reason from cause to effect, but in case we have war and the enemy’s
ships come into our waters, if the government will give me reasonable
means of action, I will soon convince the world that we have surer and
cheaper modes of defense than they are aware of.”
Fulton had been having his troubles with the navy department. Soon
after his return to this country he had made his usual demonstration
of torpedoing a small anchored vessel, but it was not until 1810 that
he was given the opportunity to make a test attack on a United States
warship. But stout old Commodore Rogers, who had been entrusted with
the defense of the brig _Argus_, under which Fulton was to plant a
torpedo, anchored the vessel in shallow water, stretched a tight wall
of spars and netting all round her, and successfully defied the
inventor to blow her up. Even a modern destroyer or submarine would
be puzzled to get past this defense. Though compelled to admit his
failure, Fulton pointed out that “a system then in its infancy, which
compelled a hostile vessel to guard herself by such extraordinary
means, could not fail of becoming a most important mode of warfare.”
It was a great triumph for conservatism--the same spirit of
conservatism that threatens to send our navy into its next war with
no battle-cruisers, too few scouts and sea-planes, and the slowest
dreadnoughts in the world. Though Fulton published a wonderful
little book on “Torpedo War and Submarine Explosions” in New York in
1810, the United States navy made no use of it in the War of 1812.
A privateer submarine from Connecticut made three dives under the
British battleship _Ramillies_ off New London, but failed to attach
a torpedo for the old reason: copper sheathing. Further attacks were
prevented by the captain of the _Ramillies_, who gave notice that he
had had a number of American prisoners placed on board as hostages.
Fulton himself was hard at work superintending the building both of the
_Demologos_, the first steam-propelled battleship, and the _Mute_, a
large armored submarine that was to carry a silent engine and a crew of
eighty men, when he died in 1815.