Submarine and Anti-submarine — Reading Companion

ench 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.