THE LAKE SUBMARINES
John P. Holland was not the only inventor who responded to the
invitation of the United States navy department to submit designs for
a proposed submarine boat in 1893. That invitation had been issued and
an appropriation of $200,000 made by Congress on the recommendation
of Commander Folger, chief of ordnance, after he had seen a trial
trip on Lake Michigan of an underwater boat invented by Mr. George C.
Baker. This was an egg-shaped craft, propelled by a steam engine on the
surface and storage-batteries when submerged, and controlled by two
adjustable propellers, mounted on either side of the boat on a shaft
running athwartship. These screws could be turned in any direction,
so as to push or pull the vessel forward, downward, or at any desired
angle. Mr. Baker submitted designs for a larger boat of the same kind,
but they were not accepted.
The third inventor who entered the 1893 competition was Mr. Simon
Lake, then a resident of Baltimore. He sent in the plans of the most
astonishing-looking craft that had startled the eyes of the navy
department since Ericsson’s original monitor. It had two cigar-shaped
hulls, one inside the other, the space between being used for
ballast-tanks. It had no less than five propellors: twin screws aft
for propulsion, a single screw working in an open transverse tunnel
forward,[12] to “swing the vessel at rest to facilitate pointing her
torpedos,” and two downhaul or vertical-acting propellers “for holding
vessel to depth when not under way.” These were not placed on deck,
as on the _Nordenfeldt II_, but in slots in the keel. Other features
of the bottom were two anchor weights, a detachable “emergency keel,”
and a diving compartment. On deck were a folding periscope and a “gun
arranged in water-tight, revolving turret for defense purposes or
attack on unarmored surface craft.” There were four torpedo tubes,
two forward and two aft, according to the modern German practice.
The motive-power was the then usual combination of steam and storage
batteries. But the two remaining features of the 1893 model Lake
submarine were extremely unusual.
[Illustration:
Courtesy International Marine Engineering.
Lake 1893 Design as Submitted to the U. S. Navy Department.]
Instead of one pair of horizontal rudders, there were four pairs, two
large and two small. The latter, placed near the bow and stern, were
“levelling vanes, designed automatically to hold the vessel on a level
keel when under way”; while the larger ones were called “hydroplanes”
and so located and designed as to steer the submarine under, not by
making it dive bow-foremost but by causing it to submerge on an even
keel. How this was to be accomplished will be explained presently. The
other new thing about the Lake boat was that it was mounted on wheels
for running along the sea-bottom. There were three of these wheels: a
large pair forward on a strong axle for bearing the vessel’s weight,
and a small steering-wheel on the bottom of the rudder.
[Illustration:
Courtesy of Mr. Simon Lake.
The _Argonaut Junior_.]
This submarine was never built, however, for the congressional
appropriation was awarded to the Holland Torpedo-boat Company and Mr.
Lake had at that time no means for building so elaborate a vessel
by himself. What he did build was the simplest and crudest little
submarine imaginable: the _Argonaut Jr._ She was a triangular box of
yellow pine, fourteen feet long and five feet deep, mounted on three
solid wooden wheels. She was trundled along the bottom of Sandy Hook
Bay by one or two men cranking the axle of the two driving wheels. The
boat was provided with an air-lock and diver’s compartment “so arranged
that by putting an air pressure on the diver’s compartment equal to
the water pressure outside, a bottom door could be opened and no water
would come into the vessel. Then by putting on a pair of rubber boots
the operator could walk around on the sea bottom and push the boat
along with him and pick up objects, such as clams, oysters, etc., from
the sea bottom.”[13]
Enough people were convinced by the performances of this simple
craft of the soundness of Mr. Lake’s theories that the inventor was
able to raise sufficient capital to build a larger submarine. This
boat, which was designed in 1895 and built at Baltimore in 1897, was
called the _Argonaut_. When launched, she had a cigar-shaped hull
thirty-six feet long by nine in diameter, mounted on a pair of large
toothed driving-wheels forward and a guiding-wheel on the rudder. The
driving-wheels could be disconnected and left to revolve freely while
the boat was driven by its single-screw propeller. There was a diver’s
compartment in the bottom and a “lookout compartment in the extreme
bow, with a powerful searchlight to light up a pathway in front of her
as she moved along over the waterbed. The searchlight I later found of
little value except for night work in clear water. In clear water the
sunlight would permit of as good vision without the use of the light
as with it, while if the water was not clear, no amount of light would
permit of vision through it for any considerable distance.”
Storage batteries were carried only for working the searchlight and
illuminating the interior of the boat. The _Argonaut_ was propelled,
both above and below the surface, by a thirty horse-power gasoline
engine, the first one to be installed in a submarine. There was enough
air to run it on, even when submerged, because the _Argonaut_ was
ventilated through a hose running to a float on the surface: a device
later changed to two pipe masts long enough to let her run along the
bottom at a depth of fifty feet.
[Illustration:
Courtesy of International Marine Engineering.
_Argonaut_ as Originally Built.]
The _Argonaut_ had no hydroplanes or horizontal rudders of any kind.
She was submerged, like the _Intelligent Whale_, by “two anchor
weights, each weighing 1000 pounds, attached to cables, and capable of
being hauled up or lowered by a drum and mechanism within the boat....
When it is desired to submerge the vessel the anchor weights are first
lowered to the bottom; water is then allowed to enter the water-ballast
compartments until her buoyancy is less than the weight of the two
anchors, say 1500 pounds; the cables connecting with the weights are
then hauled in, and the vessel is thus hauled to the bottom, until she
comes to rest on her three wheels. The weights are then hauled into
their pockets in the keel, and it is evident that she is resting on
the wheels with a weight equal to the difference between her buoyancy
with the weights at the bottom, and the weights in their pockets, or
500 pounds. Now this weight may be increased or diminished, either
by admitting more water into the ballast tanks or by pumping some
out. Thus it will be seen that we have perfect control of the vessel
in submerging her, as we may haul her down as fast or as slow as we
please, and by having her rest on the bottom with sufficient weight to
prevent the currents from moving her out of her course we may start up
our propeller or driving-wheels and drive her at will over the bottom,
the same as a tricycle is propelled on the surface of the earth in the
upper air. In muddy bottoms, we rest with a weight not much over 100
pounds; while on hard bottoms, or where there are strong currents,
we sometimes rest on the bottom with a weight of from 1000 to 1500
pounds....
“In the rivers we invariably found a muddy bed; in Chesapeake Bay we
found bottoms of various kinds, in some places so soft that our divers
would sink up to their knees, while in other places the ground would
be hard, and at one place we ran across a bottom which was composed of
a loose gravel, resembling shelled corn. Out in the ocean, however,
was found the ideal submarine course, consisting of a fine gray sand,
almost as hard as a macadamized road, and very level and uniform.”
During this cruise under the waters of Chesapeake Bay, the _Argonaut_
came on the wrecks of several sunken vessels, which Mr. Lake or some
member of his crew examined through the open door in the bottom of the
diving-compartment. The air inside was kept at a sufficiently high
pressure to keep the water from entering, and the man in the submarine
could pull up pieces of the wreck with a short boathook, or even reach
down and place his bare hand on the back of a big fish swimming past.
Sometimes members of the crew would put on diving-suits and walk out
over the bottom, keeping in communication with the boat by telephone.
Telephone stations were even established on the bottom of the bay, with
cables running to the nearest exchange on shore, and conversations
were held with people in Baltimore, Washington, and New York. (Perhaps
the commanders of German submarines in British waters to-day are using
this method to communicate with German spies in London, Dublin, and
Liverpool.)
The Spanish-American War was being fought while Mr. Lake was making
these experiments. The entrance to Hampton Roads was planted with
electric mines, but though he was forbidden to go too near them, the
inventor proved that nothing would be easier than to locate the cable
connecting them with the shore, haul it up into the diver’s compartment
of the _Argonaut_ and cut it. He did this with a dummy cable of his
own, and then repeatedly begged the navy department to let him take the
_Argonaut_ into the harbor of Santiago de Cuba and disable the mines
that were keeping Admiral Sampson’s fleet from going in and smashing
the Spanish squadron there. But his offer, like that of John P.
Holland, was refused.
“In 1898, also,” says Mr. Lake, “the _Argonaut_ made the trip from
Norfolk to New York under her own power and unescorted. In her original
form she was a cigar-shaped craft with only a small percentage of
reserve buoyancy in her surface cruising condition. We were caught
out in the severe November northeast storm of 1898 in which over two
hundred vessels were lost and we did not succeed in reaching a harbor
in the ‘horseshoe’ back of Sandy Hook until three o’clock in the
morning. The seas were so rough they would break over her conning-tower
in such masses I was obliged to lash myself fast to prevent being swept
overboard. It was freezing weather and I was soaked and covered with
ice on reaching harbor.”
[Illustration:
Courtesy of International Marine Engineering.
_Argonaut_ as Rebuilt.]
Mr. Lake then sent the _Argonaut_ to a Brooklyn shipyard, where her
original cigar-shaped hull was cut in half, and lengthened twenty
feet, after which a light ship-shaped superstructure was built over
her low sloping topsides. To keep it from being crushed in by water
pressure when submerged, scupper-like openings were cut in the thin
plating where it joined the stout, pressure-resisting hull, so that
the superstructure automatically filled itself with sea-water on
submerging and drained itself on rising again. Though uninhabitable,
its interior supplied useful storage space, particularly for the
gasoline fuel tanks, which, as Mr. Lake had already discovered, gave
off fumes that soon rendered the air inside the submarine unbreathable,
unless the tanks were kept outside instead of inside the hull. The
swan-bow and long bowsprit of the new superstructure, together with
the two ventilator-masts, gave the rebuilt _Argonaut_ a schooner-like
appearance, and her bowsprit has been compared to the whip-socket on
the dashboard of the earliest automobiles. But Mr. Lake declares that
this was no useless leftover but a practicable spring-buffer to guard
against running into submerged rocks, while the bobstay helped the
_Argonaut_ to climb over the obstruction, as she could over anything
on the sea-bottom she could get her bows over.
Primarily, the superstructure served to make the submarine more
seaworthy as a surface craft. Until then, most inventors and designers
of undersea boats had confined their attentions to the problems of
underwater navigation only, because, as had been pointed out by the
monk Mersenne before 1648, even during the most violent storms the
disturbance is felt but a little distance below the surface. But Mr.
Lake realized that a submarine, like every other kind of boat, spends
most of its existence on top of the water and that it is not always
desirable to submerge whenever a moderate-sized wave sweeps over one
of the old-fashioned, low-lying, cigar-shaped vessels. With her new
superstructure, the _Argonaut_ rode the waves as lightly as any yacht
and ushered in the era of the sea-going submarine.
It was not until a year later that the _Narval_, a large double-hulled
submarine with a ship-shaped outer shell of light, perforated plating,
was launched in France. She was propelled by steam on the surface and
by storage batteries when submerged. To distinguish this sea-going
torpedo-boat, that could be submerged, from the earlier and simpler
submarines designed and engined for underwater work only, her designer,
M. Labeuf, called the _Narval_ a “submersible.” As the old type of
boat soon became extinct, the distinction was not necessary and the
old name “submarine” is still applied to all underwater craft. That
Simon Lake and not M. Labeuf first gave the modern sea-going submarine
its characteristic and essential superstructure is easily proved by
dates. The _Narval_ was launched in October, 1899, the _Argonaut_ was
remodeled in December, 1898, and on April 2, 1897, Mr. Lake applied for
and was presently granted the pioneer patent on a “combined surface
and submarine vessel,” the space between its cylindrical hull and the
superstructure “being adapted to be filled with water when the vessel
is submerged and thus rendered capable of resisting the pressure of the
water.”
But though in her remodeled form she became the forerunner of the
long grim submarine cruisers of to-day, the _Argonaut_ herself had
been built to serve not as a warship but as a commercial vessel. Like
her namesakes who followed Jason in the _Argo_ to far-off Colchis for
the Golden Fleece, she was to go forth in search of hidden treasure.
She was to have been the first of a fleet of wheeled bottom-workers,
salvaging the cargoes of wrecked ships; from the mail-bags of the
latest lost liner to ingots and pieces-of-eight from the sand-clogged
hulks of long-sunk Spanish galleons, or bringing up sponges, coral, and
pearls from the depths of the tropic seas. But though he investigated a
few wrecks and ingeniously transferred a few tons of coal from one into
a submarine lighter by means of a pipe-line and a powerful force-pump,
Mr. Lake has done nothing more to develop the fascinating commercial
possibilities of the submarine since 1901, because he has been kept too
busy building undersea warships for the United States and other naval
powers.
[Illustration:
Courtesy of International Marine Engineering.
The Rebuilt _Argonaut_, Showing Pipe-masts and Ship-shaped
Superstructure.]
Mr. Lake declares that one of his up-to-date wheeled submarines could
enter a harbor-mouth defended by booms and nettings that would keep out
either surface torpedo boats or ordinary submarines. The smooth-backed
bottom-worker of this special type would slip under the netting like a
cat under a bead portière. If the netting were fastened down, a diver
would step out through the door in the bottom of the submarine and
either cut the netting from its moorings or attach a bomb to blow a
hole for the bottom-worker to go in through. An ordinary submarine,
entering a hostile harbor, would be in constant danger of running
aground in shallow water and either sticking there or rebounding to the
surface, to be seen and fired at by the enemy. Even if its commander
succeeded in keeping to the deep channel by dead reckoning--a process
akin to flying blindfolded in an aeroplane up a crooked ravine and
remembering just when and where to turn--even if he dodged the rocks
and sand bars, he would be liable to bump the nose of his boat against
an anchored contact mine (see Chapter XI). But the Lake bottom-worker
would trundle steadily along, sampling the bottom to find where it was,
and passing safely under the mines floating far above it. The divers
would make short work of cutting the mine cables, or they might plant
mines of their own under the ships in the harbor and blow them up as
Bushnell tried to. Using electric motors and storage air-flasks, with
no pipe masts or other “surface-indications” to betray its presence,
one of these boats could remain snugly hid at the bottom of an enemy’s
harbor as long as its supplies held out.
[Illustration:
Courtesy of Mr. Simon Lake.
Cross-section of Diving-compartment on a Lake Submarine.]
As yet, however, we have not heard of any such exploits in the present
war, though they seem perfectly feasible. Mr. Lake sold a boat designed
for this sort of work and called the _Protector_ to Russia in 1906.
The most characteristic feature of the Lake submarines is not the
wheels, which are found only on those specially designed for bottom
working, but the hydroplanes. These are horizontal rudders that are
so placed and designed as to steer the boat forward and downward, but
at the same time keeping it on an even keel. Bushnell and Nordenfeldt
forced their boats straight up and down like buckets in a well, John
P. Holland made his tip up its tail and dive like a loon, but Mr.
Lake conceived the idea of having his boat descend like a suitcase
carried by a man walking down-stairs: the suitcase moves steadily
forward and downward towards the front door but it remains level. The
first method with its vertical propellers wasted too much energy, the
second incurred the risk of diving too fast and too deep, no matter
whether the single pair of horizontal rudders were placed on the bow,
or amidships, or on the stern. So Mr. Lake used two pairs of horizontal
rudders “located at equal distances forward and aft of the center of
gravity and buoyancy of the vessel when in the submerged condition, so
as not to disturb the trim of the vessel when the planes were inclined
down or up to cause the vessel to submerge or rise when under way.”
These he called hydroplanes, to distinguish them from another set of
smaller horizontal rudders, which at first he called “leveling-vanes”
and which were not used to steer the submarine under but manipulated
to keep her at a constant depth and on a level keel while running
submerged.
In theory, the early Lake boats were submerged on an even keel; in
practice, they went under at an angle of several degrees. But they made
nothing like the abrupt dives of the _Holland_.
“As the Electric Boat Company’s boats (Holland type) increased in
size,” declares Chief Constructor D. W. Taylor, U.S.N., “bow rudders
were fitted, and nowadays all submarines of this type in our navy
are fitted with bow rudders as well as stern rudders. The Lake type
submarines are still fitted with hydroplanes. But as you may see, means
for effecting submergence have approached each other very closely: in
fact, speaking generally, submarines all over the world now have two or
more sets of diving-rudders; the most general arrangement is one pair
forward and one pair aft; in some types three pairs are fitted, but
this arrangement is more unusual.
“In general it may be said then that modern submarines of both types
submerge in practically the same way. They assume a very slight angle
of inclination, say a degree and a half or two degrees, and submerge at
this angle. This may be said to be practically on an even keel.”
[Illustration:
Courtesy of International Marine Engineering.
Cross-section of the _Protector_, showing wheels stowed away when not
running on the sea bottom.]
The credit of originating this now world-wide practice of “level-keel
submergence” obviously belongs, as “Who’s Who in America” gives it, to
“Lake, Simon, naval architect, mechanical engineer. Born at
Pleasantville, New Jersey, September 4, 1866; son of John Christopher
and Miriam M. (Adams) Lake; educated at Clinton Liberal Institute,
Fort Plain, New York, and Franklin Institute, Philadelphia; married
Margaret Vogel of Baltimore, June 9, 1890. Inventor of even keel type
of submarine torpedo boats; built first experimental boat, 1894;
built _Argonaut_, 1897 (first submarine to operate successfully in the
open sea); has designed and built many submarine torpedo boats for the
United States and foreign countries; spent several years in Russia,
Germany, and England, designing, building, and acting in an advisory
capacity in construction of submarine boats. Also inventor of submarine
apparatus for locating and recovering sunken vessels and their cargoes;
submarine apparatus for pearl and sponge fishing, heavy oil internal
combustion engine for marine propulsion, etc. Member of the Society of
Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, American Society of Mechanical
Engineers, American Society of Naval Engineers, Institute of Naval
Architects (London), Schiffsbautechnische Gesellschaft (Berlin). Mason.
_Clubs_, Engineers’ (New York), Algonquin, (Bridgeport, Connecticut).
_Home_, Milford, Connecticut. _Office_, Bridgeport, Connecticut.”
[Illustration: Mr. Simon Lake.]
When the Krupps first took up the idea of constructing submarines for
the German and Russian governments, the great German firm consulted
with Mr. Lake, who was at that time living in Europe. An elaborate
contract was drawn up between them. The Krupps agreed to employ Mr.
Lake in an advisory capacity and to build “Lake type” boats, both in
Russia, where they were to erect a factory and share the profits with
him, and in Germany, on a royalty basis. Before he could sign this
contract, Mr. Lake had to obtain the permission of the directors of
his own company in Bridgeport. In the meanwhile, he gave the German
company his most secret plans and specifications. But the Krupps never
signed the contract, withdrew from going into Russia, and their lawyer
coolly told Mr. Lake that, as he had failed to patent his inventions
in Germany, his clients were perfectly free to build “Lake type”
submarines there without paying him anything and were going to do so.
The famous Krupp-built German submarines that are playing so prominent
a part in the present war are therefore partly of American design.
Whenever Mr. Lake reads that another one of them has been destroyed by
the Allies, his emotions must be rather mixed.