THE STORY OF THE SUBMARINE THE STORY OF THE SUBMARINE BY FARNHAM BISHOP Author of "Panama, Past and Present," etc. ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS AND DRAWINGS NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1916 Copyright, 1916, by THE CENTURY Co. Published, February, igi6 To MY MOTHER 355264 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 w r ho 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 launch- ing 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 cross- bows and catapults in 1916? The chapter on " A Trip in a Modern Submarine " is purely imaginative. There is no such boat in our sub- marine 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 frag- Preface mentary 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 His- torical Society, I am indebted for much information about Bushnell's Turtle, and to Mrs. Daniel Whitney, of Ger- mantown, Pa., a descendant of Ezra Lee, for the por- trait 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. Button & Company, publishers of Mr. Alan H. Burgoyne's " Sub- marine Navigation Past and Present " ; the American Magazine, Flying, International Marine Engineering, the Scientific American, and the New York Snn have cheer- fully given permission for the reproduction of many pic- tures of which they hold the copyright. Albert Frank & Company have given the cut of the advertisement of the last sailing of the Liisitania. 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 sub- marine boats the first book devoted exclusively to this subject in 1875. " The last time I heard of that pink pamphlet," writes Preface 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 De- partment, 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 I II IN THE BEGINNING DAVID BUSHNELL'S " TURTLE " PAGE 3 12 III IV V VI ROBERT FULTON'S " NAUTILUS " . . SUBMARINES IN THE CIVIL WAR . THE WHITEHEAD TORPEDO . FREAKS AND FAILURES ... 26 ... 36 43 VII VIII JOHN P. HOLLAND THE LAKE SUBMARINES .... ... 69 ... 82 IX x A TRIP IN A MODERN .SUBMARINE . ACCIDENTS AND SAFETY DEVICES . . too . 124 XI MINES XII XIII THE SUBMARINE IN ACTION . THE SUBMARINE BLOCKADE -156 177 XIV THE SUBMARINE AND NEUTRALS . INDEX . . . l89 207 List of Illustrations PAGE U. S. Submarine M-i 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-con- structed 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. i 70 Xlll xiv List of Illustrations PAGE The Fenian Ram 73 U. S. S. Holland, in Drydock with the Russian Battle- ship Retvizan 77 John P. Holland . . So 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 Sub- marine 94 Cross-section of the Protector 97 Mr. Simon Lake 98 U. S. Submarine E2 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 no 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 " Oscil- lator " 121 Side-elevation of a Modern Submarine 127 One Type of Safety- jacket . . . . . . . .131 List of Illustrations xv PAGE The Vulcan Salvaging the [7-j 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 E7-/5 . 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 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 in, 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 '11 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. 3 4 The Story of the Submarine 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 English- man 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 sub- marine 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 sci- !Also spelled Van Drebbel, Drebell, Dreble, and Trebel. He is the man Ben Jonson calls " Cornelius' son." In the Beginning 5 ence 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 pleas- ant evening in the year 1620, when he " noticed some sail- ors 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 oc- curred to him that a ship could be held under water by a somewhat similar method and could be propelled by oars and poles." 2 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. 2 Harsdoffer. Cornelius Van Drebel. Reproduced from " Submarine Navigation, " by Alan H. Burgoyne, by permission of E. P. Button & Company. leprod Past and Present ' 6 The Story of the Submarine 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 sub- marine, 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 't is not only the whole body of the air but a certain Quintessence (as Chymists speake) or spirituous part that makes it fit for In the Beginning 7 respiration ... so that (for aught I could gather) be- sides 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 " Quintes- sence " 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 Abbe de Haute feullie, who wrote in 1680 on " Methods of breathing under water," made the follow- ing 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 3 " New Experiments touching the Spring of the Air and its Ef- fects," by Robert Boyle, Oxford, 1662, p. 188. 8 The Story of the Submarine parts consumed by respiration, Drebel evidently wished to disguise his invention and prevent others from finding out its real nature. 7 ' 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, un- guarded by patent laws, for making a mystery of his Courtesy of the Scientific American, The Rotterdam Boat. discoveries. He had to be a showman as well as a scien- tist, 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, In the Beginning 9 wholly medieval in appearance, with his long furred gown and long, fair beard, Cornelius Van Drebel marches pic- turesquely 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 sub- marines, 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 sub- marine 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 bot- tom. 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 1O The Story of the Submarine 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 sur- face, absolutely certain of his ability to repeat the ex- Symons's Submarine. periment at any depth. But how could he turn this to practical account? It was an age of betting, when gentlemen could always be found to risk money on any wager, however fan- tastic. 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 In the Beginning ll 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., Tues- day, 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 sub- marine failed to reappear, Mr. Blake called on the cap- tain 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 with- out giving Day time enough to release the outer ballast and rise to safety. CHAPTER II IN the first week of September, 1776, the American army defending New York still held Manhattan Is- land, but nothing more. Hastily improvised, badly equipped, and worse disciplined, it had been easily de- feated by a superior invading force of British regulars and German mercenaries in the battle of Long Island. Brooklyn had fallen; from Montauk Point to the East River, all was the enemy's country. Staten Island, too, was an armed and hostile land. After the fall of the forts on both sides of the Narrows, the British fleet had entered the Upper Bay, and even landed marines and infantry on Governor's Island. Grimly guarding the crowded transports, the ship-of-the-line Asia and the frigate Eagle lay a little above Staten Island, with their broadsides trained on the doomed city. In the mouth of the North River, not a biscuit-toss from the Battery, floated the brass conning-tower of an American submarine. It was the only submarine in the world and its in- ventor called it the Turtle. He called it that because it looked like one : a turtle floating with its tail down and a conning-tower for a head. It has also been compared to a modern soldier's canteen with an extra-large mouth- piece, or a hardshell clam wearing a silk hat. It was 12 David Bushnell's " Turtle " deeper than it was long and not much longer than it ^as broad. It had no periscope, torpedo tubes, or cage of white mice. But the Turtle was a submarine, for all that. Its inventor was a Connecticut Yankee, Mr. David Bushnell, later Captain Bushnell of the corps of sappers and miners and in the opinion of his Excellency General Washington " a man of great mechanical powers, fertile in in- vention and master of execution." Bushnell was born in Saybrook and educated at Yale, where he graduated with the class of 1775. During his four years as an undergraduate, he spent most of his spare time solving the problem of exploding gunpowder under wa- ter. A water-tight case would keep his powder dry, but how could he get a spark inside to explode it? Percus- sion caps had not yet been invented, but Bushnell took the flintlock from a musket and had it snapped by clockwork that could be wound up and set for any desired length of time. The Submarine of 17/6. (As described by its operator.) 14 The Story of the Submarine " The first experiment I made," wrote Bushnell in a letter to Thomas Jefferson when the latter was American minister to France in 1789, "was with about 2 ounces of powder, which I exploded 4 feet under water, to prove to some of the first personages in Connecticut that powder would take fire under water. " The second experiment was made with 2 Ib. of powder enclosed in a wooden bottle and fixed under a hogshead, with a 2-inch oak plank between the hogs- head and the powder. The hogshead was loaded with stones as deep as it could swim ; a wooden pipe, descend- ing through the lower head of the hogshead and through the plank into the bottle, was primed with powder. A match put to the priming exploded the powder, which produced a very great effect, rending the plank into pieces, demolishing the hogshead, and casting the stones and the ruins of the hogshead, with a body of water, many feet into the air, to the astonishment of the spec- tators. This experiment was likewise made for the sat- isfaction of the gentlemen above mentioned." Governor Trumbull of Connecticut was among the " first personages " present at these experiments, which so impressed him and his council that they appropriated enough money for Bushnell to build the Turtle. The Nutmeg State was thus the first " world-power " to have a submarine in its navy. 1 The hull of the Turtle was not made of copper, as is sometimes stated, but was " built of oak, in the strongest 1 The only submarine built before this for military purposes, the Rotterdam Bout, remained private property, and King James's " eel- boats " were merely pleasure craft. David Bushnell's " Turtle " 15 manner possible, corked and tarred." 2 The conning- tower was of brass and also served as a hatch-cover. The hatchway was barely big enough for the one man who made up the entire crew to squeeze through. Once inside, the operator could screw the cover down tight, and look out through " three round doors, one directly in front and one on each side, large enough to put the hand through. When open they admitted fresh air." On top of the conning-tower were two air-pipes " so con- structed that they shut themselves whenever the water rose near their tops, so that no water could enter through them and opened themselves immediately after they rose above the water. " The vessel was chiefly ballasted with lead fixed to its bottom; when this was not sufficient a quantity was placed within, more or less according to the weight of the operator; its ballast made it so stiff that there was no danger of oversetting. The vessel, with all its ap- pendages and the operator, was of sufficient weight to set- tle it very low in the water. About 200 Ib. of lead at the bottom for ballast could be let down 40 or 50 feet below the vessel; this enabled the operator to rise in- stantly to the surface of the water in case of accident." The operator sat on an oaken brace that kept the two sides of the boat from being crushed in by the water- pressure, and did things with his hands and feet. He must have been as busy as a cathedral organist on Easter morning. With one foot he opened a brass valve that let 2 Sergeant Ezra Lee's letter to Gen. David Humphreys, written in 1815. Published in the " Magazine of American History/' Vol. 29, p. 261. 16 The Story of the Submarine water into the ballast tanks, with the other he worked a force pump to drive it out. When he had reached an approximate equilibrium, he could move the submarine up or down, or hold it at any desired depth, by cranking a small vertical-acting propeller placed just forward of the conning-tower on the deck above. Before him was the crank of another propellor, or rather tractor, for it drew, not pushed, the vessel forward. Behind him was the rudder, which the operator controlled with a long curved tiller stuck under one arm. The Best-known Picture of Bushnell's Turtle. Drawn by Lieutenant F. M. Barber, U. S. N., in 1875. Bushnell, in his letter to Jefferson, calls each of these propellors " an oar, formed upon the principle of the screw/' and the best-known picture of the Turtle shows a bearded gentleman in nineteenth-century clothes boring his way through the water with two big gimlets. But Sergeant Ezra Lee of the Connecticut Line, who did the actual operating, described the submarine's forward pro- pellor (he makes no mention of the other) as having two wooden blades or " oars, of about 12 inches in length and 4 or 5 in width, shaped like the arms of a windmill/' David .Bushnell's " Turtle " 17 Except in size, this device must have looked very much like the wooden-bladed tractor of a modern aero- plane. " These oars/' noted Judge Griswold on the letter before forwarding it to General Humphrey, " were fixed on the end of a shaft like windmill arms projected out forward, and turned at right angles with the course of the machine ; and upon the same principles that wind-mill arms are turned by the wind, these oars, when put in motion as the writer describes, draw the machine slowly after it. This moving power is small, and every atten- dant circumstance must cooperate with it to answer the purpose calm waters and no current." " With hard labor," said Lee, " the machine might be impelled at ihe rate of ' 3 nots ' an hour for a short time." Sergeant Lee volunteered " to learn the ways and mys- tery of this new machine " because the original operator, Bushnell's brother, " was taken sick in the campaign of 1776 at New York before he had an opportunity to make use of his skill, and never recovered his health sufficiently afterwards." While Lee was still struggling with the " mystery " in practice trips on Long Island Sound, the British fleet entered New York Harbor. The submarine was at once hurried to New Rochelle, carted overland to the Hudson, and towed down to the city. At slack tide on the first calm night after his arrival, Lee screwed down the conning-tower of the Turtle above his head and set out to attack the British fleet. 4 Two 4 " General Washington and his associates in the secret took their stations upon a house in Broadway, anxiously awaiting the result." i8 The Story of the Submarine whaleboats towed him as near as they dared and then cast off. Running awash, with not more than six or seven inches of the conning-tower exposed, the submarine crept, silent and unseen, down the bay and up under the towering stern of his Britannic Majesty's 64-gun frigate Eagle. " When I rowed under the stern of the ship/' wrote Sergeant Lee in after years, " I could see the men on deck and hear them talk. I then shut down all the doors, sunk down and came under the bottom of the ship." Up through the top of the submarine ran a long sharp gimlet, not for boring a hole through the bottom of a ship, but to be screwed into the wooden hull and left there, to serve as an anchor for a mine. Tied to the screw and carried on the after-deck of the Turtle was an egg-shaped " magazine," made of two hollowed-out pieces of oak and containing one hundred and fifty pounds of gun- powder, with a clockwork time-fuse that would begin to run as soon as the operator cast off the magazine after making fast the screw. Everything seemed ready for Sergeant Lee to anticipate Lieutenant Commander Von Weddigen by one hundred and thirty-eight years. But no matter how hard the strong-wristed sergeant turned the handle, he could not drive the screw into the frigate's hull. The Eagle was copper-sheathed! 5 " I pulled along to try another place," said Lee, " but deviated a little to one side and immediately rose with From Ezra Lee's obituary, New York " Commercial Advertiser," November 15, 1821. 5 According to Bushnell, the screw struck an iron bar securing the rudder. David Bushnell's " Turtle " 19 great velocity and came above the surface 2 or 3 feet, between the ship and the daylight, then sunk again like a porpoise. I hove about to try again, but on further thought I gave out, knowing that as soon as it was light the ships' boats would be rowing in all directions, and I thought the best generalship was to retreat as fast as I could, as I had 4 miles to go before passing Governor's Island. So I jogg'd on as fast as I could." To enable him to steer a course when submerged, Lee Another Idea of Bushnell's Turtle. had before him a compass, most ingeniously illuminated with phosphorescent pieces of rotten wood. But for some reason this proved to be of no use. " I was obliged to rise up every few minutes to see that I sailed in the right direction, and for this purpose keeping the machine on the surface of the water and the doors open. I was much afraid of getting aground on the island, as the tide of the flood set on the north point. " While on my passage up to the city, my course, owing to the above circumstances, was very crooked and zig- 20 The Story of the Submarine zag, and the enemy's attention was drawn towards me from Governor's Island. When I was abreast of the fort on the island, 3 or 400 men got upon the parapet to observe me ; at length a number came down to the shore, shoved off a 12 oar'd barge with 5 or 6 sitters and pulled for me. I eyed them, and when they had got within 50 or 60 yards of me I let loose the magazine in hopes that if they should take me they would likewise pick up the magazine, and then we should all be blown up together. But as kind Providence would have it, they took fright and returned to the island to my infinite joy. I then weathered the island, and our people seeing me, came off with a whaleboat and towed me in. The magazine, after getting a little past the island, went off with a tremendous explosion, throwing up large bodies of water to an im- mense height." A few days afterwards, the British forces landed on Manhattan Island at what is now the foot of East Thirty- fourth Street, and Washington's army hastily withdrew to the Harlem Heights, above One Hundred and Twenty- fifth Street. A British frigate sailed up the Hudson and anchored off Bloomingdale, or between Seventy-second and One Hundred and Tenth Streets, in the same waters where our Atlantic fleet lies whenever it comes to town. Here Sergeant Lee in the Turtle made two more attempts. But the first time he was discovered by the watch, and when he approached* again, submerged, the phosphorus- painted cork that served as an indicator in his crude but ingenious depth-gage, got caught and deceived him so that he dived completely under the warship without touch- ing her. Shortly after this, the frigate came up the river, Ezra Lee. Born at Lyme, Conn., Jan. 21, 1749, Died at Lyme, Conn., Oct. 29, 1821. From original painting in possession of his descendant, Mrs. Daniel Whitney, 5117 Pulaski Avenue, Germantown, Pa. 21 22 The Story of the Submarine overhauled the sloop on which the Turtle was being trans- ported, and sent it to the bottom, submarine and all. " Though I afterwards recovered the vessel/' Bushnell wrote to Jefferson, " I found it impossible at that time to prosecute the design any further. I had been in a bad state of health from the beginning of my undertaking, and was now very unwell; the situation of public affairs was such that I despaired of obtaining the public atten- tion and the assistance necessary. I was unable to sup- port myself and the persons I must have employed had I proceeded. Besides, I found it absolutely necessary that the operators should acquire more skill in the manage- ment of the vessel before I could expect success, which would have taken up some time, and no small additional expense. I therefore gave over the pursuit for that time and waited for a more favorable opportunity, which never arrived. " In the year 1777 I made an attempt from a whale- boat against the Cerberus frigate, then lying at anchor between Connecticut River and New London, by drawing a machine against her side by means of a line. The ma- chine was loaded with powder, to be exploded by a gun- lock, which was to be unpinioned by an apparatus to be turned by being brought alongside of the frigate. This machine fell in with a schooner at anchor astern of the frigate, and concealed from my sight. By some means or other it was fired, and demolished the schooner and three men, and blew the only one left alive overboard, who was taken up very much hurt. 6 6 This survivor was examined by the captain of the Cerberus, who David Bushnell's " Turtle " 23 " After this I fixed several kegs under water, charged with powder, to explode upon touching anything as they floated along with the tide. I set them afloat in the Delaware, above the English shipping at Philadelphia, in December, 1777. I was unacquainted with the river, and obliged to depend upon a gentleman very imperfectly acquainted with that part of it, as I afterwards found. We went as near the shipping as we durst venture ; I be- lieve the darkness of the night greatly deceived him, as it did me. We set them adrift to fall with the ebb upon the shipping. Had we been within sixty rods I believe they must have fallen in with them immediately, as I designed; but, as I afterwards found, they were set adrift much too far distant, and did not arrive until, after being detained some time by frost, they advanced in the day- time in a dispersed situation and under great disadvan- tages. One of them blew up a boat with several persons in it who imprudently handled it too freely, and thus gave the British the alarm which brought on the battle of the kegs." The agitated redcoats lined the banks and blazed away at every bit of drifting wreckage in the river, as de- scribed by a sarcastic Revolutionary poet in " The Battle of the Kegs." Gallants attend, and hear a friend Troll forth harmonious ditty, Strange things I '11 tell that once befell In Philadelphia city. reported that the schooner's crew had drawn the machine on board and by rashly tampering with its mechanism caused it to explode. 24 The Story of the Submarine 'Twas early day, as poets say, Just as the sun was rising, A soldier stood on a log of wood And saw a thing surprising. As in amaze he stood to gaze, The truth can't be denied, sir, He spied a score of kegs or more Come floating down the tide, sir. These kegs, I'm told, the rebels hold Packed up like pickled herring, And they 're coming down to attack the town, In this new way of ferrying. Therefore prepare for bloody war, The kegs must all be routed, Or surely we despised shall be And British valor doubted. The royal band now ready stand All ranged in dread array, sir, With stomach stout to see it out And make a bloody day, sir. The cannon roar from shore to shore, The small arms make a rattle, Since wars began, I 'm sure no man E'er saw so strange a battle. The kegs, 't is said, though strongly made, Of rebel staves and hoops, sir, Could not oppose their powerful foes, The conquering British troops, sir. David Bushnell was later captured by the British, who failed to recognize him and soon released him as a harm- David Bushnell's " Turtle " 25 less civilian. After the Revolution he went to France, and then to Georgia, where disgusted with the Govern- ment's neglect of himself and his invention he changed his name to " Dr. Bush." He was eighty-four years old when he died in 1826. His identity was then revealed in his will. Bushnell found the submarine boat a useless plaything and made it a formidable weapon. To him it owes the propeller, the conning-tower, and the first suggestion of the torpedo. The Turtle was not only the first Ameri- can submarine but the forerunner of the undersea de- stroyer of to-day. " I thought and still think that it was an effort of genius," declared George Washington to Thomas Jeffer- son, " but that too many things were necessary to be combined to expect much against an enemy who are al- ways on guard." CHAPTER III 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 com- patriots of to-day, he found anything but a ready market. For three years, beginning in 1797, Fulton tried con- stantly 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 min- ister, 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 26 Robert Fulton's "Nautilus" 27 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 in- ventor this honor was a panorama of the burning of Moscow not the burning of the city to drive out Na- poleon, 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 ap- pointed three expert naval engineers to examine Fulton's plans, and on their approval, Napoleon advanced him 10,000 francs to build a submarine. .'v Construction was begun at once and the boat was fin- ished 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 im- mediately above it were the water-ballast tanks for sub- merging the vessel. Two men propelled the boat when 28 The Story of the Submarine beneath the surface by turning a hand-winch geared to the shaft of a two-bladed, metal propellor. (Fulton called the propellor a " fly/ 7 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- The Nautilus, Invented by Robert Fulton. A-B, Hull; C-D, Keel; E-E, Pumps; F, Conning Tower; G, Bulkhead; H, Pro- pellor; 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 at- tacked; X, Anchor; Y, Mast and sail for use on surface. spit in many a French kitchen for centuries past.) The third member of the crew stood in the dome-shaped con- ning-tower and steered, while Fulton himself controlled the pumps, valves, and the diving-planes or horizontal rudders that steered the submarine up and down. In- stead of forcing his boat under with a vertical-acting screw, like Bushnell and Nordenf elt (seepages i6and62), Robert Fulton's " Nautilus " 29 Fulton, like Holland, made her dive bow-foremost by de- pressing 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 under- sea 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 propeller bettered this by half a knot. 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 30 The Story of the Submarine 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 success- fully 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 in- ventor declared that: Robert Fulton's "Nautilus" 31 " 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 use- less 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 ac- tions 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 tele- scopes 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 32 The Story of the Submarine the navy to him and his crew. He wanted some assur- ance that in case they were captured they would not be hanged by the British, who then as now denounced sub- marine 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 Oc- tober 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, break- ing the brig in two amidships and hurling the frag- ments 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: Robert Fulton's " Nautilus " 33 " Pitt was the greatest fool that ever existed, to en- courage a mode of war which they who command the seas did not want and which if successful would deprive them of it." Six days after the destruction of the Dorothea, the sea- Destruction of the Dorothea. From a woodcut by Robert Fulton. power of France was broken by Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar. Napoleon now gave up all hope of gain- ing 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 34 The Story of the Submarine Boulogne. With this danger gone, England was no longer interested in submarines and torpedoes. So Ful- ton 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 de- partment. Soon after his return to this country he had made his usual demonstration of torpedoing a small an- chored 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 net- Robert Fulton's " Nautilus " 35 ting 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 com- pelled 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 war- fare." 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 Con- necticut made three dives under the British battleship Rantillies 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 Demolo- gos, the first steam-propelled battleship, and the Mute, a large armored submarine that was to carry a silent en- gine and a crew of eighty men, when he died in 1815. CHAPTER IV SUBMARINES IN THE CIVIL WAR THE most powerful battleship in the world, half a century ago, was the U.S.S. New Ironsides. She was a wooden-hulled, ship-rigged steamer of 3486 tons displacement about one tenth the size of a modern superdreadnought her sides plated with four inches of iron armor, and carrying twenty heavy guns. On the night of October 5, 1863, the New Ironsides was on block- ade duty off Charleston Harbor, when Ensign Howard, the officer of the deck, saw something approaching that looked like a floating plank. He hailed it, and was an- swered by a rifle ball that stretched him, mortally wounded, on the deck. An instant later came the flash and roar of a tremendous explosion, a column of water shot high into the air alongside, and the New Ironsides was shaken violently from stem to stern. The Confederate submarine David had crept up and driven a spar-torpedo against Goliath's armor. But except for a few splintered timbers, a flooded en- gine-room, and a marine's broken leg, no damage had been done. As the Confederate craft was too close and too low in the water for the broadside guns to bear, the crew of the ironclad lined the rail and poured volley after volley of musketry into their dimly seen adversary 36 Submarines in the Civil War 37 till she drifted away into the night. Her crew of seven men had dived overboard at the moment of impact, and were all picked up by different vessels of the blockading fleet, except the engineer and one other, who swam back "to the David, started her engine again, and brought her safely home to Charleston. The David was a cigar-shaped steam launch, fifty- four feet long and six feet broad at the thickest point. Pro- View when immerse*.- Views of a Confederate David. From Scharf's History of the Confederate States Navy. jecting from her bow was a fifteen- foot spar, with a tor- pedo charged with sixty pounds of gunpowder at the end of it. This was exploded by the heat given off by certain chemicals, after they were shaken up together by the im- pact of the torpedo against the enemy's ship. The David, steaming at her full speed of seven knots an hour, struck squarely against the New Ironsides at the water-line and rebounded to a distance of seven or eight feet before this clumsy detonator could do its work. When the ex- 38 The Story of the Submarine plosion came, the intervening body of water prevented it from doing any great damage. The David was not a true submarine but a surface tor- pedo boat, that could be submerged till only the funnel and a small pilot-house were exposed. A number of other Davids were built and operated by the Confederate States navy, but the first of them was the only one to accomplish anything. The one real submarine possessed by the Confederacy was not a David, though she is usually so called. This was the C.S.S. Hundley, a hand-power "diving-boat" C. S. S. Hundley. The Only Submarine to sink a Hostile Warship before the Outbreak of the Present War. not unlike Fulton's Nautilus, but very much clumsier and harder to manage. She had ballast tanks and a pair of diving-planes for steering her up and down, and she was designed to attack an enemy's ship by swimming under it, towing a torpedo that would explode on striking her opponent's keel. ^ Submarines in the Civil War 39 The Hundley was built at Mobile, Alabama, by the firm of Hundley and McKlintock, named for the senior partner, and brought to Charleston on a flatcar. There she was manned by a crew of nine volunteers, eight of whom sat in a row and turned the cranks on the propel- lor-shaft, while the ninth man steered. There was no conning-tower and the forward hatchway had to be left open for the helmsman to look out of while running on the surface. On the Hundley's first practice cruise, the wash from the paddle-wheels of a passing steamer poured suddenly down the open hatchway. Only the steersman and commanding officer, Lieutenant Payne, had time to save himself before the submarine sank, drowning the rest of her crew. The boat was raised and Payne took her out with a new crew. This time a sudden squall sank her before they could close the hatches, and Payne escaped, with two of his men. He tried a third time, only to be capsized off Fort Sumter, with the loss of four of his crew. On the fourth trip, the hatches were closed, the tanks filled, and an attempt was made to navigate beneath the surface. But the Hundley dived too suddenly, stuck her nose deep into the muddy bottom, and stayed there till her entire crew were suffocated. On the fifth trial she became en- tangled in the cable of an anchored vessel, with the same result. By this time the submarine's victims numbered thirty- five, and the Confederates had nicknamed her the " Peri- patetic Coffin." But at the sixth call for volunteers, they still came forward. It was decided to risk no more lives on practice trips but to attack at once. In spite of the 40 The Story of the Submarine protests of Mr. Hundley, the designer of the craft, her latest and last commander, Lieutenant Dixon of the 2ist South Carolina Infantry, was ordered by General Beau- regard to use the vessel as a surface torpedo-boat, sub- merged to the hatch-coaming and with the hatches open. A spar-torpedo, to be exploded by pulling a trigger with a light line runing back into the boat, was mounted on the bow. Thus armed, and manned by Lieutenant Dixon, Captain Carlson, and five enlisted men of their regiment, the little Hundley put out over Charleston bar on the night of February 17, 1864, to attack some vessel of the blockading fleet. This proved to be the U.'S.S. Housatonic, a fine new thirteen-gun corvette of 1264 tons. What followed is best described by Admiral David Porter in his " Naval History of the Civil War." " At about 8.45 P.M., the officer of the deck on board the unfortunate vessel discovered something about 100 yards away, moving along the water. It came directly towards the ship, and within two minutes of the time it was first sighted was -alongside. The cable was slipped, the engines backed, and all hands called to quarters. But it was too late the torpedo struck the Housatonic just forward of the mainmast, on the starboard side, on a line with the magazine. The man who steered her (the Hundley} knew where the vital spots of the steamer were and he did his work well. When the explosion took place the ship trembled all over as if by the shock of an earth- quake, and seemed to be lifted out of the water, and then sank stern foremost, heeling to port as she went down/' The Hundley was not seen after the explosion, and it Submarines in the Civil War 41 was supposed that she had backed away and escaped. But when peace came, and Charleston Harbor was being cleared of the wrecks with which war had clogged it, the divers sent down to inspect the Housatonic found the Hundley lying beside her. Sucked in by the rush of the water through the hole her torpedo had made, she had been caught and dragged down by her own victim. All the Hundley's crew were found dead within her. So perished the first and last submarine to sink a hostile war- ship, before the outbreak of the present war. A smaller underwater boat of the same type was privately built at New Orleans at the beginning of the war, lost on her trial trip, and not brought up again till after peace was de- clared. The North had a hand-power submarine, that was built at the Georgetown Navy Yard in 1862. It was designed by a Frenchman, whose name is now forgotten but who might have been a contemporary of Cornelius Van Drebel. Except that its hull was of steel instead of wood and greased leather, this first submarine of the United States navy was no better than an eel-boat of the seventeenth century. It was propelled by eight pairs of oars, with hinged blades that folded up like a book on the return stroke. The boat was thirty-five feet long and six in diameter, and was rowed by sixteen men. It was sub- merged by flooding ballast tanks. There was an oxygen tank and an apparatus for purifying the used air by blow- ing it over lime. A spar-torpedo was to be run out on rollers in the bow. Ten thousand dollars was paid to the inventor of this medieval leftover, and he prudently left the country be- 42 The Story of the Submarine fore he could be called on to operate it, though he had been promised a reward of five thousand dollars for every Confederate ironclad he succeeded in blowing up. Like the first Monitor, this nameless submarine was lost in a storm off Cape Hatteras, while being towed by a steamer. After the loss of the Housatonic, the North built two semi-submersible steam torpedo-boats on the same idea as the David, but larger and faster. Both were armed with spar-torpedoes and fitted with ballast tanks to sink them very low in the water when they attacked. The smaller of the two, the Stromboli, could be submerged till only her pilot-house, smoke-stack, and one ventilator showed above the water. The other boat was called the Spuyten Duyvil. She could be sunk till her deck, which was covered with three inches of iron armor, was level with the water, but she bristled with masts, funnels, con- ning-towers, ventilators, and other excrescences that sprouted out of her hull at the most unexpected places. Neither of these* craft was ever used in action. CHAPTER V THE WHITEHEAD TORPEDO HOW best to float a charge of explosives against the hull of an enemy's ship and there explode it is the great problem of torpedo warfare. The spar-torpedo, that did such effective work in the Civil War, was little more than a can of gunpowder on the end of a stick. This stick or spar was mounted usually on the bow of a steam-launch, either partially submerged, like the David, or boldly running on the surface over log-booms and through a hail of bullets and grapeshot, as when Lieu- tenant Gushing sank the Confederate ironclad Albemarle. Once alongside, the spar-torpedo was run out to its full length, raised, depressed, and finally fired by pulling dif- ferent ropes. So small was the chance of success and so great the danger to the launch's crew that naval officers and inventors all the world over sought constantly for some surer and safer way. Early in the sixties, an Austrian artillery officer at- tached to the coast defenses conceived the idea of sending out the launch without a crew. He made some drawings of a big toy boat, to be driven by steam or hot air or even by clockwork, and steered from the shore by long ropes. As it would have no crew, this boat could carry the ex- plosives in its hull, and the spars which were to project from it in all directions would carry no torpedoes them- 43 44 The Story of the Submarine selves but would serve to explode the boat's . cargo of guncotton by firing a pistol into it, as soon as one of the spars came into contact with the target. Before he could carry out his ideas any further, this officer died and his plans were turned over to Captain Lupuis of the Aus- trian navy. Lupuis experimented diligently with surface torpedoes till 1864, but found that he would have to dis- cover some better steering-device than ropes from the shore and some other motive-power than steam or clock- work. So he consulted with Mr. Whitehead, the English manager of a firm of engine manufacturers at the sea- port of Fiume. Whitehead gave the torpedo a fish-shaped hull, so that it could run beneath instead of on the surface. For mo- tive-power he used compressed air, which proved much superior to either steam or clockwork. And by improv- ing its rudders, he enabled the little craft to keep its course without the aid of guide-ropes from the shore. The chief defect of the first Whitehead torpedoes, which were fin- ished and tried in 1866, was that they kept bobbing to the surface, or else they would dive too deep and pass harm- lessly under the target. To correct this defect, White- head invented by 1868 what he called the " balance cham- ber." Then, as now, each torpedo was divided into a number of separate compartments or chambers, and in one of these the inventor placed a most ingenious device for keeping the torpedo at a uniform depth. The contents of the balance-chamber was Whitehead's great secret, and it was not revealed to the public for twenty years. The automobile or, as it was then called, the " sub- marine locomotive " torpedo was now a practicable, The Whitehead Torpedo 45 though by no means perfected, weapon, and the Austrian naval authorities gave it a thorough trial at Fiume in 1868. Whitehead rigged up a crude ejecting tube on the bow of a gunboat, and successfully discharged two of his torpedoes at a yacht. The Austrian government promptly adopted the weapon, but could not obtain a monopoly of it, for Whitehead was a patriotic English- man. The British admiralty invited him to England two years later, and after careful trials of its own, induced the English government to buy Whitehead's secret and manu- facturing rights for $45,000. Other nations soon added " Whiteheads " to their navies, and in 1873 there was built in Norway a large, fast steam launch for the ex- press purpose of carrying torpedoes and discharging them at an enemy. Every one began to build larger and swifter launches, till they evolved the torpedo-boat and the destroyer of to-day. The torpedo itself has undergone a similar development in size and efficiency. The difference between the White- heads of forty-five years ago and those of to-day is strik- ingly shown in the following table : BRITISH NAVAL TORPEDOES OF 1870 Length, Diameter, Charge, Range, Speed, Feet Inches Pounds Yards Knots Large 14 16 67 600 7.5 guncotton Small 13 10.58 in. 14 18 200 8.5 dynamite BRITISH NAVAL TORPEDOES OF 1915 Large 21 21 330 12,000 48 guncotton Small 18 18 200 16,000 36 guncotton 46 The Story of the Submarine The length of a large modern torpedo, it will be ob- served, is only three inches less than that of Fulton's famous submarine boat of 1801. A Whitehead torpedo is really a small automatic submarine, steered and con- trolled by the most ingenious and sensitive machinery, as surely as if it were manned by a crew of Lilliputian seamen. Projecting from the head is the " striker/' a rod which, when the torpedo runs into anything hard, is driven back in against a detonator or " percussion-cap " of fulminate of mercury. Just as the hammer of a toy " cap-pistol " explodes a paper cap, so the sudden shock of the in-driven striker explodes the fulminate, which is instantly ex- panded to more than two thousand times its former size. This, in turn, gives a severe blow to the surrounding " primer " of dry guncotton. The primer is exploded, and by its own expansion sets off the main charge of sev- eral hundred pounds of wet guncotton. The reason for this is that though wet guncotton is safe* to handle because a very great shock is required to make it explode, dry guncotton is much less so, while a shell or torpedo filled with fulminate of mercury would be more dangerous to its owners than to their enemies, because the slightest jar might set it off prematurely. Every precaution is taken to prevent a torpedo's explod- ing too soon and damaging the vessel from which it is fired. When the torpedo is shot out of the tube, by com- pressed air, like a pea from a pea-shooter, the striker is held fast by the "jammer": a small propellor-shaped collar, whose blades begin to revolve as soon as they The Whitehead Torpedo 47 strike the water, till the collar has unscrewed itself and dropped off after the torpedo has traveled about forty feet. A copper pin that runs through the striker-rod is not removed but must be broken short off by a blow of considerable violence, such as would be given by run- ning into a ship's hull. As a third safeguard, there is a strong safety-catch, that must be released by hand, just before the torpedo is placed in the tube. The explosive charge of two or three hundred pounds of wet guncotton is called the " war-head." In peace and for target-practice it is replaced by a dummy head of thick steel. The usual target is the space between two buoys moored a ship's length or less apart. At the end of a practice run, the torpedo rises to the surface, where it can be recovered and used again. This is distinctly worth while, for a modern torpedo costs more than seven thousand dollars. Back of the war-head is the air-chamber, that contains the motive-power of this miniature submarine. The air is either packed into it by powerful pumps, on shore or shipboard, or else drawn from one of the storage flasks of compressed air, a number of which are car- ried on every submarine. The air-chamber of a mod- ern torpedo is charged at a pressure of from 2000 to 2500 pounds per square inch. As the 'torpedo leaves the tube, a lever on its back is struck and knocked over by a little projecting piece of metal, and the starting-valve of the air-chamber is opened. But if the compressed air were allowed to reach and start the engines at once, they would begin to revolve the propellers while they were still in the air inside the tube. This would cause the 48 The Story of the Submarine screws to " race," or spin round too rapidly and perhaps break off. So there is a " delay ing-valve," which keeps the air away from the engines till another valve-lever is swung over by the impact of the water against a little metal flap. As the compressed air rushes through the pipe from the chamber to the engine-room, it passes through a " re- ducing-valve," which keeps it from spurting at the start and lagging at the finish. By supplying the air to the engines at a reduced but uniform pressure, this device enables the torpedo to -maintain the same speed through- out the run. At the same time the compressed air is heated by a small jet of burning oil, with a consequent increase in pressure, power, and speed, estimated at 30 per cent. All these devices are kept not in the air-cham- ber itself but in the next compartment, the balance-cham- ber. Here is the famous little machine, once a close-kept secret but now known to all the world, that holds the torpedo at any desired depth. Think of a push-button, working in a tube open to the sea, with the water pres- sure pushing the button in and a spiral spring inside shoving it out. This push-button called a " hydro- static valve " is connected by a system of levers with the two diving-planes or horizontal rudders that steer the torpedo up or down. By turning a screw, the spring can be adjusted to exert a force equal to the pressure of the water at any given depth. If the torpedo dives too deep, the increased water-pressure forces in the valve, moves the levers, raises the diving-planes, and steers the torpedo towards the surface. As the water pressure The Whitehead Torpedo 49 grows less, the spring forces out the valve, depresses the diving-planes, and brings the miniature submarine down to its proper depth again. When his torpedoes grew too big to be controlled by the comparatively feeble force exerted by the hydrostatic valve, Whitehead in- vented the " servo-motor " : an auxiliary, compressed- air engine, less than five inches long, sensitive enough to respond to the slightest movement of the valve levers but strong enough to steer the largest torpedo, exactly as the steam steering-gear moves the huge rudder of an ocean liner. There is also a heavy pendulum, swinging fore and aft and attached to the diving-planes, that checks any sud- den up-or-down movement of the torpedo by inclining the planes and restoring the horizontal position. Next comes the engine-room, with its three-cylinder motor, capable of developing from thirty-five to fifty-five horse-power. The exhaust air from the engine passes out through the stern in a constant stream of bubbles, leaving a broad white streak on the surface of the water as the torpedo speeds to its mark. The aftermost compartment is called the buoyancy chamber. Besides adding to the floatability of the tor- pedo, this space also holds the engine shaft and the gear attaching it to the twin propellers. The first White- heads were single-screw boats. But the revolution of the propellor in one direction set up a reaction that caused the torpedo itself to partially revolve or heel over in the other, disturbing its rudders and swerving it from its course. This reaction is neutralized by using two pro- pellers, one revolving to the right, the other to the left. 50 The Story of the Submarine Instead of being placed side by side, as on a steamer, they are mounted one behind the other, with the shaft of one revolving inside the hollow shaft of the other, and in the opposite direction. Long after they could be depended on to keep a proper depth, the Whiteheads and other self-propelled torpedoes were liable to swing suddenly to port or starboard, or even turn completely round. During the war between Chile and Peru, in 1879, the Peruvian ironclad Huascar discharged an automobile torpedo that went halfway to the target, changed its mind, and was coming back to blow up its owners when an officer swam out to meet it and succeeded in turning it aside, for the torpedoes of that time were slow and small as well as erratic. Nowadays a torpedo is kept on a straight course by a gyroscope placed in the buoyancy chamber. Nearly every boy knows the gyroscopic top, like a little flywheel, that you can spin on the edge of a tumbler. The upper part of this toy is a heavy little metal wheel, and if you try to push it over while it is spinning, it resists and pushes back, as if it were alive. A similar wheel, weigh- ing about two pounds, is placed in the buoyancy chamber of a Whitehead. When the torpedo starts, it releases either a powerful spring or an auxiliary compressed air engine that sets the gyroscope to spinning at more than two thousand revolutions a minute. It revolves verti- cally, in the fore-and-aft line of the torpedo, and is mounted on a pivoted stand. If the torpedo deviates from its straight course, the gyroscope does not, and the consequent change in their relative positions brings the flywheel into contact with a lever running to the servo- 52 The Story of the Submarine motor that controls the two vertical rudders, which soon set the torpedo right again. Thus guided and driven, a modern torpedo speeds swiftly and surely to its target, there to blow itself into a thousand pieces, with a force sufficient to sink a ship a thousand times its size. The Whitehead is used by every navy in the world except the German, which has its own torpedo: the " Schwartzkopf ." This, however, is practicaly identical with the Whitehead, except that its hull is made of bronze instead of steel and its war-head is charged with trini- trotuluol, or T.N.T., a much more powerful explosive than guncotton. After the Russo-Japanese War, when several Russian battleships kept afloat although they had been struck by Japanese torpedoes, many naval experts declared that an exploding war-head spent most of its energy in throwing a great column of water up into the air, instead of blow- ing in the side of the ship. So Commander Davis of the United States navy invented his " gun-torpedo." This is like a Whitehead in every respect except that instead of a charge of guncotton it carries in its head a short eight-inch cannon loaded with an armor-piercing shell and a small charge of powder. In this type of torpedo, the impact of the striker against the target serves to fire the gun. The shell then passes easily through the thin side of the ship below the armor-belt and through any protecting coal-bunkers and bulkheads it may encounter, till it reaches the ship's vitals, where it is exploded by the delayed action of an adjustable time-fuse. What would happen if it burst in a magazine or boiler-room is best The Whitehead Torpedo 53 left to the imagination. Several Davis gun-torpedoes have been built and used against targets with very satis- factory results, but they have not yet been used in actual warfare. Mr. Edward F. Chandler, M.E., one of the foremost torpedo-experts in America, is dissatisfied with the com- Courtesy of the Electric Boat Company. Davis Gun-Torpedo after discharge, showing eight-inch gun forward of air-flask. pressed-air driven gyroscope, both because it does not begin to revolve till after the torpedo has been launched and perhaps deflected from its true course, and because it cannot be made to spin continuously throughout the long run of a modern torpedo. He proposes to remove the compressed-air servo-motors, both for this purpose and for controlling the horizontal-rudders by the hydro- static valve, and replace them with an electrical-driven gyroscope and depth-gear. The increased efficiency of the latter would enable him to get rid of the heavy, un- 54 The Story of the Submarine certain pendulum, thus allowing for the weight of the storage batteries. Mr. Chandler declares that his elec- trically-controlled torpedo can be lowered over the side of a small boat, headed in any desired direction, and started, without any launching-tube. 1 Though the automobile torpedo has been brought to so Courtesy of the Electric Buat Company. Effect of Davis Gun-Torpedo on a specially-constructed target. high a state of perfection, the original idea of steering from the shore has not been abandoned. The Brennan and Sims-Edison controllable torpedoes were driven and steered by electricity, receiving the current through wires trailed astern and carrying little masts and flags above the surface to guide the operator on shore. But these also served as a warning to the enemy and gave him too good a chance either to avoid the torpedo or destroy it with machine-gun fire. Then, too, the trailing wires reduced 1 See the " Scientific American," August 7, 1915. The Whitehead Torpedo 55 its speed and were always liable to get tangled in the propellers. Controllable torpedoes of this type were abandoned before the outbreak of the present war and will probably never be used in action. A new and more promising sort of controllable torpedo was immediately suggested by the invention of wireless telegraphy. Many inventors have been working to per- fect such a weapon, and a young American engineer, Mr. John Hays Hammond, Jr., seems to have succeeded. From his wireless station on shore, Mr. Hammond can make a small, crewless electric launch run hither and yon as he pleases about the harbor of Gloucester, Massachu- setts. The commander and many of the officers of the United States coast artillery corps have carefully in- spected and tested this craft, which promises to be the forerunner of a new and most formidable species of coast defense torpedo. CHAPTER VI FREAKS AND FAILURES DURING the half-century following the death of Ful- ton, scarcely a year went by without the designing or launching of a new' man-power submarine. Some of these boats, notably those of the Bavarian Wilhelm Bauer, were surprisingly good, others were most amazingly bad, but none of them led to anything better. Inventor after i iventor wasted his substance discovering what Van Drebel, Bushnell, and Fulton had known before him, only to die and have the same facts painfully rediscovered by some one on the other side of the earth. A striking example of this lack of progress is Hal- stead's Intelligent Whale. Built for the United States navy at New York, in the winter of 18645, this craft is no more modern and much less efficient than Fulton's Nautilus of 1 80 1. The Intelligent Whale is a fat, cigar- shaped, iron vessel propelled by a screw cranked by man- power and submerged by dropping two heavy anchors to the bottom and then warping the boat down to any de- sired depth. A diver can then emerge from a door in the submarine's bottom, to place a mine under a hostile ship. It was not until 1872 that the Intelligent Whale was sent on a trial trip in Newark Bay. Manned by an utterly in- experienced and very nervous crew, the clumsy submarine got entirely out of control and had to be hauled up by a 56 Freaks and Failures 57 cable that had been thoughtfully attached to her before she went down. Fortunately no lives had been lost, but the wildest stories were told and printed, till the imaginary death-roll ran up to forty-nine. The Intel- ligent Whale was hauled up on dry land and can still be seen on exhibition at the corner of Third Street and Perry Avenue in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Lack of motive-power was the reason why man-sized submarines lagged behind their little automatic brethren, the Whitehead torpedoes. Compressed air was just the thing for a spurt, but when two Frenchmen, Captain Bourgois and M. Brun, built the Plongeur, a steel sub- marine 146 feet long and 12 feet in diameter, at Roche- fort in 1863, and fitted it with an eighty-horse-power, compressed-air engine, they discovered that the storage- flasks emptied themselves too quickly to permit a voyage of any length. The Plongeur also proved that while you can sink a boat to the bottom by filling her ballast-tanks or make her rise to the surface by emptying them, you cannot make her float suspended between two bodies of water except by holding her there by some mechanical means. Without anything of the kind, the Plongeur kept bouncing up and down like a rubber ball. Once her inventors navi- gated her horizontally for some distance, only to find that she had been sliding on her stomach along the soft muddy bottom of a canal. Better results were obtained after the Plongeur was fitted with a crude pair of diving- planes. But the inefficiency of her compressed-air en- gine caused her to be condemned and turned into a water tank. Freaks and Failures 59 I Electricity was first applied in 1861 by another French- an, named Olivier Riou. This is the ideal motive- power for underwater boats, and it was at this time that Jules Verne described the ideal submarine in his immortal story of " Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea." But before we can have a Nautilus like Captain Nemo's we must discover an electric storage battery of unheard-of lightness and capacity. There was a great revival of French interest in elec- tric submarines after Admiral Aube, who was a lifelong :fefcd==: Le' Plongeur. submarine " fan/' became minister of marine in 1886. In spite of much ridicule and opposition, he authorized the construction of a small experimental vessel of this type called the Gymnote. She was a wild little thing that did everything short of turning somersaults when she dived, but she was enough of a success to be followed by a larger craft named, after the great engineer who had designed her predecessor, the Gustave Zede. :< The history of the Gustarue Zede shows how much in earnest the French were in the matter of submarines. When she was first launched she was a failure in almost 60 The Story of the Submarine every respect, and it was only after some years, during which many alterations and improvements were carried out, that she became a serviceable craft. At first noth- ing would induce the Gustave Zede to quit the surface, and when at last she did plunge she did it so effectually that she went down to the bottom in 10 fathoms of water at an angle of 30 degrees. The committee of engineers were on board at the time, and it speaks well for their patriotism that they did not as a result of their unpleasant experience condemn the Gustaue Zede and advise the government to spend no more money on submarine craft." 1 Twenty-nine other electric submarines were built for the French navy between 1886 and 1901. During the same period, a French gentleman named M. Goubet built and experimented with two very small electric sub- marines, each of which was manned by two men, who sat back to back on a sort of settee stuffed with machinery. Little or big, all these French boats had the same fatal defect : lack of power. Their storage batteries, called on to propel them above, as well as below, the surface, be- came exhausted after a few hours' cruising. They were as useless for practical naval warfare as an electric run- about would be to haul guns or carry supplies in Flanders. But if compressed-air and electricity were too quickly exhausted, gasoline or petroleum was even less practicable for submarine navigation. To set an oil-engine, that derives its power from the explosion of a mixture of oil-vapor and air, at work in a small closed space like the interior of a submarine, would soon make it uninhabit- 1 Herbert C. Fyf e, " Submarine Warfare," p. 269. Freaks and Failures 61 able. While Mr. Holland was puzzling how to overcome this difficulty, in the middle eighties, a Swedish inventor named Nordenfeldt was building submarines to be run by steam-power. Mr. Nordenfeldt, who is remembered to-day as the in- ventor of the famous gun that bears his name, had taken up the idea of an English clergyman named Garett, who in 1878 had built a submarine called the Resurgam, or " I Shall Rise." Garett's second boat, built a year later, had a steam-engine. When the vessel was submerged, the smoke-stack was closed by a sliding panel, the furnace doors were shut tight, and the engine run by the steam given off by a big tank full of bottled-up hot water. Nordenfeldt improved this system till his hot-water tanks gave off enough steam to propel his boat beneath the sur- face for a distance of fourteen miles. He also rediscovered and patented Bushnell's device for submerging a boat by pushing it straight down and holding it under with a vertical propellor. His first sub- marine had two of these, placed in sponsons or projec- tions on either side of the center of the hull. The Nor- denfeldt boats, with their cigar-shaped hulls and pro- jecting smoke-stacks, looked like larger editions of the Civil War Davids, and like them, could be submerged by taking in water-ballast till only a strip of deck with the funnel and conning-tower projected above the surface. Then the vertical propellors would begin to revolve and force the boat straight down on an even keel. Mr. Nor- denfeldt insisted with great earnestness that this was the only safe and proper way to submerge a submarine. If you tried to steer it downward with any kind of driving- 62 The Story of the Submarine planes, he declared, then the boat was liable to keep on descending, before you could pull its head up, till it either struck the bottom or was crushed in by the pressure of too great a depth of water. There was a great deal of truth in this, but Mr. Nordenfeldt failed to realize that if one of his vertical propellors pushed only a little harder Steam Submarine Nordenfeldt II, at Constantinople, 1887. Ob- serve vertical-acting propellors on deck. Reproduced from " Submarine Navigation, Past and Present " by Alan H. Burgoyne, by permission of E. P. Button & Company than the other, then the keel of his own submarine was going to be anything but even. The first Nordenfeldt boat was launched in 1886 and bought by Greece, after a fairly successful trial in the Bay of Salamis. Two larger and more powerful sub- marines : Nordenfeldt II and ///, were promptly ordered Freaks and Failures 63 by Greece's naval rival Turkey. Each of these was 125 feet long, or nearly twice the length of the Greek boat, and each carried its two vertical propellers on deck, one forward and the other aft. Both boats were shipped in sections to Constantinople in 1887, but only Nordenfeldt II was put together and tried. She was one of the first submarines to be armed with a bow torpedo-tube for discharging Whiteheads, and as a surface torpedo-boat, she was a distinct success. But when they tried to navi- gate her under water there was a circus. No sooner did one of the crew take two steps forward in the engine-room than down went the bow. The hot water in the boilers and the cold water in the ballast- tanks ran downhill, increasing the slant still further. English engineers, Turkish sailors, monkey-wrenches, hot ashes, Whitehead torpedoes, and other movables came tumbling after, till the submarine was nearly standing on her head, with everything inside packed into the bow like toys in the toe of a Christmas stocking. The little vertical propellers pushed and pulled and the crew clawed their way aft, till suddenly up came her head, down went her tail, and everything went gurgling and clattering down to the other end. Nordenfeldt II was a perpetual see-saw, and no mortal power could keep her on an even keel. Once they succeeded in steadying her long enough to fire a torpedo. Where it went to, no man can tell, but the sudden lightening of the bow and the recoil of the discharge made the submarine rear up and sit down so hard that she began to sink stern foremost. The water was blown out of her ballast tanks by steam-pres- sure, and the main engine started full speed ahead, till n 64 The Story of the Submarine she shot up to the surface like a flying-fish. The Turkish naval authorities, watching the trials from the shores of the Golden Horn, were so impressed by these antics that they bought the boat. But it was impossible to keep a crew on her, for every native engineer or seaman who was sent on board prudently deserted on the first dark night. So the Nordenfeldt II rusted away till she fell to pieces, long before the Allied fleets began the forcing of the Dardanelles. Fantastic though their performances seem to us to- day, these submarines represent the best work of some of the most capable inventors and naval engineers of the nineteenth century. With them deserve to be mentioned the boats of the Russian Drzewiecki and the Spaniard Peral. Failures though they were, they taught the world many valuable lessons about the laws controlling the ac- tions of submerged bodies. But many of the underwater craft invented between 1850 and 1900 can be classified only as freaks. Most of them, fortunately, were designed but never built, and those that were launched miraculously refrained from drowning any of their crews. There were submarines armed with steam-driven gimlets : the " nimble tail, Made like an auger, with which tail she wriggles, Betwixt the ribs of a ship and sinks it straight," that Ben Jonson playfully ascribed to Van Drebel. Dr. Lacomme, in 1869, proposed a submarine railroad from Calais to Dover, with tracks laid on the bottom of the Channel and cars that could cast off their wheels and 66 The Story of the Submarine rise to the surface in case of accident. Lieutenant Andre Constantin designed, during the siege of Paris, a boat to be submerged by drawing in pistons working in large cylinders open to the water. A vessel was actually built on this principle in England in 1888, and submerged in Tilbury Docks, where the soft mud at the bottom choked the cylinders so that the pistons could not be driven out again and the boat was brought up with considerable dif- ficulty. Two particularly delirious inventors claimed that their submarines could also be used as dirigible bal- loons. Boucher's underwater boat of 1886 was to have gills like a fish, so that it need never rise to the surface for air, and was further adorned with spring-buffers on the bottom, oars, a propellor under the center of the keel, and a movable tail for sculling the vessel forward. There were submarines with paddle-wheels, submarines with fins, and submarines with wings. A Venezuelan dentist, Senor Lacavalerier, invented a double-hulled, cigar-shaped boat, whose outer hull was threaded like a screw, and by revolving round the fixed inner hull, bored its way through the water. But he had been an- ticipated and outdone by Apostoloff, a Russian, who not only designed a submarine on the same principle but in- tended it to carry a large cabin suspended on davits above the surface of the water, and declared that his vessel would cross the Atlantic at an average speed of in knots an hour. As late as 1898 the Spanish government, neglecting the promising little electric boat built ten years before by Senor Peral, was experimenting with two highly impossible submarines, one of which was to be propelled 68 The Story of the Submarine by a huge clock-spring, while the other was perfectly round. Needless to say, neither the sphere nor the toy boat ever encountered the American fleet. At the same time, the United States government de- clined to accept the war services of the already prac- ticable boats of the two American inventors who were about to usher in the present era of submarine war- fare: Simon Lake and John P. Holland. CHAPTER VII JOHN .P. HOLLAND WHEN the Merrimac rammed the Cumberland, burned the Congress, and was fought to a stand- still next day by the little Monitor, all the 'world realized that there had been a revolution in naval warfare. The age of the wooden warship was gone forever, the day of the ironclad had come. And a twenty-year-old Irish school-teacher began to wonder what would be the next revolution ; what new craft might be invented that would dethrone the ironclad. This young Irishman's name was John P. Holland, and he decided to devote his life to the perfection of the submarine. Like Robert Fulton, Admiral Von Tirpitz, and the Frenchman who built the Rotterdam Boat in 1652, Hol- land relied on submarines to break the power of the British fleet. Though born a British subject, in the little village of Liscannor, County Clare in the year 1842, he had seen too many of his fellow countrymen starved to death or driven into exile not to hate the stupid tyranny that characterized England's rule of Ireland in those bit- ter, far-off days. He longed for the day of Ireland's in- dependence, and that day seemed to be brought much nearer by the American Civil War.. Not only had many thousand brave Irish-Americans become trained veterans 69. 70 The Story of the Submarine but Great Britain and the United States had been brought to the verge of war by the sinking of American ships by the Alabama and other British-built, Confederate commerce-destroyers. When that Anglo-American war broke out, there would be an army ready to come over and free Ireland if only the troublesome British navy could be put out of the way. And already the English were launching ironclad after ironclad to replace their now useless steam-frigates and ships-of-the-line. It is no use trying to outbuild or outfight the British navy above The Holland No. i. Designed to carry a torpedo and fix it to the bottom of a ship, on the general principle of Bushnell's Turtle. Drawn by Lieutenant F. M. Barber, U. S. N., in 1875. water, and John P. Holland realized this in 1862, as sev- eral kings and emperors have, before or since. Though his friends in Cork kept laughing at him, Hol- land worked steadily on his plans for a submarine boat, throughout the sixties. Presently he came to America and obtained a job as school-teacher in Paterson, New Jersey. There he built and launched his first submarine in 1875. It was a sharp-pointed, little, cigar-shaped af- fair, only sixteen feet long and two feet in diameter amidships. This craft was designed to carry a torpedo and fix it to the bottom of a ship, on the general principle John P. Holland 71 of Bushnell's Turtle. It was divided into four compart- ments, with air-chambers fore and aft. Air-pipes led to where Holland sat in the middle, with his head in a respirator shaped like a diver's helmet, and his feet work- ing pedals that turned the propellor. There was nothing revolutionary about this Holland No. i. A similar underwater bicycle is said to have been invented by Alvary Templo in 1826, and Drzewiecki used one at Odessa in 1877. But Holland used his to teach himself how to build something better. Just as the Wright brothers learned how to build and fly aero- planes by coasting down through the air from the tops of the Kitty Hawk sand-hills in their motorless " glider/' so John P. Holland found how to make and navigate submarines by diving under the surface of the Passaic River and adjacent waters, and swimming around there in his No. I and her successors. The Holland No. 2 was launched in 1877 and became immediately and prophetically stuck in the mud. She had a double hull, the space between being used as a bal- last-tank, whose contents leaked constantly into the in- terior, and she was driven intermittently by a four horse- power petroleum engine of primitive design. After a series of trials that entertained his neighbors and taught the inventor that the best place for a single horizontal rudder is the stern, Holland took the engine out of the boat and sank her under the Falls Bridge, where she lies to this day. He then entered into negotiations with the Fenian Brotherhood, a secret society organized for the purpose of setting up an Irish republic by militant methods. 72 The Story of the Submarine Though not a Fenian himself, Holland was thoroughly in sympathy with the brotherhood, and offered to show them how they could get round, or rather under, the British navy. You may have seen a once-familiar litho- graph of a green-painted superdreadnought of strange design flying the Crownless Harp, and named the Irish battleship Emerald Isle. The only real Irish warships of modern times, however, were the two submarines Hol- land persuaded the Fenians to have him build at their expense. Rear- Admiral Philip Hichborn, former Chief Con- structor, U.S.N., said of these two boats: " She (the earlier one) was the first submarine since Bushnell's time employing water ballast and always re- taining buoyancy, in which provision was made to insure a fixed center of gravity and a fixed absolute weight. Moreover, she was the first buoyant submarine to be steered down and up in the vertical plane by horizontal- rudder action as she was pushed forward by her motor, instead of being pushed up and down by vertical-acting mechanism. 1 Her petroleum engine, provided for mo- tive-power and for charging her compressed-air flasks, was inefficient, and the boat therefore failed as a prac- tical craft; but in her were demonstrated all the chief principles of successful, brain-directed, submarine navi- gation. In 1 88 1, Holland turned out a larger and bet- ter boat in which he led the world far and away in the 1 But Fulton's Nautilus could not possibly have made the dives with which she is credited except by the use of the horizontal rudders which she possessed in conjunction with the push of her man-power propeller. Holland had carefully studied the plans and letters of Bushnell and Fulton. John P. Holland 73 solution of submarine problems, and for a couple of years demonstrated that he could perfectly control his craft in the vertical plane. Eventually, through financial compli- cations, she was taken to New Haven, where she now is. Political as well as financial complications caused the Photo by Brown Bros. The Fenian Ram. (Photographed by Mr. Simon Lake, in the shed at New Haven.) internment of this submarine, which a New York re- porter, with picturesque inaccuracy, called the Fenian Ram. The Irish at home were by this time thinking less of fighting for independence and more for peacefully obtaining home rule, while the arbitration and payment of the " Alabama claims " by Great Britain had removed all danger of a war between that country and the United 74 The Story of the Submarine States. Under these circumstances, many of the Fenians felt that it was wasted money for their society to spend any more of its funds on warships it could never find use for. This led to dissensions which culminated in a party of Fenians seizing the Ram and taking it to a shed on the premises of one of their members at New Haven, where it has remained ever since. But the construction and performances of this sub- marine, and of several others which he soon afterwards built for himself, won Holland such a reputation that when Secretary Whitney decided in 1888 that submarines would be a good thing for the United States navy, the great Philadelphia ship-building firm of Cramps sub- mitted two designs: Holland's and Nordenfeldt's, and the former won the award. But after nearly twelve months had been spent in settling preliminary details, and when a contract for building an experimental boat was just about to be awarded, there came a change of ad- ministration and the matter was dropped. This was a great disappointment for Holland, and the next four or five years were lean ones for the inventor. He had built five boats and designed a sixth without their having brought him a cent of profit. It was not until March 3, 1893, that Congress appropriated the money for the construction of an experimental submarine, and inventors were invited to submit their designs. By this time John P. Holland had not only spent all his own money, but all he could borrow from his relatives and friends. To make matters worse, the country was then passing through a financial panic, when very few people had any money to lend or invest. And all the security John P. Holland 75 Holland could offer was his faith in the future of the submarine, which at that time was a stock joke of the comic papers, together with those other two crack-brained projects, the flying-machine and the horseless carriage. " I know I can win that competition and build that boat for the Government," said Holland to a young law- yer whom he had met at lunch in a downtown New York restaurant, " if I can only raise the money to pay the fees and other expenses. I need exactly $347.19." " What do you want the nineteen cents for ? " asked the other. " To buy a certain kind of ruler I need for drawing my plans." " If you Ve figured it out as closely as all that," re- plied the lawyer, " I '11 take a chance and lend you the money." He did so, receiving in exchange a large block of stock in the new- formed Holland Torpedo-boat Company. To-day his stock is worth several million dollars. Mr. Holland won the competition and after two years' delay his company began the construction of the Plunger. This submarine was to be propelled by steam while run- ning on the surface and by storage-batteries when sub- merged. Double propulsion of this type had been first installed by a Southerner named Alstitt on a submarine he built at Mobile, Alabama, in 1863, and theoretically discussed in a book written in 1887 by Commander Hovgaard of the Danish navy. Though a great im- provement on any type of single propulsion, this system had many drawbacks, the chief of which was the length of time from fifteen to thirty minutes that it took 76 The Story of the Submarine for the oil-burning surface engine to cool and rid itself of hot gases before it was safe to seal the funnel and dive. Though the Plunger was launched in 1897, she was never finished, for Mr. Holland foresaw her defects. He persuaded the Government to let his company pay back the money already spent on the Plunger and build an entirely new boat. Holland No. 8 was built accordingly, but failed to work properly. Finally came the ninth and last of her line, the first of the modern submarines, the world-famous Holland. She was a chunky little porpoise of a boat, 10 feet 7 inches deep and only 53 feet 10 inches long, and look- ing even shorter and thicker than she was because of the narrow, comb-like superstructure running fore and aft along the deck. But her shape and dimensions were the results of twenty-five years' experience. Built at Mr. Lewis Nixon's shipyards at Elizabethport, New Jer- sey, the Holland was launched in the early spring of 1898, between the blowing-up of the Maine and the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. But though John P. Holland repeatedly begged to be allowed to take his sub- marine into Santiago Harbor and torpedo Cervera's fleet, the naval authorities at Washington were too conserva- tive-minded to let him try. " United States warship goes down with all hands ! " the small boys (I was one of them) used to shout at this time, and then explain that it was only another dive of the " Holland submarine." Strictly speaking, the Holland was not a United States warship till October 13, 1900, when she was formally placed in commission 78 The Story of the Submarine under the command of Lieutenant Harry H. Caldwell, who had been on her during many of the exhaustive series of trials in which the little undersea destroyer proved to even the most conservative officers of our navy that the day of the submarine had come at last. Propelled on the surface by a fifty horse-power gaso- line motor, the Holland had a cruising radius of 1500 miles at a speed of seven knots an hour. Submerged, she was driven by electric storage-batteries. This effec- tive combination of oil-engines with an electric motor is . one of John P. Holland's great discoveries, and is used in every submarine to-day. When her tanks were filled till her deck was flush with the water, and the two hori- zontal rudders at the stern began to steer her down- wards, the Holland could dive to a depth of twenty-eight feet in five seconds. She had no periscope, for that in- strument was then crude and unsatisfactory. To take aim, the captain of the Holland had to make a quick " porpoise dive," up to the surface and down again, ex- posing the conning-tower for the few seconds needed to take aim and judge the distance to the target. Though by this means the Holland succeeded in getting within striking-distance of the Kearsarge and the New York without being detected, during the summer manoeuvers of the Atlantic fleet off Newport in 1900, it has proved fatal to the only submarine that has tried it in actual warfare (see page 160). Less than half the length of the Nordenfeldt II, the Holland did not pitch or see-saw when submerged. Each of her crew of six sat on a low stool beside the machinery he was to operate, and there was no moving John P. Holland 79 about when below the surface. Neither did the boat stand on her tail when a torpedo was discharged from the bow-tube, for the loss of weight was immediately compensated by admitting an equivalent amount of water into a tank. Originally the Holland had a stern torpedo- tube as well, besides a pneumatic gun for throwing eighty pounds of dynamite half a mile through the air, but these were later removed. How the Holland impressed our naval officers at that time is best shown in the oft-quoted testimony of Ad- miral Dewey before the naval committee of the House of Representatives in 1900. " Gentlemen, I saw the operation of the boat down off Mount Vernon the other day. Several members of this committee were there. I think we were all very much impressed with its performance. My aid, Lieutenant Caldwell, was on board. The boat did everything that the owners proposed to do. I said then, and I have said it since, that if they had had two of those things at Manila, I could never have held it with the squadron I had. The moral effect to my mind, it is infinitely su- perior to mines or torpedoes or anything of the kind. With those craft moving under water it would wear people out. With two of those in Galveston all the navies of the world could not blockade the place." The Holland was purchased by the United States Gov- ernment on April n, 1900, for $150,000. She had cost her builders, exclusive of any office expenses or salaries of officers, $236,615.43. But it had been a profitable in- vestment for the Holland Torpedo-boat Company, for on August 25, the United States navy contracted with 8o The Story of the Submarine it for the construction of six more submarines. And in the autumn of the same year, though it was not an- nounced to the public till March i, 1901, five other Photo by Brown Bros. John P. Holland. Hollands were ordered through the agency of Vickers Sons, and Maxim by the British admiralty. Soon every maritime nation was either buying Hollands or paying John P. Holland 81 royalties on the inventor's patents, and building bigger, faster, better submarines every year. The original Holland had outlived her fighting value when she was condemned by Secretary Daniels in June, 1915, to be broken up and sold as junk. There is still room in the Brooklyn Navy Yard for that worthless and meaningless relic, the Intelligent Whale, but there was none for the Holland submarine, whose place in his- tory is with the Clairmont and the Monitor. John P. Holland withdrew in 1904 from the Holland Torpedo-boat Company, which has since become merged with the Electric Boat Company, that builds most of the submarines for the United States navy, and many for the navies of foreign powers. Like most other great inventive geniuses, Holland was not a trained engineer, and it was perhaps inevitable that disputes should have arisen between him and his associates as to the carrying out of his ideas. His last years were embittered by the belief that the submarines of to-day were distorted and worthless developments of his original type. Whether or not he was mistaken, only time can tell. That to John P. Holland, more than to any other man since David Bushriell and Robert Fulton, the world owes the modern submarine, cannot be denied. His death, on August 12, 1914, was but little noticed in the turmoil and confusion of the first weeks of the great European War. But when the naval histories of that war are written, his name will not be forgotten. CHAPTER VIII 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 i&93- That invitation had been issued and an appropriation of $200,000 made by Congress on the recommendation of Commander Folger, chief of ord- nance, after he had seen a trial trip on Lake 'Michigan of an underwater boat invented by Mr. George C. Baker. This was an egg-shaped craft, propelled by a steam en- gine on the surface and storage-batteries when sub- merged, and controlled by t$vo adjustable propellers, mounted on either side of the boat on a shaft running athwartship. These screws could be turned in any direc- tion, 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 propellers : 82 The Lake Submarines 83 twin screws aft for propulsion, a single screw working in an open transverse tunnel forward, 1 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 Submerged W.L Courtesy International Marine Engineering. Lake 1893 Design as Submitted to the U. S. Navy Department. weights, a detachable " emergency keel," and a diving compartment. On deck were a folding periscope and a " gun arranged in watertight, revolving turret for de- fense 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 stor- age batteries. But the two remaining features of the 1893 model Lake submarine were extremely unusual. 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 1 Mr. J. F. Waddington used vertical propellers in tubes through the vessel for keeping her on an even keel or submerging when stationary, on a small electric submarine he invented, built and demonstrated at Liverpool in 1886. 84 The Story of the Submarine 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 caus- Courtesy of Mr. Simon Lake. The Argonaut Junior. ing 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. The Lake Submarines 85 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." 2 Enough people were convinced by the performances of this simple craft of the soundness of Mr. Lake's the- ories that the inventor was able to raise sufficient capital to build a larger submarine. This boat, which was de- signed 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 2 Quotations in this chapter are from Mr. Lake's articles published in " International Marine Engineering," and are here reprinted by his kind permission. 86 The Story of the Submarine 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 com- partment 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 sur- face, 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. The Argonaut had no hydroplanes or horizontal rud- ders 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 The Lake Submarines 87 ?then hauled in, and the vessel is thus hauled to the bot- ^tom, until she comes to rest on her three wheels. The tweights are then hauled into their pockets in the keel, and it is evident that she is resting on the wheels with a weight Jfequal to the difference between her buoyancy with the .weights at the bottom, and the weights in their pockets, tpr 500 pounds Now this weight may be increased or Diminished, either by admitting more water into the bal- Courtesy of International Marine Engineering. Argonaut as Originally Built. ast tanks or by pumping some out. Thus it will be seen that we have perfect control of the vessel in submerging 'tier, as we may haul her down as fast or as slow as we ^please, and by having her rest on the bottom with sufficient height to prevent the currents from moving her out of her ^bourse we may start up our propeller or driving-wheels nd drive her at will over the bottom, the same as a tricycle ^js propelled on the surface of the earth in the upper air. The Story of the Submarine 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 unk form." During this cruise under the waters of Chesapeake Bay/ the Argonaut came on the wrecks of several sunken ves- "'U, which Mr. Lake or some member of his crew ex- anr'v ' u rough the open door in the bottom of the diving- compartrnen;. The air inside was kept at a sufficiently high pre:-ure t 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. Some- times 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 es- tablished 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 The Lake Submarines 89 municate with German spies in London, Dublin, and Liv- erpool. ) 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 in- ventor 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 re- peatedly 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 buoy- ancy 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 har- bor." Mr. Lake then sent the Argonaut to a Brooklyn ship- yard, where her original cigar-shaped hull was cut in half, 90 The Story of the Submarine and lengthened twenty feet, after which a light ship- shaped superstructure was built over her low sloping top- sides. To keep it from being crushed in by water pres- sure when submerged, scupper-like openings were cut in the thin plating where it joined the stout, pressure-resist- ing 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 D D Courtesy of International Marine Engineering. Argonaut as Rebuilt. 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 appear- ance, 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 Ar- The Lake Submarines 91 gonaut 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 sub- marine more seaworthy as a surface-craft. Until then, most inventors and designers of undersea boats had con- fined their attentions to the problems of underwater navi- gation 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 bat- teries when submerged. To distinguish this sea-going torpedo-boat, that could be submerged, from the earlier and simpler submarines designed and engined for under- water 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 es- sential superstructure is easily proved by dates. The 92 The Story of the Submarine 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 superstruc- ture " being adapted to be filled with water when the ves- sel 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 hid- den 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 sub- marine 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. 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 94 The Story of the Submarine torpedo boats or ordinary submarines. The smooth- backed bottom-worker of this special type would slip un- der the netting like a cat under a bead portiere. 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 Courtesy of Mr. Simon Lake. Cross-section of Diving-compartment on a Lake Submarine. 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 com- mander succeeded in keeping to the deep channel by dead reckoning a process akin to flying blindfolded in The Lake Submarines 95 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 bot- tom of an enemy's harbor as long as its supplies held out. As yet, however, we have not heard of any such ex- ploits 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 de- signed 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 re- mains level. The first method with its vertical propel- 96 The Story of the Submarine lers 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 dis- tances forward and aft of the center of gravity and buoy- ancy 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 sev- eral 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 nowa- days 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 ap- proached each other very closely: in fact, speaking gen- erally, submarines all over the world now have two or more sets of diving-rudders; the most general arrange- ment is one pair forward and one pair aft; in some types The Lake Submarines 97 three pairs are fitted, but this arrangement is more un- usual. " In general it may be said then that modern sub- marines 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." 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 ex- 98 The Story of the Submarine perimental boat, 1894; built Argonaut, 1897 (first sub- marine to operate successfully in the open sea) ; has de- signed and built many submarine torpedo boats for the United States and foreign countries; spent several years Mr. Simon Lake. in Russia, Germany, and England, designing, building, and acting in an advisory capacity in construction of sub- marine boats. Also inventor of submarine apparatus for locating and recovering sunken vessels and their cargoes ; submarine apparatus for pearl and sponge fishing, heavy The Lake Submarines 99 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) , Schffsbautechnische Gesellschaft (Berlin). Mason. Clubs, Engineers' (New York), Al- gonquin, (Bridgeport, Connecticut). Home, Milford, Connecticut. Office, Bridgeport, Connecticut/ 7 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 inven- tions in Germany, his clients were perfectly free to build " Lake type " submarines there without paying him any- thing and were going to do so. The famous Krupp-built German submarines that are playing so prominent a part in the present war are there- fore 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. CHAPTER IX A TRIP IN A MODERN SUBMARINE LIEUTENANT PERRY SCOPE, commanding the X-class flotilla, was sitting in his comfortable little office on the mother-ship Ozark, when I entered with a letter from the secretary of the navy, giving me permis- sion to go on board a United States submarine. With- out such authorization no civilian may set foot on the narrow decks of our undersea destroyers, though he may visit a battleship with no more formality than walking into a public park. " We 're too small and full of machinery to hold a crowd/' explained the lieutenant, " and the crowd would n't enjoy it if they came. No nice white decks for the girls to dance on or fourteen-inch guns for them to sit on while they have their pictures taken. Besides, everything's oily you'd better put on a suit of over- alls instead of those white flannels." There were plenty of spare overalls on the Ozark, for she was the mother-ship of a family of six young sub- marines. Built as a coast defense monitor shortly after the Spanish War, she had long since been retired from the fighting-line, and was now the floating headquarters, dor- mitory, hospital, machine-shop, bakery, and general store for the six officers and the hundred and fifty men of the flotilla. 100 !O2 The Story of the Submarine Moored alongside the parent-ship, the submarine X~4 was filling her fuel-tanks with oil through a pipe-line, in preparation for the day's cruise and target-practice I was to be lucky enough to witness. Two hundred and fifty feet long, flat-decked and straight-stemmed, she looked, except for the lack of funnels, much more like a surface- going torpedo-boat than the landsman's conventional idea of a submarine. " I thought she would be cigar-shaped," I said as we went on board. " She is underneath," answered Lieutenant Scope. " What you see is only a light-weight superstructure or false hull built over the real one. See those holes in it, just above the water line? They are to flood the super- structure with whenever we submerge, otherwise the water pressure would crush in these thin steel plates like veneering. But it makes us much more seaworthy for surface work, gives us a certain amount of deckroom, and stowage-space for various useful articles, such as this." Part of the deck rose straight up into the air, like the top of a freight-elevator coming up through the side- walk. Beneath the canopy thus formed was a short-bar- reled, three-inch gun. " Fires a twelve-pound shell, like the field-pieces the landing-parties take ashore from the battleships," ex- plained the naval officer, as he trained the vicious-looking little cannon all around the compass. " Small enough to be handy, big enough to sink any merchant ship afloat, or smash anything that flies." A Trip in a Modern Submarine 103 Here he pointed the muzzle straight up as if gunning for hostile aeroplanes. " And please observe," he concluded, as the gun sank down into its lair again, " how that armored hatch- cover protects the gun-crew from shrapnel or falling bombs." I followed him to the conning-tower, or, as he always spoke of it, the turret. The little round bandbox of the Holland has developed into a tall, tapering structure, sharply pointed fore and aft to lessen resistance when run- ning submerged. Above the turret was a small navigat- ing-bridge, screened and roofed with canvas, where a red- haired quartermaster stood by the steering-wheel, and saluted as we came up the ladder. The lieutenant put the engine-room telegraph over to " Start," and a mighty motor throbbed underneath our feet. Then the mooring was cast off, the telegraph put over to " Slow Ahead," and the X-j. put out to sea. " How long a cruise could she make? " I asked. " Four thousand miles is her radius," answered her commander. " Back in. 1915, ten American-designed sub- marines crossed from Canada to England under their own power." " Yet it is only a few years since we were told that submarines could only be used for coast defense, unless they were carried inside their mother-ships and launched near the scene of battle," I remarked. " Or that each battleship should carry a dinky little submarine on deck and lower it over the side like a steam-launch." " People said the same thing about torpedo-boats," 104 The Story of the Submarine agreed the lieutenant ; " they began as launches now look at the size of that destroyer smoking along over there. Ericsson thought that any ironclad bigger than a Civil War monitor would be an unwieldy monster. Even John P. Holland fought tooth and nail against increasing the length of his submarines. This boat of mine is five times the length of the old Holland, but she 's only a primitive ancestor of the perfect submarine of the fu- ture." " She is n't a submarine at all," I replied presently, as the X~4 swept on down the coast at a good twenty-two knots, her foredeck buried in foam and the sea-breeze singing through the antennae of her wireless. " She 's nothing but a big motor-boat/' " And she 's got some big motors," replied the lieuten- ant. " Better step below and have a look at them." I went down through the open hatchway to the interior of the boat and aft to the engine-room. There I found two long, many-cylindered oil-engines of strange design, presided over by a big blond engineer whose grease- spotted dungarees gave no hint as to his rating. " What kind of machines are these? " I shouted above the roar they made. " And why do you need two of them?" " Diesel heavy-oil engines/' he answered. " One for each propeller." " What is the difference between one of these and the gasoline engine of a motor-car? I know a little about that." "Do you know what the carburetor is?" asked the engineer. Li - "( w w " 3 * ^8.1" 3 If I 3 g^srssg s- i.|#i?:^8^ l^^^s ^ 3 io6 The Story of the Submarine ' That 's where the gasoline is mixed with air, before it goes into the cylinder." The engineer nodded. " The mixture is sucked into the cylinder by the down- stroke of the piston. The up-stroke compresses it, and then the mixture is exploded by an electric spark from the spark-plug. The force of the explosion drives the pis- ton down, and the next stroke up drives out the refuse gases. That 's how an ordinary, four-cycle gasoline motor works. " But the Diesel engine," he continued, " does n't need any carburetor or spark-plug. When the piston makes its first upward or compression-stroke, there is nothing in the cylinder but pure air. This is compressed to a pres- sure of about 500 pounds a square inch and when you squeeze anything as hard as that, you make it mighty hot " " Like a blacksmith pounding a piece of cold iron to a red heat?" I suggested. The engineer nodded again. " That compressed air is so hot that the oil which has been spurted in through an injection-valve is exploded, and drives the piston down on the power-stroke. The waste gases are then blown out by compressed air. There are an air-compressor and a storage tank just for scaveng- ing, or blowing the waste gases out of every three power- cylinders." " What are the advantages of the Diesel over the gaso- line engine ? " " In the first place, it gives more power. You see, three out of every four strokes made by the piston of a A Trip in a Modern Submarine 107 gasoline engine suction-stroke, compression-stroke, and scavenging-stroke waste power instead of producing it. But the Diesel is what we call a two-cycle engine; its piston makes only two trips for each power-stroke. In the second place, it is cheaper, because instead of gasoline it uses heavy, low-price oil. And this makes it much safer, for the heavy oil does not vaporize so easily. The Courtesy of the Electric Boat Company. Auxiliary Switchboard and Electric Cook-stove, in a U. S. Submarine. air in some of the old submarines that used gasoline motors would get so that it was like trying to breathe in- side a carburetor, and there was always the chance of a spark from the electric motors exploding the whole business, and your waking up to find the trained nurse changing your bandages. The German navy refused to build a submarine as long as there was nothing better than gasoline to propel it on the surface. They did n't io8 The Story of the Submarine launch their U-i till 1906, after Dr. Diesel had got his motor into practicable shape. It cost him twenty years of hard work, but without his motor we could n't have the modern submarine. And they 're using it more and more in ocean freighters. There 's a line of motor-ships running to-day between Scandinavia and San Francisco, through the Panama Canal. " Aft of the Diesel, here/' continued the engineer, " is our electric motor, for propelling her when submerged. Reverse it and have it driven by the Diesel engine, and the motor serves as a dynamo to generate electricity for charg- ing the batteries. As long as we can get oil and come to the surface to use it, we can never run short of ' juice.' l " Besides turning the propeller, the electricity from the batteries lights the boat, and turns the ventilating fans, works the air-compressor for the torpedo-tubes, drives all the big and little pumps, runs a lot of auxiliary motors that haul up the anchor, turn the rudders, and do other odd jobs, it heats the boat in cold weather " " And cooks the grub all the year round, don't forget that, Joe," said another member of the crew. " Luncheon is served in the palm room." We ate from a swinging table let down from the ceil- ing of the main- or living-compartment of the submarine, that extended forward from the engine-room to the tiny officers' cabin and the torpedo room in the bows. Tiers of canvas bunks folded up against the walls showed where the crew slept when on a cruise. For lunch that day we had bread baked on the mother-ship, butter out of a can, fried ham, fried potatoes, and coffee hot from a little 1 Electric current. A Trip in a Modern Submarine 109 electric stove such as you can see in the kitchenette of a light-housekeeping apartment on shore. The lieutenant's lunch was carried up to him on the bridge. When the meal was over, most of the men went on deck, and my friend the engineer put a large cigar in his mouth. I Courtesy of the Electric Boat Company. Forward deck of a U. S. Submarine, in cruising trim. took out a box of matches and was about to strike one for his benefit when he stopped me, saying, " Don't ever strike a light in a submarine or a dyna- mite factory. It 's unhealthy." I apologized profusely. " The air is so much better than I had expected that I forgot where I was." " Yes," said the engineer, chewing his unlighted cigar, " there is plenty of good air in a big modern boat like this, running on the surface in calm weather and with lio The Story of the Submarine the main hatch and all ventilators open. But come with us when we 're bucking high seas or running submerged on a breathing-diet of canned air flavored with oil, and you '11 understand why so many good men have been in- valided out of the flotilla with lung-trouble. We 're the only warships without any dogs or parrots or other mas- cots on board, for no animal could endure the air in a submarine." Courtesy of the Electric Boat Company. Same, preparing to submerge. Railing stowed away and bow-rudders extended. " I thought every submarine carried a cage of white mice, because they began to squeak as soon as the air began to get bad and so warned the crew." " That was a crude device of the early days/' replied the engineer. " We don't carry white mice any more, though I believe they still use them in the British navy." I went up on deck, to find that the X~4 had reached the practice-grounds and was being made ready for a A Trip in a Modern Submarine ill dive. Her crew were busy dismantling and stowing away the bridge and the light deck-railing, hauling down the flag, and closing all ventilators and other openings. " How long has it taken you to get ready? " I asked Lieutenant Scope. " Twenty minutes," he answered. " But the real div- ing takes only two minutes. We '11 go below now, sink her to condition, and run her under with the diving rud- ders." " What are those things unfolding themselves on either side of the bows? " I asked. " I thought the diving rud- ders were carried astern." " Modern submarines are so long that they need them both fore and aft," replied the lieutenant. " As you see, the diving rudders fold flat against the side of the boat where they will be out of harm's way when we are run- ning on the surface or lying alongside the mother-ship. Better come below now, for we 're going to dive." We descended into the turret and the hatch was closed. The Diesel engines had already been stopped and the electric motors were now turning the propellers. " Why are those big electric pumps working down there?" I asked. " Pumping water into the ballast-tanks." " But does n't the water run into the tanks anyhow, as soon as you open the valves? " I asked the lieutenant. " Turn a tumbler upside down and force it down into a basin of water," he replied, " and you trap some air in the top of the tumbler, which prevents the water from rising beyond a certain point. The same thing takes place in our tanks, and to fill them we have to force in 112 The Story of the Submarine the water with powerful pumps that compress the air in the tanks to a very small part of its original bulk. This compressed air acts as a powerful spring to drive the water out of the tanks again when we wish to rise. By blowing out the tanks, a submarine can come to the sur- face in twenty seconds or one sixth the time it takes to submerge." " When are we going under? " I asked him. The lieu- tenant looked at his watch and answ r ered, " We have been submerged for the last four minutes." I experienced a feeling of the most profound disap- pointment. Ever since I had been a very small boy I had been looking forward to the time when I should go down in a submarine boat, and now that time had passed with- out my realizing it. " But why did n't I feel the boat tilt when she dived? " I demanded. " Because she went down a very gentle slope, between two and three degrees at the steepest. The only way you could have noticed it would have been to watch these gages." Large dials on the wall of the turret indicated that the X~4 was running on what was practically an even keel at a depth of sixteen feet and under a consequent .water- pressure of 1024 pounds on every square foot of her hull. " How deep could she go? " " One hundred and fifty feet if she had to. The strong inner hull of a modern submarine is built up of three quarter inch plates of the best mild steel and well braced and strengthened from within. But as a rule there is no need of our diving below sixty feet at the A Trip in a Modern Submarine 113 deepest, or far enough to clear the keel of the largest ship. You will notice how the depth-control man is holding her steady by manipulating the forward hori- zontal rudders, just as an aviator steadies his aeroplane." Courtesy of the Electric Boat Company. Depth-control Station, U. S. Submarine. Wheel governing horizontal rudders, gages showing depth, trim, etc. " He must be a strong man to handle those two big horizontal rudders." " He has an electric motor to do the hard work for him, as has the quartermaster steering the course here with the vertical rudder." The same red-headed petty officer that I had noticed on the bridge now grasped the, spokes of a smaller steer- ing-wheel inside the conning-tower. " What is that queer-looking thing whirling round and round in front of him? " I asked. " A Sperry gyroscopic compass," replied the lieutenant. 114 The Story of the Submarine " An ordinary magnetic compass could not be relied on to point in any particular direction if it was shut up in a steel box full of charged electric wires, like the turret of a submarine. We tried to remedy this by building con- ning-towers of copper, till Mr. Sperry perfected a compass that has no magnetic needle, but operates on the principle of the gyroscope. You know that a heavy, rapidly rotating wheel resists any tendency to being shifted relative to space?" " Yes/' " The earth, revolv- ing on its axis, is noth- ing but a big gyroscope that is why it stays put. The little gyro- scope on this compass spins at right angles to the revolution of the earth and so keeps in a Cross-section of a Periscope. due north and south line. But the frame it is mounted on turns with the ship, so the relative positions of the frame and the gyro- axis show in what direction the submarine is heading." " And you can see what 's ahead of you through the periscope. Who invented that? " " The idea is a very old one. Certain French and A Trip in a Modern Submarine 115 Dutch inventors designed submarines with periscopes as long ago as the eighteen-fifties. In the Civil War, the light-draft river-monitor Osage had attached to her turret a crude periscope made by her chief engineer, Thomas Doughty, out of a piece of three-inch steam-pipe with holes cut at each of its ends at opposite sides, and pieces of looking-glass inserted as reflectors. By means of this instrument her captain, now Rear-Admiral, Thomas O. Self ridge, was able to look over the high banks of the Red River when the Osage had run aground in a bend and was being attacked by three thousand dismounted Confederate cavalry, who were repulsed with the loss of four hundred killed or wounded by the fire of the moni- tor's 1 1 -inch guns, directed through the periscope. 2 " But as late as 1900 the periscope was so crude and un- satisfactory an instrument that John P. Holland would have nothing to do with it. The credit for bringing it to its present efficiency belongs chiefly to the Germans, who kept many of their scientists working together on the solution of the difficult problems of optics that were involved. " By turning this little crank," the lieutenant continued, " I can revolve the reflector at the top of the tube. This reflector contains a prism which reflects the image of the object in view down through a system of lenses in the tube to another prism here at the bottom, where the ob- server sees it through an eyepiece and telescope lenses." I looked into the eyepiece, which was so much like that of an old-fashioned stereoscope that I felt that it, too, ought to work back and forth after the manner of a 2 From an article by Admiral Selfridge in the " Outlook." n6 The Story of the Submarine slide trombone. I found myself looking out over the broad blue waters of a sunlit bay. I noticed a squall blackening the surface of the water, a catboat running before it, and the gleam of the brass instruments of the band playing on the after deck of a big white excursion steamer half a mile away. " I can almost imagine I can hear the music of that band/' I exclaimed. " The optical illusion is perfect/' " It has to be," rejoined the lieutenant. "If the image were in the least distorted or out of perspective, we could n't aim straight." " What do you do when the periscope is wet with spray ? " I asked him. " Wash the glass with a jet of alcohol and dry it from the inside with a current of warm air passing up and down the tube. A periscope-tube is double: the outer one passing through a stuffing-box in the hull, and the in- ner tube revolving inside it. The old-fashioned single tubes were too hard to revolve and the resistance of the water used to bend them aft and cause leakage. We can raise and lower the periscopes at will, and all our larger boats, have two of them, so that they can keep a look- " out in two directions at once, besides having a spare eye in case the first is put out." " What are those two little things that big naval tug is towing over there? " I inquired. " The target for our torpedo practice," replied Lieu- tenant Scope. " We shall try to put four Whiteheads between those two buoys as the tug tows them past at an unknown range and speed. If you step forward to the torpedo room you can see them loading the tubes." A Trip in a Modern Submarine 117 As I walked forward it occurred to me that the twenty- odd men on board the X-4 seemed to be moving about inside her with perfect freedom, without disturbing her trim. I mentioned this to one of the crew. " It 's the trimming-tanks that keep her level/' he ex- plained. " As we 're .walking forward, our weight in water is being automatically pumped from the trimming- Courtesy of the Electric Boat Company. Forward torpedo-compartment, U. S. Submarine, showing breech- mechanism of four tubes. Round opening above is the escape- hatch. tank in the bow to the one astern. A submarine is just one blamed tank after another. Stand clear of that chain-fall, sir ; they 're loading No. I tube." Stripped to the waist like an old-time gun-crew, four beautifully muscled young gunner's mates were hoisting, with an ingenious arrangement of chains and pulleys, a torpedo from the magazine. The breach of the tube was opened and the long Whitehead thrust in, two flanges on ii8 The Story of the Submarine its sides being fitted into deep grooves in the sides of the tube, so that the torpedo would not spin like a rifle-bullet but be launched on an even keel. The breach was closed, and the men stood by expectantly. " Skipper 's up in the conning-tower, taking aim through the periscope/' explained the man who had told me about trimming-tanks. " The tubes being fixed in the bow, he has to train the whole boat like a gun. Likewise he 's got to figure out how far it is to the target and how fast the tug is towing it, how many seconds it 's going to take the torpedo to get there, and how much he 's got to allow for its being carried off its course by tide and cur- rents. When he gets good and ready, the lieutenant '11 press a little electric button and you '11 hear " " THUD ! " went the compressed air in the tube, and the submarine shuddered slightly with the shock of the re- coil. But that was all. " There she goes ! " said my friend the tank-expert. " As soon as the Whitehead was expelled, a compensation- tank just above the tube was flooded with enough water to make good the loss in weight/' " What keeps the sea-water from rushing into the tube after the torpedo leaves it? " I asked. " A conical-shaped cap on the bow of the boat keeps both tubes closed except when you want to fire one of them. Then the cap, which is pivoted on its upper edge, swings to port or starboard just long enough for the tor- pedo to get clear and swings back before the water can get in." Four of the ten torpedoes carried in the magazine were sped on their way to the unseen target. I returned to A Trip in a Modern Submarine 119 the turret as the wireless operator entered and handed a typewritten slip to Lieutenant Scope, who smiled happily and said to me, " The captain of the tug reports that all four shots were hits and all four torpedoes have been safely re- covered/' I was too astonished to congratulate him on his marks- manship, as I should have done. " How in the name of miracles ! " I gasped. " Can you receive a wireless telegram under the sea? " " By the Fessenden oscillator," he replied, and added to the wireless man, " Take this gentleman below and show him how it works/' " Did you ever have another chap knock two stone to- gether under water when you were taking a dive? " asked the operator. I nodded in vivid recollection. " Then you have some idea how sounds are magnified under water. It is an old idea to put submarine bells down under lighthouses and fit ships with some kind of receiver so that the bells can be heard and warning given when it is too foggy to see the light. The advantage over the old-style bell-buoy lies in the fact that sound travels about four times as fast through water as through air, 3 and goes further and straighter because it is n't deflected by winds or what the aviators call ' air-pockets/ The man who knows most about these things is Professor Fessenden, of the Submarine Signal Company of Boston, 3 The velocity of sound in dry air at a temperature of 32 degrees Fahrenheit is about 1087 feet a second, in water at 44 degrees, about 4708 feet a second. 12O The Story of the Submarine BBBHBBBB Courtesy of the American Magazine. Fessenden oscillator outside the hull of a ship, a modern vessel. The " ear " of who first realized the possibility of telegraphing through water. 4 " Fastened outside the hull of this boat is one of the Fessenden oscillators: a steel disk eighteen inches in diameter, that can be vibrated very rapidly by electricity. 4 The sound of the first gun of the salute fired by the Russian fleet in Cronstadt harbor to celebrate the coronation of Alexander II in 1855 was the signal for the crew of the submerged submarine Le Diable Marin to begin singing the National Anthem. Their voices, accompanied by a band of four pieces, were distinctly heard above the surface. This novel concert had been planned by Wilhelm Bauer, the designer of the submarine and one of the earliest students of under-water acoustics. He succeeded in signaling from one side of the harbor to another by striking a submerged piece of sheet- iron with a hammer. A Trip in a Modern Submarine 121 These vibrations travel through the water, like wireless waves through the ether, till they strike the oscillator on another vessel and set it to vibrating in sympathy. To send a message, I start and stop the oscillator with this key so as to form the dots and dashes of the Morse code. To receive, I sit here with these receivers over my ears and ' listen in/ just like a wireless operator, till I pick up our call ' X-4/ ' X-4/ " " How far can you send a message under water ? " " Ten miles is the furthest I Ve ever sent one. Profes- sor Fessenden has sent messages more than thirty miles. The invention only dates back to 1913 and what it will do in the future, there is no telling/' " Even now, could n't a surface vessel act as eyes for Courtesy of the American Magazine. Professor Fessenden receiving a message sent through several miles of sea-water by his " Oscillator." 122 The Story of the Submarine a whole flotilla of submarines and tell them where to go and when to strike by coaching them through the Fessenden oscillator? " The operator nodded. " We 're doing it to-day, in practice. But don't forget that an enemy's ship carrying a pair of oscillators can hear a submarine coming two miles away. You can make out the beat of a propeller at that distance every time." " But how can you tell how far away and in what direction it is? " " I can't, with a single oscillator like ours. But a ship carries two of them, one on each side of the hull, like the ears on a man's head. And just as a man knows whether a shout he hears comes from the right or left, because he hears it more with one ear than the other, so the skipper of a surface craft can look at the indicator that registers the relative intensity of the vibrations received by the port and starboard oscillators and say, " ' There 's somebody three points off the starboard bow, mile and three quarters away, and heading for us. Nothing in sight, so it must be one of those blamed sub- marines.' " And away he steams, full speed ahead and cutting zigzags. Or maybe he gets his rapid-fire guns ready and watches for Mr. Submarine to rise like the X~4 's do- ing now." Freed of the dead weight of many tons of sea water blown from her ballast-tanks by compressed air, the sub- marine rose to the surface like a balloon. Ventilators and hatch-covers were thrown open and we swarmed up A Trip in a Modern Submarine 123 on deck to fill our grateful lungs with the good sea air. Three motor-boats from the tug throbbed up alongside with the four torpedoes we had discharged. " Those boats wait, one this side of the target, one near it and the third over on the far side, to mark the shots and catch the torpedoes after they rise to the surface at the end of their run/' said Lieutenant Scope. " We very seldom lose a torpedo nowadays. They tell a story about one that dived to the bottom and was driven by the force of its own engines into forty feet of soft mud, where it stayed till it happened to be dug up by a dredger/' The four torpedoes were hoisted aboard, drained of the sea water that had flooded their air-chambers, cleaned and lowered through the torpedo hatch forward down into the magazine. By this time the bridge and railing were again in place and the flags fluttering over the taffrail as the X~4, her day's work done, sped swiftly up the coast to home and mother-ship. CHAPTER X ACCIDENTS AND SAFETY DEVICES VHE following submarines, with all or part of their crews, have been accidentally lost in time of peace : Men Lost ii 26 14 M 13 13 20 13 14 26 3 14 24 15 3 none ii 21 The A- 1 was engaged in manoeuvers off Spithead, Eng- land, when she rose to the surface right under the bows of the fast-steaming Union Castle Liner Berwick Castle. Before anything could be done, the, sharp prow of the steamer had cut a great gash in the thin hull of the sub- marine and sent her to the bottom with all her crew. This was in broad daylight; her sister-ship C-n was 124 Date Name Nationality March 18, 1904 A- 1 British June 20, 1904 Delfin Russian June 8, 1905 A-8 British July 6, 1905 Farfadet French October 16, 1906 Lutin French April 26, 1909 Foca Italian June 12, 1909 Kambala Russian July 14, 1909 C-ii British April 15, 1910 No. 6. Japanese May 26, 1910 Pluviose French January 17, 1911 U-3 German February 2, 1912 A-3 British June 8, 1912 Vendemiaire French October 4, 1912 B-2 British June 8, 1913 E-5 British December 10, 1913 C-i 4 British January 16, 1914 A-7 British March 25, 1915 F- 4 American Accidents and Safety Devices 125 rammed and sunk by another liner three years later, at night. The Plumose of the French navy escaped the bow of an on-coming cross-channel steamer when the subma- rine came up at the entrance to Calais Harbor, only to have her topsides crushed in by a blow from one of the paddle-wheels. Collisions like these are less likely to hap- pen nowadays, for the navigating officer of a modern sub- marine can take a look round the horizon through the periscope from a depth sufficient to let most steamers pass harmlessly over him, and in case of darkness or fog, he can detect the vibrations of approaching propellers by means of the Fessenden oscillator or some similar device. Yet the frequency with which submarines have been in- tentionally rammed and sunk in the present war shows that they would still be liable to rise blindly to their de- struction in time of peace. The vapor from a leaking fuel-tank, making an ex- plosive mixture with the air inside the submarine and set off by a spark from the electrical machinery, has caused many accidents of another kind. Such an explosion took place on the original Holland, shortly after she was taken into the government service, but fortunately without kill- ing any one. As the crew of the British A-$ were filling the fuel tanks of their vessel with gasoline, some of them were blown up through the open hatchway and into the sea by a burst of flaming vapor that killed six men and terribly injured twelve more. A rescue party that entered the boat to save the men still left aboard had several of its own members disabled by a second explosion. The vessel itself, however, was almost unharmed. But not long afterwards, another submarine of the same ill- 126 The Story of the Submarine fated class, the A-8, was lying off Plymouth breakwater with her hatches open, when the people on shore heard three distinct explosions on board her and saw her sud- denly submerge. Her crew evidently got the hatches closed before she went down, as they sent up signals that they were alive but unable to rise. Two hours later a fourth explosion took place and all hope was abandoned. This danger has been guarded against by better con- struction of tanks and valves, and very greatly lessened by the substitution of the heavy oil used in the Diesel engines for the more costly and volatile gasoline. Besides igniting explosive oil vapors with their sparks, the old-fashioned sulphuric acid and -lead storage bat- teries still used in many submarines are a great source of danger in themselves. The jars are too easily broken, and the leaking acid eats into the steel plating of the boat, weakening it if not actually letting in the sea water. And if salt water comes in contact with a battery of this type, then chlorin gas - the same poisonous gas that the Germans use against the Allies' trenches is generated and the crew are in very great danger of suffocation. The new Edison alkali storage battery, besides being lighter and more durable, uses no acid and cannot give off chlorin when saturated with sea water. The remaining great danger is that a submarine may get out of control and submerge too quickly, so that it either strikes the bottom, at the risk of being crushed in or entangled, or descends to so great a depth that its sides are forced in by the pressure of the water outside, which also prevents the submarine from discharging the water in its ballast tanks and escaping to the surface. O ,1. o 2 II 3 I 5- I'-o H! $ O "I f The Story of the Submarine Detachable safety weights and keels to lighten the boat in such an emergency date back to the time of Bushnell and J. Day. A more modern device is to have a hydro- static valve (see page 51) set to correspond with the pressure of a certain depth of water, so that if the sub- marine goes below this the valve will be forced in and automatically " blow the tanks/' A submarine that sank too deep was the No. 6, of the Imperial Japanese navy, which disappeared while manoeu- vering in Hiroshima Bay, on April 15, 1910. When she was found, her entire crew lay dead at their stations, and in the conning-tower, beside the body of the commander, was the following letter written by that officer, Lieutenant Takuma Faotomu: " Although there is indeed no excuse to make for the sinking of his Imperial Majesty's boat, and for the do- ing away of subordinates through my heedlessness, all on board the boat have discharged their duties well and in everything acted calmly until death. Although we are dying in the pursuance of our duty to the State, the only regret we have is due to anxiety lest the men of the world misunderstand the matter, and that thereby a blow may be given to the future development of the submarine. " Gentlemen, we hope you will be increasingly diligent and not fail to appreciate the cause of the accident, and that you will devote your entire energy to investigate everything and so secure the future development of sub- marines. If this be done we have nothing to regret. " While going through gasoline submerged exercises we submerged too far, and when we attempted to shut the sluice-valve, the chain broke. Accidents and Safety Devices 129 " Then we tried to close the sluice-valve by hand, but it was too late, for the afterpart was full of water, and the boat sank at an angle of about twenty-five degrees. The boat came to rest at an incline of about twelve de- grees, pointing towards the stern. The switchboard be- ing under water the electric lights went out. Offensive gas developed and breathing became difficult. The boat sank about 10 A.M. on the I5th, and though suffering at the time from this offensive gas, we endeavored to expel the water by hand pumps. As the vessel went down we expelled the water from the main tank. As the light has gone out the gage cannot be seen, but we know the water has been expelled from the main tank. " We cannot use the electric current at all. The bat- tery is leaking but no salt water has reached it and chlorin gas has not developed. We only rely on the hand pump now. " The above was written under the light of the con- ning-tower, at about 11.45 o'clock. We are now soaked by the water that has made its way in. Our clothes are wet and we feel cold. I had been accustomed to warn my shipmates that their behavior (in an emergency) should be calm and deliberate, as well as brave, yet not too deliberate, lest work be retarded. People may be tempted to ridicule this after this failure, but I am perfectly con- fident that my words have not been mistaken. " The depth gage of the conning-tower indicates 52 feet, and despite our efforts to expel the water the pump stopped and would not work after 12 o'clock. The depth in this neighborhood being ten fathoms, the reading may be correct. 130 The Story of the Submarine " The officers and men of submarines should be chosen from the bravest of the brave or there will be annoyances in cases like this. Happily all the members of this crew have discharged their duties well and I am satisfied. I have always expected death whenever I left my home, and therefore my will is already in the drawer at Kara- saki. (This remark applies only to my private affairs and is really superfluous. Messrs. Taguchi and Asami will please inform my father of this.) " I respectfully request that none of the families left by my subordinates suffer. The only thing I am anxious about is this. "Atmospheric pressure is increasing and I feel as if my tympanum were breaking. " 12.30 o'clock. Respiration is extraordinarily diffi- cult. I mean I am breathing gasoline. I am intoxi- cated with gasoline. " It is 12.40 o'clock/' Those were the last words written by Lieutenant Takuma Faotomu, bravest of the brave. Very many ingenious devices have been invented to enable the crew of a stranded submarine to escape. The best-known and most widely used is some form of the air-lock or diver's chamber, as described in the chapter on the Lake boats. Through this the crew can pass in suc- cession to the water outside and swim to the surface. If the depth is so great that an unprotected swimmer would be crushed by the weight of water above him, there is a great variety of safety-helmets, and of jackets with mouth-pieces leading to tanks containing enough air un- der moderate pressure to inflate the lungs and cheeks so Accidents and Safety Devices 131 that the internal pressure of the body will counteract that of the water. An escaping seaman, burdened with such a device, cannot rise unaided to the surface but must climb or be hauled up by a rope let down from above. Moreover, he must not ascend too rapidly, or the pressure within his body will dangerously exceed that without, as if he had been suddenly picked up at the seashore and carried to the top of the Andes. The human body is too delicate and elaborate a structure to be carelessly turned into a compressed-air tank. The surplus oxygen forms bubbles which try to force their way out through the tissues of the body, caus- ing intense pain, and possibly paralysis or death. To avoid this, divers are brought up from any great depth by slow and careful stages, un- less they can be placed at once in specially-constructed tanks on shore, where the pressure they are under can be gradually reduced to normal. A covered lifeboat carried in a socket on the sub- marine's deck, so that in case of accidental stranding the crew could get into the small boat from below, close the hatch cover, release the lifeboat from within, and rise safely and comfortably to the surface, was an attractive \ Courtesy of the Scientific American. One Type of Safety- jacket. 132 The Story of the Submarine feature of the Plongeitr in 1863, and of many projected but unbuilt submarines since then. A detachable con- ning-tower, containing a small lifeboat that could be launched after the safety compartment had risen to the surface, has also been designed and patented more than once. Theoretically, these devices seem admirable but naval architects will have none of them. The reason for this is very simple. A submarine is primarily a warship, an instrument of destruction, and its carrying capacity is too limited to permit several hundredweight of tor- pedoes or supplies being crowded out by a lifeboat or a score of safety-helmets. A divers' compartment and one or two ordinary diving-suits for these things are of military value and a buoy that can be sent up to mark the spot where the boat has gone down are as much as you can expect to find in the average naval submarine. One of the most instructive accidents that ever hap- pened to an undersea boat was the loss and rescue of the German C7-J. She sank to the bottom of Kiel Harbor on January 17, 1911. A small spherical buoy was re- leased and rose to the surface, where it was picked up and a telephone attached to the end of the thin wire cable. "Hello!" " Hello ! This is the captain of the [7-j speaking. We cannot rise, but we are resting easy and have air enough to last forty-eight hours/' " Good. The steam salvage-dock Vulcan has been sent for and will be here before then, Herr Kapitan." But before the Vulcan arrived, it occurred to some one in authority to attempt to raise the C7-J with a large float- Accidents and Safety Devices 133 ing crane then available. The strong steel chain ready coiled at the lower end of the buoy-line was drawn up and made fast to the crane, which could not lift the 300- ton submarine bodily, but succeeded in hauling up its bow sufficiently for the twenty-seven petty officers and sea- men on board the U-$ to be shot up through the torpedo tube to the surface. The captain and his two lieutenants chose to remain. Shortly afterwards the chain slipped and broke off one of the boat's ventilators, letting water into the hull and drowning all three officers. Then the sea-going, steam salvage-dock Vulcan reached the scene and brought the C7-J to the surface in three hours. " The Vulcan is a double-hulled vessel, 230 feet in length with a lifting capacity of 500 tons. The width between the two hulls is sufficient to admit with good clearance the largest submarines. At a suitable height a shelf is formed along each wall of the interior opening, and upon this rests the removable floor of the dock. The two hulls of the ship are each built with water-tight com- partments of large capacity, similar to those which are found in the side walls of the ordinary floating dock. When a sunken submarine is to be raised, the Vulcan steams to the wreck and is moored securely in position above it. Spanning the well between the two hulls are two massive gantry cranes, each provided with heavy lifting tackle driven by electric motors. The first opera- tion is to fill the compartments until the vessel has sunk to the required depth. The floor of the dock is then moved clear of the well. The lifting tackles are now lowered and made fast, either to chains which have been 134 The Story of the Submarine slung around the body of the submarine, or to two massive eyebolts which are permanently riveted into the submarine's hull. At the order to hoist away, the sub- marine is lifted free from the mud and drawn up within the well, until its bottom is clear of the supporting shelves on the inner faces of the two hulls, above referred to. The dock floor is then placed in posi- tion on the shelves, the water is pumped out of the two hulls, and the Vulcan rises, lifting the submarine and the dock floor clear of the water." * A similar vessel was built by the French government as a result of public indignation over the delay in raising the sunken Plumose. Great Britain has a salvage dock with a lifting capacity of 1000 tons. But the most remarkable craft of this kind belongs to Italy and was designed by the famous engineer Major Cesare Laurenti, technical director of the Fiat-San Giorgio works, builders of some of the world's best submarines. She is a twin-hulled vessel, fitted not only to pick a sunken submarine from the sea bottom, but 1 " Scientific American," January 28, 1911, page 87. Courtesy of the Scientific American. The l/ulcan salvaging the U-3. Accidents and Safety Devices 135 to care for it in every way, for she is also a floating dry- dock, capable of repairing two of the largest subma- rines, besides being a fully equipped mother-ship for a flotilla of six. With the ends of her central tunnel closed by a false stem and stern, and propelled by twin screws driven by powerful Diesel engines, she is a fast and sea- worthy vessel, capable of keeping company w r ith her flotilla on a surface cruise. She carries a sufficient armament of quick-firing guns to beat off a hostile destroyer. But the most noteworthy feature of the Laurenti dock is a long steel cylinder, capable of enduring great pressure from within, that is used to test the resisting strength of new submarines. A new boat, or a section of a proposed new type, is placed in this tube, which is filled with water that is then compressed by pumps, reproducing the effect of submergence to any desired depth. The United States navy tests each new submarine built for it by actually lowering the boat, with no one in it, to a depth of 200 feet. We have no Laurenti dock, no Vulcan, no sea-going salvage dock of any kind. The tender Fulton has a powerful crane, but she cannot be on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and in the Far East, simultaneously. " The difficulties encountered in raising the sunken British submarine A-j," wrote Mr. R. G. Skerrett in the " Scientific American " some years ago, " have in them a note of warning for us. We are steadily adding to our flotilla of under-water boats, and yet we have no proper facilities in the government service for the prompt salvage of any of these boats should they be carried suddenly to the bottom. We have been fortu- 136 The Story of the Submarine nate so far in escaping serious accidents, but that is no reason for assuming that we are any more likely to be immune from disaster than any other naval serv- ice. We should profit by the catastrophes which have befallen England, Russia, France, Germany, and Japan, and no longer continue unprepared for kindred mis- haps." 2 We refused to profit and we continued unprepared. Then came a brief official cablegram from Hawaii, "Honolulu, March 25, 1915. U. S. submarine F-4 left tender at 9 A.M. for submerged run. Failed to re- turn to surface/' The other two submarines on the station and motor- boats from the tender Alert -cruised about till they found the spot where oil and air-bubbles were coming to the surface. Two tugs then swept the bottom with a two- thousand foot sweep of chains and wire cables, which caught early the next morning on what proved to be the lost submarine, in three hundred feet of water, about a mile and a half outside the entrance to Honolulu Har- bor. For twenty- four hours or so the navy department held out the hope that the men on board her were still alive and might be rescued. But there was nothing ready to rescue them with. Three weeks were spent in building the windlasses for an improvised salvage-dock made out of two mud scows. In the meanwhile, a de- tachment of the department's most skilled divers were sent out from the Brooklyn Navy Yard. With their aid, strong wire cables were passed under the submarine's 2 " Scientific American," November 23, 1912. Accidents and Safety Devices 137 hull. While engaged on this work, one of the divers, Chief Gunner's Mate Frank Crilley, broke all deep sub- mergence records by descending to a depth of 288 feet. As a result, his lungs were severely injured and he soon afterwards developed pneumonia. The wire ropes chafed through and were replaced by chains. Then the F-# was lifted from the bottom and towed inshore to a depth of fifty feet. Here a heavy storm set in and the lines had to be cast off. Six big cylindrical-shaped pontoons were then built at San Fran- cisco and brought out to Honolulu on the cruiser Mary- land. Divers passed fresh chains under the F-q, the pon- toons were sunk on either side of her, and coupled to- gether. Then the water- was blown out of the pontoons by compressed-air piped down from above, the F-$ was raised to the surface, and towed into dry dock. No decipherable written record was discovered inside her hull, which was filled with sand washed in through a large hole made in the plating by the chafing of the chains. But the story of the disaster was written in the plates and rivets of the vessel herself, and skilfully de- duced and reconstructed by a board of inquiry, headed by Rear-Admiral Boush. Their report, which was not made public till October 27, told dramatically how the corroded condition of the lead lining in the battery tanks had let the acid eat away the rivets in the port wall of the forward tank. Salt water thus entered part of the battery, producing chlorin gas, which exploded violently, admitting more water, till the submarine began to sink by the head, in spite of the raising of her diving-rudders. " Automatic blow was tripped, and blow valve on 138 The Story of the Submarine auxiliary tank opened in the endeavor to check downward momentum. Maneuvering with propellers probably took place. The appreciable length of time requisite for air to build up in ballast tanks for the expulsion of sufficient quantities of water resulted in the vessel reaching crushing depth. " Seams of the vessel began to open, and probably through open torpedo tubes and seams water entered the vessel and a condition of positive buoyancy was never attained. " There followed actual disaster. The vessel began filling with water. The personnel abandoned stations and many sought refuge in the engine room, closing the door. Under great pressure the engine room bulkhead failed suddenly, leaving the vessel on the bottom, com- pletely flooded." All the boats of the " F " class had already been with- drawn from the service, by order of Secretary Daniels. Their place at Honolulu was taken by four boats of the " K" class, which made the 2100 mile voyage out from San Francisco under their own power. CHAPTER XI MINES THE MINE SWEEPERS " Ware mine ! " " Starboard your helm/' . . . " Full speed ahead ! " The squat craft duly swings A hand's breadth off, a thing of dread The sullen breaker flings. Carefully, slowly, patiently, The men of Grimsby Town Grope their way on the rolling sea The storm-swept, treacherous, gray North Sea Keeping the death-rate down. H. INGAMELLS, in the " London Spectator." A MINE is a torpedo that has no motive-power of its own but is either anchored or set adrift in the supposed path of an enemy's ship. We have already seen how Bushnell used drifting mines at Philadelphia in 1777. Anchored mines are among the many inven- tions of Robert Fulton. The following description of the original type, illustrated by an engraving made by himself, is taken from Fulton's " Torpedo War and Sub- marine Explosions." " Plate II represents the anchored torpedo, so ar- ranged as to blow up a vessel which should run against 139 140 The Story of the Submarine it; B is a copper case two feet long, twelve inches di- ameter, capable of containing one hundred pounds of powder. A is a brass box, in which there is a lock simi- lar to a common gun lock, with a barrel two inches long, to contain a musket charge of powder: the box, Fulton's Anchored Torpedoes. with the lock cocked and barrel charged, is screwed to the copper case B. H is a lever which has a communi- cation to the lock inside of the box, and in its present state holds the lock cocked and ready to fire. C is a deal box filled with cork, and tied to the case B. The object of the cork is to render the torpedo about fifteen Mines 141 or twenty pounds specifically lighter than water, and give it a tendency to rise to the surface. It is held down to any given depth under water by a weight of fifty or sixty pounds as at F: there is also a small anchor G, to prevent a strong tide moving it from its position. With torpedoes prepared, and knowing the depth of water in all our bays and harbors, it is only necessary to fix the weight F at such a distance from the torpedo, as when thrown into the water, F will hold it ten, twelve, or fifteen feet below the surface at low water, it will then be more or less below the surface at high water, or at different times of the tide; but it should never be so deep as the usual draft of a frigate or ship-of-the-line. When anchored, it will, during the flood tide, stand in its present position ; at slack water it will stand perpendicular to the weight F, as at D; during the ebb it will be at E. At ten feet under water the waves, in boisterous weather, would have little or no tendency to disturb the torpedo; for that if the hollow of a wave should sink ten feet below what would be the calm surface, the wave would run twenty feet high, which I believe is never the case in any of our bays and harbors. All the experi- ence which I have on this kind of torpedo is, that in the month of October, 1805, I had one of them anchored nine feet under water, in the British Channel near Dover; the weather was severe, the waves ran high, it kept its position for twenty- four hours, and, when taken up, the powder was dry and the lock in good order. The tor- pedo thus anchored, it is obvious, that if a ship in sail- ing should strike the lever H, the explosion would be in- stantaneous, and she be immediately destroyed; hence, 142 The Story of the Submarine to defend our bays or harbors, let a hundred, or more if necessary, of these engines be anchored in the channel, as for example, the Narrows, to defend New York. " The figure to the right of the plate is an end view of the torpedo. H-H shews its lever forked, to give the better chance of being struck. " Having described this instrument in a way which I hope will be understood/' continues Fulton, " I may be permitted to put the following question to my reader, which is: Knowing that the explosion of one hundred pounds of powder, or more if required, under the bot- tom of a ship-of-the-line, would destroy her, and seeing, that if a ship in sailing should strike the lever of an anchored torpedo, she would be blown up, would he have the courage, or shall I say the temerity, to sail into a channel where one or more hundred of such engines were anchored? I rely on each gentleman's sense of prudence and self-preservation, to answer this question to my satis- faction. Should the apprehension of danger become as strong on the minds of those who investigate this subject as it is on mine, we may reasonably conclude that the same regard to self-preservation will make an enemy cau- tious in approaching waters where such engines are placed; for however brave sailors may be, there is no danger so distressing to the mind of a seaman, or so calculated to destroy his confidence, as that which is in- visible and instantaneous destruction/' But Admiral Farragut at Mobile Bay, half a century later, did have the " temerity to sail into a channel where one or more hundred of such engines were anchored." The monitor Tecumseh struck and exploded a mine that Mines 143 sent her to the bottom with almost her entire crew. The rest of the fleet began to waver when, from the main-rigging of the Hartford Farragut shouted his im- mortal command: " Full steam ahead ! Damn the torpedoes ! " As the flagship led the way through the mine field, those on board heard mine after mine bump against her bottom, but though the levers were struck and the primers Sinking of the U. S. S. Tecumseh, by a Confederate mine, in Mobile Bay. snapped, the powder-charges failed to explode. Hastily improvised out of beer-kegs and other receptacles, with tin or iron covers that became rusty and useless soon after they were placed under water, many of the Con- federate mines were in this respect inferior to the well- built copper torpedoes of Fulton. Yet crude as they were, they destroyed more than forty Northern warships, transports, and supply vessels. 144 The Story of the Submarine Percussion-caps instead of flintlocks were now used to explode contact mines. A new type of anchored torpedo, set off by an electric spark through a wire run- ning to an operator on shore, was also a favorite with the Confederates. Because they are exploded not by contact with the ship's hull but by the closing of the circuit by the operator when he observes an enemy's vessel to be above one of them, these are called " observation mines." In the Civil War, many effective mines of this sort were From Scharf 'a History of the Confederate States Navy. A Confederate "Keg-Torpedo." made out of whisky demijohns. One of these blew up the gunboat Cairo, in the Yazoo River, in the autumn of 1862. The double-ended, river gunboat Commodore Jones was blown to pieces by an observation mine, whose operator was subsequently captured and tied to the cut- water of another Federal gunboat as a warning and a hostage. During the bombardment of Fort Sumter by the United States fleet in 1863, the New Ironsides lay for an hour directly above an observation mine made of boiler iron and containing a ton of gunpowder but which Mines 145 failed to explode despite all the efforts of the operator. He was naturally accused of treachery and it would have gone hard with him had it not been discovered, soon after the New Ironsides ceased firing and stood out to sea, that the shore end of the wire had been severed by the wheel of an ammunition wagon. During the Franco-Prussian War, the powerful French fleet blockaded the German coast but did not attack the shore batteries, which were well protected by mines. 17. 8. EBON-CLAD "CAIBO" (BLOWN UP BY CONFEDERATE TOBPEDO). From Scharf's History of the Confederate States Navy. First Warship Destroyed by a Mine. After peace was declared the foreign consuls at one of the North German seaports congratulated the burgomas- ter on having planted and taken up so many mines with- out a single accident. Unknown to any one, the pru- dent burgomaster had unloaded them first, and they kept the French away just as well. In the Spanish-American War, Admiral Dewey was able to enter Manila Bay and destroy the Spanish squad- ron there because its commander " had repeatedly asked 146 The Story of the Submarine for torpedoes (mines) from Madrid, but had received none and his attempts to make them had been failures." l It was the mine fields and not the feeble shore batteries that kept Sampson's fleet out of Havana and Santiago. At Guantanamo, now a United States naval station, the Texas and the Marblehead each " struck her propeller against a con- tact mine, which failed to explode only because it was incrusted with a thick growth of barnacles. Grati- tude for the vessels' escape may fairly be divided between divine care to which the gallant and devout Captain Philip attributed it in his report, and the Spaniards' neglect to maintain a proper inspection of these defenses. A number of these torpedoes, which were of French manufacture, and contained forty- six and a half kilograms (one hun- dred and two pounds) of guncotton, were afterward dragged up in the channel." 2 At the siege of Port Arthur in 1904, the Japanese fleet planted mines outside the harbor to keep the Russians in, and the Russians came out and planted mines of their own to entrap the blockaders. While engaged in this work, the Russian mine-layer Yenisei had a mine which 1 Titherington's History of the Spanish-American War, p. 139. 2 Ibid., page 202. From Scharf's History of the Con- federate States Navy. A Confederate " Buoy- ant Torpedo " or Contact-mine. Mines 147 had just been lowered through her specially constructed sternports thrown by a wave against her rudder, and was blown to atoms by the consequent explosion of three hundred more in her hold. The flagship Petropavlosk, returning from a sortie on April 13, struck a Japanese con- tact-mine and went down with the loss of six hundred men, including Vereshchagin, the famous painter of war- scenes, and Admiral Makaroff, who was not only the commander but the heart and soul of the Russian fleet. 3 A month later, another mine cost the Japanese their finest battleship, the Hatsuse. Nor was the loss confined either to the belligerents or to the duration of the war. Nearly one hundred Chinese and other neutral merchant vessels were sunk by some of the many mines torn loose from their anchors by storms to drift, the least noticeable and most terrible of derelicts, over all the seas of the Far East, long after peace was declared. The same thing on a larger scale will doubtless take place as a result of the present European War. From the Baltic to the Dardanelles, both sides have sown the waters thick with contact mines, hundreds of which have already broken loose and been cast up on the shores of Denmark, Holland, and other neutral lands. How many more have been picked up on the coasts of the different belligerent countries, the military censors have naturally kept a close secret ; how many of these infernal machines are now drifting about the North Sea, the North At- lantic, and the Mediterranean it is impossible to compute. Scarcely a week passes without the publication of such 3 He had done notable work with mines himself, during the Russo- Turkish War of 1878. 148 The Story of the Submarine news items as the following extracts from " Current events in Norway," in the " American-Scandinavian Re- view " for July-August* 1915 : " One hundred and fifty mines had been brought into Bergen up to April 12. The steamer Caprivi of Ber- gen, which sank after being struck by a mine off the coast of Ireland, was on its way from Baltimore with a cargo of 4150 tons of grain, the property of the Nor- wegian government. . . . The German government has declared its willingness to comply with the demand of the Norwegian government for compensation for the Bel- ridge, provided it be proved that the sinking of the steamer was the result of a German torpedo. The pieces of the shell found in the side of the vessel are to be sent to the German government, and in case there should be any disagreement about the facts they will be submitted to arbitration/' Unfortunately in most cases where a neutral ship is so sunk, the exploding mine automatically destroys all evidence of its own origin, and each belligerent promptly and positively declares that it must have been planted, if not deliberately set adrift, by the other side. The neu- tral is left to get what satisfaction he can out of the rul- ing of the last Hague Conference that all contact mines must be so constructed as to become harmless after break- ing loose from their moorings. There is nothing me- chanically difficult about installing such a safety device, and all the great powers now at war with each other solemnly pledged themselves to do so. But the tempta- tion of perhaps destroying a hostile battleship as the Mines 149 Hatsuse was destroyed, by a drifting mine, has appar- ently been too great. Premature explosion of the mine during handling and planting, such as caused the destruction of the Yenisei is, of course, carefully guarded against. One of the simplest and most effective safety devices is that used in the British navy, where the external parts of the explod- ing apparatus are sealed with a thick layer of sugar, which is dissolved by the sea-water after being sub- merged for a few minutes. By then the mine-laying vessel has had time to get safely out of the neighbor- hood. Modern mines are of various shapes and sizes but are as a rule either spherical or shaped like a pear with the stem down. The anchor is a hollow, flat-bottomed cylin- der, containing its own anchor cable wound on a wind- lass, and making a convenient base or stand for the ex- plosive chamber or mine proper, so that the whole ap- paratus can be stood or trundled about the deck of a mine-layer like a barrel. Once placed in the water either by being dropped through the overhanging stern-ports of a large sea-going mine-planter like the U.S.S. San Francisco, or lowered over the side of a smaller craft by a derrick boom, the weight of its anchor causes the mine to assume an upright position. This releases a small weight or plummet at the end of a short line at- tached to a spring that keeps the windlass inside the anchor from revolving. When the plummet has sunk to the end of its cord, its weight pulls down the spring, and the windlass begins to revolve and unreel the cable, 150 The Story of the Submarine the end of which is, of course, made fast to the bottom of the mine. This causes the anchor, which has been held up by the buoyancy of the mine, to sink, and fol- lows the plummet till the latter touches the bottom. Freed of the plummet's weight, the spring now flies up and stops the windlass. But the hollow anchor is now (Redrawn from the London Sphere. ) Modern Contact-Mine. A, Mine-Planter; B, Mine being dropped overboard; C, Plummet-line ex- tended; D, Anchor sinking; E, Plummet touching bottom; F, Mine sub- merged and anchored; G, Battleship striking mine; i, The "Striker"; 2, Charge of Explosives; 3, Air-space, for Buoyancy; 4, Mine-case; 5, Anchor; 6, Plummet. filled with water, whose additional weight drags the mine under. When the anchor rests on the bottom, the mine will be at the same distance beneath the surface of the water as the anchor had to sink after the windlass stopped, or the length of the plummet's line. By regu- lating that, a mine can be made automatically to set itself at any desired depth. Mines 151 Mines are almost never laid singly but in groups, the area of water so planted being called a " mine field." A secret, zigzag channel is often left clear for the benefit of friendly craft. The rows of mines are usually " stag- gered " or placed like the men on a checker-board, so that if a hostile vessel passes through an opening in the first row she will strike a mine in the second. Another device is to couple together the mooring cables of two or more mines so that a ship passing between them will draw them in against her sides. Contact may cause explosion in any one of several different ways. The head or sides of the mine may be studded with projecting rods like the striker on the nose of a Whitehead, to be either driven directly in against a detonating charge of fulminate or else open the jaws of a clutch and release the spring of a firing-pin. Such external movable parts, however, are too prone to become overgrown and clogged with barnacles and the like. A more modern way is to have the shock of the collision with the ship's hull dislodge a heavy ball held in a cup inside the mine. The fall of this weight sets in motion machinery which fires the detonating charge. Or the device may not be mechanical but electrical, as in the type of mine that, when drawn far enough over to one side by a vessel passing over it, spills a cupful of mer- cury. This stream of liquid metal closes an electric cir- cuit, so that an electric current passes through a piece of platinum wire embedded in fulminate and heats it red^ hot, with obvious results. This current may be obtained either from a storage-battery carried in the mine itself, or through a wire running down the mooring cable and 152 The Story of the Submarine over the bottom to the shore. Most shore-control mines are so designed that they can either be fired by observa- tion, or else turned into electro-contact mines of the above-mentioned type by arranging the switches in the controlling station. It is also possible to have the contact serve to warn the operator on shore by ringing a bell and indicating the position of the intruding ship in the mine-field. Just as barbed-wire entanglements on land are blown out of the way by small charges of high explosives, so mined areas of the sea can be cleared by " counter-min- ing." One or more strings of linked-together mines, of a small, easily-handled type, are carefully placed by light- draft vessels in the waters already planted by the enemy. When these are exploded together, the concussion is enough to destroy any anchored mines near at hand, either by setting off their exploding-devices or causing their cases to leak, so that they will be filled with water and sink harmlessly to the bottom. Or a channel may be cleared by " sweeping " it with a drag-rope towed along the bottom by two small steamers, exploding the mines or tearing them up by the roots. Very effective work of this kind has been done by the small steam- trawlers used by the North Sea fishermen, and if any- thing of the sort is ever necessary in American waters we may be thankful for the powerful sea-going tugs now towing strings of barges up and down our coasts. But even a light field-piece on shore can shell and sink the sort of small, unarmored craft that must be used for mine-sweeping. When a fleet attacks a channel or harbor entrance properly defended by both mine-fields 154 The Story of the Submarine and batteries, each supporting the other, there comes a time when the naval forces must wait till troops can be landed to drive away the forces protecting the rear of the batteries, so that the mine-sweepers can advance and clear a channel for the superdreadnoughts. The most striking example of this is the holding of the Allied fleet by the Turks at the Dardanelles. There, too, effective use is being made of the latest, which is an adaptation of the oldest type of torpedo : the drifting mine. 4 This twentieth-century improvement on Bushnell's " kegs charged with powder " floats upright, with a vertical-acting propeller on top and another on its bottom, and a hydrostatic valve set to maintain it at any desired depth. Should it rise or sink, the change in pres- sure will cause the valve to act on the principle already explained in connection with the Whitehead torpedo (see page 44). Controlled by the valve, the little compressed- air motor attached to the vertical propellers will cause them to make a few revolutions, just enough to keep the mine at a constant depth beneath the surface of the Dardanelles, as the four-mile-an-hour current carries it down against the Anglo-French fleet. Within a few hours of each other, during the furious bombardment of the forts on March 18, 1915, the French battleship Bouvet was struck by one of these drifting mines and went down stern- foremost, then H.M.S. Ocean was sunk by another, and the Irresistible forced to run ashore to escape sinking, only to be pounded to pieces by the guns of the forts. A feature of this type of mine is that its 4 This was a very popular type with the Confederate Torpedo Service in the Civil War. Mines 155 size and shape enable it to be launched through a torpedo tube, either from a surface craft or from a submarine. Ordinary contact-mines, without anchors and attached to floats that held them a few feet below the surface of the water, are sometimes dropped overboard from a vessel closely pursued by an enemy. A small mine so dropped by a German light cruiser returning from an attempted raid on the English coast, early in the war, was struck by the pursuing British submarine D-$ and sent her to the bottom. The D-$ was running awash at the time and only two officers and two seamen were saved. CHAPTER XII THE SUBMARINE IN ACTION " Hit and hard hit ! The blow went home The muffled knocking stroke, The steam that overrides the foam, The foam that thins to smoke, The smoke that cloaks the deep aboil, The deep that chokes her throes, Till, streaked with ash and sleeked with oil, The lukewarm whirlpools close ! " KIPLING. THE first submarine in history to sink a hostile warship without also sinking herself is the E-p of the British navy. Together with most of her consorts, she was sent, at the outbreak of the present war, to explore and reconnoiter off the German coast and the island fortress of Heligoland to find where the enemy's ships were lying, how they were protected and how they might be attacked. After six weeks of such work, the E-p entered Heligoland Bight on September 13, 1914, and dis- charged two torpedoes at the German light cruiser Hela. One exploded against her bow and the other amidships, and the cruiser went down almost immediately, drown- ing many of her crew. Another British submarine had already appeared in action off Heligoland but as a saver instead of a de- stroyer of human life. On the 28th of August a number 156 Copyright, London Sphere & N. Y. Herald. English Submarine Rescuing English Sailors. 157 158 The Story of the Submarine of German torpedo-craft and light cruisers were decoyed out to sea by the appearance and pretended flight of some English destroyers. (It has been declared but not officially confirmed that the " bait " consisted not of de- stroyers but two British submarines, which rose to the surface where one of them pretended to be disabled and was slowly towed away by the other till their pursuers were almost within range, when the line was cast off and both boats dived to safety.) The Germans found them- selves attacked by a larger British flotilla and a confused sort of battle followed. During the melee, an English cruiser lowered a whaleboat that picked up several sur- vivors of a sunken German vessel. The cruiser was then driven away by a more powerful German ship, and the crew of the whaleboat found themselves left in the enemy's waters without arms, food, or navigating instru- ments, Suddenly a periscope rose out of the water alongside, followed by the conning-tower and hull of the British submarine -4, which took the Englishmen on board and left the Germans the whaleboat, after which both parties went home rejoicing. Shortly after this, the German submarine C/-/5 boldly attacked a British squadron, but revealed herself by the white wake of her periscope as it cut through the calm water. A beautifully aimed shot from the cruiser Bir- mingham smashed the periscope. The submarine dived, temporarily safe but blinded, for she was an old-fash- ioned craft with only one observation instrument. Her commander now essayed a swift " porpoise dive " up to the surface and down again, exposing only the conning- tower for a very few seconds. But a broadside blazed Copyright, London Sphere & N. Y. Herald. Copyright. London Sphere & N. Y. Herald. 3 Engagement between the Birmingham and the U-i 1. Submarine's periscope shot away. 2. Submarine dives, temporarily safe but blinded. 3. Submarine exposes conning-tower. 4. Conning-tower shot away, U-I5 sinking. 159 160 The Story of the Submarine from the Birmingham, a shell struck squarely against the conning-tower, and the sea poured in through the ragged death-wound in the deck of the E/-/5. But these early affairs were now overshadowed as com- pletely as the first Union victories in West Virginia were overshadowed by Bull Run. Another British squadron encountered another German submarine and this time the periscope was not detected. Lieutenant-Commander Otto von Weddigen had had ample time to take up an ideal position beside the path of his enemies, who passed in slow and stately procession before the bow torpedo- tubes of the U-p. The German officer pressed a button and saw through his periscope the white path of the " Schwartzkopf " as it sped straight and true to the tall side of the Aboukir. He saw the cruiser heaved into the air by the shock of the bursting war-head, then watched her settle and go down. Round swung her nearest con- sort to the rescue, lowering her lifeboats as she came. But scarcely had the survivors of the Aboukir 's company set foot on the deck of the Hogue than she, too, was torpedoed, and the half -naked men of both crews went tumbling down the slope of the upturned side as she rolled over and sank. Up steamed the Cressy, her gun- crews standing by their useless pieces, splendid in help- less bravery. Half reluctantly, von Weddigen sent his remaining foe to the bottom and slipped away under the waves, the victor of the strangest naval battle in history. Not a German had received the slightest injury ; four- teen hundred Englishmen had been killed. It was the loss of these trained officers and seamen, and not that of three old cruisers that would soon have been sent to the The Submarine in Action 161 scrap heap, that was felt by the British navy. Realizing that no fears for their own lives would keep the officers of a British ship from attempting to rescue the drowning crew of another, the Admiralty issued the following or- der: " It has been necessary to point out for the future guidance of his Majesty's ships that the conditions that prevail when one vessel of a squadron is injured in a mine-field or exposed to submarine attack are analogous to those which occur in an action and that the rule of leaving disabled ships to their own resources is applicable, so far at any rate as large vessels are concerned. No act of humanity, whether to friend or foe, should lead to a neglect of the proper precautions and dispositions of war, and no measures can be taken to save life which prejudice the military situation." Another old cruiser, the Hermes, that had been turned into a floating base for sea-planes, was torpedoed off Dunkirk by a German submarine, most of the crew being rescued by French torpedo boats. On New Year's day, 1915, the battleship Formidable was likewise sent to the bottom of the English Channel. She too was a rather old ship, of the same class as the Bulwark, which had been destroyed by an internal explosion two weeks earlier in the Medway, and the Irresistible, afterwards sunk by a mine in the Dardanelles. But there was nothing small or old about the Auda- cious, She was or is a 24,800 ton superdread- nought, launched in 1911 and carrying ten thirteen-and-a- half-inch guns. This stupendous war-engine was found rolling helpless in the Irish Sea, her after compartments 162 The Story of the Submarine flooded by a great hole made either by a drifting mine or, what is more likely considering its position, by a tor- pedo from a German submarine. The White Star liner Olympic, which had been summoned by wireless, took the disabled warship in tow for several hours, after which the Audacious was cast off and abandoned. A photo- graph taken by one of the Olympic's passengers and after- wards widely circulated shows the huge ironclad down by the stern, listing heavily to one side, and apparently on the point of sinking. But her loss has never been ad- mitted by the British Admiralty, and it has been re- peatedly declared by reputable persons that the Audacious was kept afloat till the Olympic was out of sight, and was then towed by naval vessels into Belfast, where she was drydocked and repaired at Harland and Wolff's shipyard to be sent back to the fighting line. Her fate is one of the most interesting of the many mysteries of the war and will probably not be made clear till peace has come. The silence of the British Admiralty is explained by the standing orders forbidding the revealing of the where- abouts of any of his Majesty's ships, particularly when helpless and disabled. It should be noted in this connec- tion that the German government has never admitted the loss of the battleship Pommern which the Russians insist was sunk by one of their submarines in the Baltic. Because the overwhelming strength of the Allied fleet has kept the German and Austrian battleships safely locked up behind shore batteries, mine-fields and nettings, the Allies' submarines have had comparatively few tar- gets to try their skill on. The activity of the British submarines in the North Sea at the outbreak of the war 164 The Story of the Submarine has already been referred to, and a year later they found another opportunity in the Baltic. There the German fleet had the same preponderance over the Russian as the English had over the German battleships in the North Sea, but the British dreadnoughts could not be sent through the long tortuous passage of the Skagerrack and Cattegat, thick-sown with German mines, without cut- ting the British fleet in half and giving the Germans a splendid chance to defeat either half and then slip back through the Kiel Canal and destroy the other. So Eng- land sent some of her submarines instead. One of these joined the Russian squadron defending the Gulf of Riga against a German fleet and decided the fight by disabling the great battle-cruiser Moltke. Another, the E-1%, ran ashore on the Danish island of Saltholm on August 19, 1915, and was warned by the commander of a Danish torpedo-boat that she would be allowed twenty- four hours to get off. Before the time-limit had expired and while three Danish torpedo-boats were standing by, two German destroyers steamed up, torpedoed the E-1%, and killed half her crew by gun-fire : an outrageous violation of Denmark's neutrality. 1 1 London, Jan. 4. A British official statement issued to-day says : " Sir Edward Grey, secretary for foreign affairs, has answered the complaint by the Germans through the American embassies regarding the destruction off the coast of Ireland of a German submarine and crew, by the British auxiliary Baralong, by referring to various Ger- man outrages. " Sir Edward Grey offers to submit such incidents, including the Baralong case, to an impartial tribunal composed, say, of officers of the United States navy. "The Foreign Office has presented to the House of Commons the full correspondence between Ambassador Page and Sir Edward Grey concerning the case. A memorandum from Germany concerning the sinking of the submarine includes affidavits from six Americans who The Submarine in Action 165 Daredevil deeds have been done by the submarines of both sides in the Dardanelles. The little B-n swam up the straits, threading her way through mine-field after mine-field, her captain keeping his course by " dead- reckoning " with map and compass and stop watch. To have exposed his periscope would have drawn the fire of the many shore batteries, to have dived a few feet too far in those shallow waters would have meant running aground, to have misjudged the swirling, changing cur- rents might have meant annihilation. But Commander Holbrook brought his vessel safely through, torpedoed and sank the guard-ship Messudieh, a Turkish ironclad of the vintage of 1874, and returned to receive the Vic- toria Cross from his king and a gigantic " Iron Cross " from his brother officers. The E-n went up even to Constantinople, torpedoed a Turkish transport within sight of the city and threw the whole waterfront into a panic. More transports and store-ships were sunk or driven on shore in the Sea of Marmora, a gunboat was torpedoed, and then the Kheyr-el-din, an old 10,000 ton battleship that had been the Kurfurst Freiderich Wil- helm before the kaiser sold her to Turkey, was sent to the bottom of the same waters by British submarines. One of them the -15 ran aground in the Dardanelles and was forced to surrender to the Turks, but before they could float her off and make use of her, two steam launches dashed upstream through the fire of the shore were muleteers aboard the steamer Nicosian and witnessed the Bara- long's destruction of the submarine. A further affidavit from Lari- more Holland, of Chattanooga, Tennessee, who was a member of the crew of the Baralong, was submitted. All the affidavits speak of the Baralong as disguised and flying the American flag." 166 The Story of the Submarine batteries and torpedoed the stranded submarine as Gush- ing blew up the Albemarle. But on the same day as the E-n's first exploit May 25, 1915, the British battleship Triumph went down with most of her crew off Gallipoli, torpedoed by a Ger- man submarine. The [7-5 1 had made the 2400 mile trip from the North Sea, using as tenders a number of small tank steamers flying the Spanish flag. These vessels in- tentionally drew the attention of the cordon of British destroyers drawn across the Straits of Gibraltar and were captured, while the submarine swam safely through and traversed the Mediterranean to the Dardanelles. Two days after her first exploit, the [7-5 1 or perhaps one of her Austrian consorts, sank another British bat- tleship, the Majestic, off Gallipoli. The [7-5 1 has been reported sunk by Russian warships in the Black Sea. If they could sink two battleships in three days, why did n't the German undersea boats sink a dozen or so more and raise the siege of the Dardanelles? Enver Pasha, the Turkish minister of war, declared that " the presence of the submarines destroyed all hopes of Rus- sia's ever effectively landing troops on the coast north of Constantinople." Then why did they permit the land- ing of British, Australian, New Zealand, and French troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula and the plains of ancient Troy? It was not . until August, 1915, that the transport Royal Edward was sunk in the Mediter- ranean by an Austrian submarine. Perhaps before this war is over some British transport may be torpedoed in the North Sea or the English Channel, but for more than a year and a half since its outbreak, troop-ships and i68 The Story of the Submarine store-ships have been crossing to France as if there were not a hostile " U-boat " in the world. Equally mysteri- ous has been the immunity of the light-draft monitors and obsolescent gunboats off the Flemish coast, where their heavy guns did so much to check the first German drive on Calais, and have harassed the invaders' right flank ever since. Many of these are mere floating plat- forms for one or two modern guns, all are slow-steam- ing, and they are not always in water too shallow for an undersea boat to swim in, yet none have been sunk by a submarine since the loss of the Hermes, in the autumn of 1914. Zeebrugge, the Belgian port that has been made the headquarters for German submarines in the North Sea, has been several times bombarded by the British fleet and, according to reports from Amsterdam, half- built submarines on the shore there have been destroyed by shell-fire. Why did the completed undersea boats in the harbor fail to come out and torpedo or drive away the attacking fleet ? We have been shown what modern sub- marines can do; what prevents them from doing much more? Shortly after von Weddigen's great exploit, a German submarine rose to the surface so near the British de- stroyer Badger that before the undersea boat could sub- merge again she was rammed, cut open and sunk. One of the most picturesque and least expected features of this war has been the revival of old ways; soldiers are again wearing breastplates and metal helmets and fighting with crossbows and catapults, while against the modern submarine, seamen are effectively using the most ancient of all naval weapons : the ram. It takes two minutes for The Submarine in Action 169 the average undersea boat to submerge, during which time a thirty-knot destroyer can come charging up from a mile away, with a good chance of scoring a hit with her forward 3- or 4-inch gun, even if she gets there too late to ram. In the case of the U-I2, the submarine dived deep enough to get her hull and superstructure out of harm's way, only to have the top of her conning- tower crushed in by the destroyer as it passed over her. When the inrush of water forced the U-I2 to rise to the surface and surrender, her crew discovered that the main hatch could not be opened because one of the periscopes had been bent down across it. Some of them succeeded in climbing out of the torpedo-hatch and jumping over- board before the U-I2 went down for good. As she sank stern foremost, it was observed that both of her bow-tubes were empty; evidence that she had vainly launched two torpedoes at the British flotilla that were hunting her down. Though several British destroyers and torpedo-boats have been sent to the bottom by Ger- man submarines, and the English E-p has sunk the Ger- man destroyer $-126, yet the nimble surface torpedo- craft have usually proved too difficult for the undersea boats to hit with their fixed tubes that can only fire straight ahead or astern. It has been pointed out that the Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue, the Formidable, and the Audacious were all mov- ing slowly and unescorted by any destroyers when they were attacked and sunk. The same was true of the Leon Gambetta and the Giuseppe Garibaldi, when they were sent to the bottom of the Mediterranean by Austrian sub- marines. Under modern conditions, such isolated big 170 The Story of the Submarine ships are in much the same perilous position as would have been a lonely battery of Union artillery marching through a country swarming with Confederate cavalry. While an escort of destroyers is no sure guarantee against submarine attack, their presence certainly seems to act as a powerful deterrent. Waters suspected of containing hostile submarines are swept, very much as they would be for mines, by pairs of destroyers or steam trawlers, dragging an arrangement of strong cables between them. Sometimes this is fes- tooned with explosives to blow in the side of any under- sea boat it may touch. Usually the vessels engaged in this work use a large net. When they feel the weight of a catch, it is said that they let go the ends and leave it to the submarine's own twin propellers to entangle themselves thoroughly. An undersea boat so entrapped is helpless to do anything but either sink or else empty her tanks and try to rise and surrender. A submarine in trouble usually sends up notification in the form of large quantities of escaping oil and gas. Inventors have been busy devising new kinds of traps, snares, and exaggerated lobster-pots to be placed in the waters about the British Isles. How many German sub- marines have poked their noses into these devices prob- ably not even the British Admiralty could tell, if it was so minded, but the traps are said to have been put down very plentifully and most of the published designs are extremely ingenious. Individual torpedo-nets for ships have rather gone out of fashion, but the most effective way of keeping sub- marines out of a harbor is to close its entrance with The Submarine in Action 171 booms and nettings. The principal naval bases on both sides are undoubtedly so protected. It has been persist- ently reported that the immunity of British transports crossing the channel is due to a double line of booms, nets and mines stretching from one shore to the other, and enclosing a broad, safe channel outside which the " U-- boats " roam hungrily. There would seem to be no great difficulty in building such a barrier, but it would be ex- tremely difficult to keep intact in heavy weather and for that reason most of our naval officers are skeptical of its existence. Microphones which have been placed under water off the coasts of France, Great Britain, and Ireland have succeeded in detecting the presence of submarines at a distance of fifty-five miles. This device has been per- fected by the joint labors of an American electrical en- gineer, Mr. William Dubilier, and Professor Tissot of the French Academy of Science. These two gentlemen, experimenting with microphones and a submarine placed at their disposal by the French government, " discovered in the course of the tests that the underwater craft were sources of sound waves of exceedingly high fre- quency, quite distinctive from any other subaqueous sounds. While the cause of the high-pitched sound is known to the inventors, it cannot be divulged since it would then be possible for German submarine construc- tors to eliminate the source of the tell-tale sound waves, and thus render void the purpose of the detector installa- tion." * These microphones, it is believed, are usually arranged 1 " Scientific American," October 16, 1915. 172 The Story of the Submarine in a semicircle. Each instrument records sound waves best when they come from one particular direction. The operator on shore, listening to a device that eliminates all other sounds coming in from under the sea, can tell by the way a passing submarine affects the different micro- phones in the semicircle how far off and in what direction it is moving, and so warns and summons the ever- watchful patrol boats. Air craft are doubtless being much used in the hunt for submarines, for an aviator at a height of several hundred feet can distinctly see a submarine swimming beneath him in clear water with a good light reflected from the bottom. Early in the war, the pilot and ob- server of a " Taube " that was brought down in the North Sea were rescued by a British submarine. In the attack on Cuxhaven a combined force of submarines, sea- planes, and light cruisers was resisted by the German shore-batteries, destroyers, " U-boats " aeroplanes and Zeppelins. As the British sea-planes returned from dropping bombs on the Cuxhaven navy yard or taking observations above the Kiel Canal, some of them were shot down by the Germans but the aviators were picked up, as had been arranged beforehand, by English sub- marines. In the spring of 1915 there was an engage- ment between a Zeppelin and a British submarine in which each side claimed the victory. On August 26 of the same year the secretary of the British Admiralty announced : " Squadron Commander Arthur Bigsworth, R.N., de- stroyed single-handed a German submarine this morning by bombs dropped from an aeroplane. The submarine Copyright, Illustrated London News & Flying. Photograph of a submarine, twenty feet below the surface, taken from the aeroplane, whose shadow is shown in the picture. 173 174 The Story of the Submarine was observed to be completely wrecked, and sank off Os- tend. " It is not the practice of the Admiralty to publish statements regarding the losses of German submarines, important though they have been, in cases where the enemy has no other source of information as to the time and place at which these losses have occurred. In the case referred to above, however, the brilliant feat of Squadron Commander Bigsworth was performed in the immediate neighborhood of the coast in occupation of the enemy and the position of the sunken submarine has been located by a German destroyer." " This is inexact/' replied the German Admiralty. " The submarine was attacked but not hit and returned to port undamaged. One of our submarines on August 1 6 destroyed by gunfire the benzol factory with the at- tached benzol warehouses and coke furnaces near Har- rington, England. The statement of the English press that the submarine attacked the open towns of Harring- ton, Parton, and Whitehaven is inexact." Equally interesting but unfortunately lacking in de- tails are the reports from the Adriatic of submarines fight- ing submarines. There have been three such duels, in one an Austrian sank an Italian submarine, in another the Italian was victorious, while after the third both were found lying on the bottom, each torn open by the other's torpedo. As it is a physical impossibility for the pilot of one submarine to see another under the water, it would seem as if at least one of the combatants in each of these fights must have been running on the sur- face at the time. The Submarine in Action 175 Both Mr. Simon Lake and the late John P. Holland were absolutely confident that submarines could not fight submarines, that surface craft would be utterly unable to injure or resist them, and that therefore the subma- rine boat would make naval warfare impossible and do more than anything else to bring about permanent peace. All that can be said at present is that the actual situa- tion is much more complex than had been expected. Submarines have sunk many surface warships but have suffered heavily themselves. The German government has admitted the loss of over a dozen " U-boats," while the unofficial estimates of their enemies' run as high as thirty-five or fifty German submarines destroyed or cap- tured. Admiral Beatty's victorious squadron, pursuing the German battle-cruisers after the second North Sea fight, turned and retreated at the wake of a single tor- pedo and the glimpse of hostile periscopes. But the sub- marine has not yet driven the surface warship from the seas and it has signally failed against transports. Its moral effect has been very great : British submarines have terrorized the citizens of Constantinople; while the vic- tories of their beloved " U-boats " have cheered the Ger- man people as the victories of our frigates cheered us in 1812, and have been a somewhat similar shock to the nerves of the British navy. But that sturdy organization has recovered from more than one attack of nerves. And as the war goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that it is unfair to expect unsupported submarines, any more than unsupported frigates a century ago, to do the work of an entire navy. Like the aeroplane, the sub- 176 The Story of the Submarine marine was first derided as useless, next hailed as a com- plete substitute for all other arms, then found to be an indispensable auxiliary, whose scope and value are now being determined. CHAPTER XIII THE SUBMARINE BLOCKADE " It is true that submarine boats have improved, but they are as useless as ever. Nevertheless, the German navy is carefully watching their progress, though it has no reason to make experiments itself." ADMIRAL VON TIRPITZ, in 1901* "DANGER! Being the Log of Captain John Sirius by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle/' IF you have not read the above-mentioned story by the author of Sherlock Holmes, I advise you to go to the nearest public library and ask for it. For those that cannot spare the time to do this, here are a brief outline and a few quotations. Captain John Sirius is supposed to be chief of sub- marines in the navy of Norland, a small European king- dom at war with England. With only eight submarines, he establishes a blockade of Great Britain and begins sinking all ships bringing in food. He enters a French harbor, though France is at peace with his country, and sinks three British ships that have taken refuge there. " I suppose," says the captain, " they thought they were safe in French waters but what did I care about 178 The Story of the Submarine three-mile limits and international law! The view of* my government was that England was blockaded, food contraband, and vessels carrying it to be destroyed. The lawyers could argue about it afterwards. My business was to starve the enemy any way I could/' Presently he overtook an American ship and sank her by gunfire as her skipper shouted protests over the rail. " It was all the same to me what flag she flew so long as she was engaged in carrying contraband of war to the British Isles. ... Of course I knew there would be a big row afterwards and there was." " The terror I had caused had cleared the Channel." "There was talk of a British invasion (of Norland) but I knew this to be absolute nonsense, for the British had learned by this time that it would be sheer murder to send transports full of soldiers to sea in the face of submarines. When they have a Channel tunnel, they can use their fine expeditionary force upon the Continent but until then it might not exist so far as Europe is con- cerned." " Heavens, what would England have done against a foe with thirty or forty submarines?" The British navy could do nothing to stop Captain John Sirius. One of his submarines was sunk by an armed liner, but with the remaining seven he sank the Olympic and so many other vessels that no one dared try to bring food into Great Britain. At the end of six weeks, fifty thousand people there had died of starvation and the British government had to make peace with Nor- land and pay for all the damage the submarines had done to neutrals. The Submarine Blockade 179 As a warning to his countrymen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote this story in May, 1914. Before it was published, 1 England was at war with Germany. On February 4, 1915, the famous " War Zone Decree" was published in Berlin. " The waters around Great Britain, including the w T hole of the English Channel, are declared hereby to be included within the zone of war, and after the i8th inst, all enemy merchant vessels encountered in these waters will be destroyed, even if it may not be possible always to save their crews and passengers. " Within this war-zone neutral vessels are exposed to danger since, in view of the misuse of the neutral flags ordered by the government of Great Britain on the 3ist ult, and of the hazards of naval warfare, neutral ships cannot always be prevented from suffering from the at- tacks intended for enemy ships. " The routes of navigation around the north of the Shetland Islands in the eastern part of the North Sea and in a strip thirty miles wide along the Dutch coast are not open to the danger-zone." But those routes had been closed three months before by the British government, which declared that it had had the North Sea planted with anchored contact mines, but that all ships trading to neutral ports would, if they first called at some British port, be given safe conduct to Holland or Scandinavia, by way of the English Channel. This way would run through the proposed " war-zone." International law says nothing about either " war- zones " or submarines. In all probability, special rules 1 In " Collier's Weekly," August 22, and 29, 1914. 180 The Story of the Submarine for undersea warfare will be drawn up by a conference of delegates from the leading countries of the world soon after the end of the present war. But till then, no such conference can be held, and the United States has always maintained, even when it has been to its dis- advantage to do so, that no one nation can change in- ternational law to suit herself. We insist that the game be played according to the rules. A submarine has no more rights than any other warship. It may sink a mer- chantman if the latter tries to fight or escape. If the captured vessel is found to be carrying contraband to the enemy's country, the warship may either take her into port as a prize or, if this is impracticable, sink her. But before an unarmed and unresisting merchant vessel can be sunk, the passengers and crew must be given time and opportunity to escape. President Wilson gave notice on February 10, 1915, that if, by act of the commander of any German war- ship, an American vessel or the lives of American citizens should be lost on the high seas, the United States " would be constrained to hold the Imperial government of Ger- many to a strict accountability for such acts of their naval authorities and to take any steps that might be necessary to safeguard American lives and property and to secure to American citizens the full enjoyments of their acknowledged rights on the high seas/' On the same day, a note to Great Britain voiced our objection to the " explicit sanction by a belligerent gov- ernment for its merchant ships generally to fly the flag of a neutral power within certain portions of the high The Submarine Blockade 181 seas which are presumed to be frequented with hostile warships." To this Sir Edward Grey replied that " the British government have no intention of advising their merchant shipping to use foreign flags as a general practice or re- sort to them otherwise than for escaping capture or de- struction/' Such " sailing under false colors " to fool the enemy's cruisers is an old and well-established right of merchant- men of belligerent countries. Its abuse, under present- day conditions, however, might have given the German submarine commanders a plausible excuse for sinking neutral vessels. To avoid this, neutral shipowners be- gan to paint the name, port, and national colors on the broadside of each of their steamers, plain enough to be read from afar through a periscope. Then the time came for the war-zone decree to be put into effect, and the world watched with great interest and no little apprehension to see what the submarine blockaders could do. Seven British ships were sunk during the first six days. Then came a lull, followed by the announcement by the British Admiralty that between February 23 to March 3, 3805 transoceanic ships had arrived at British ports, 669 had cleared and none had been lost, while two German submarines had been sunk. During the eleven weeks be- tween the establishing of the blockade and the sinking. of the Lusitania, forty-two oversea vessels and twenty-eight fishing boats of British registry had been sunk by the submarines, but 16,190 liners and freighters had safely 182 The Story of the Submarine run the blockade. The largest number of vessels sunk by the " U-boats " in any one week was thirty-six, be- Copyright, London Sphere & N. Y. Herald. German Submarine Pursuing English Merchantman. (Note stern torpedo-tubes, and funnel for carrying off exhaust from Diesel engine.) tween June 23 and 30; while nineteen British merchant- men, with a total tonnage of 76,000, and three fishing The Submarine Blockade 183 vessels were destroyed either by submarines or mines during the week ending August 25. The total number sunk in the first six months was 485. But with more than fifteen hundred ships coming and going every week, the submarine blockade of the British Isles was ob- viously a failure. It was a costly failure from the military point of view. The expenditure of torpedoes alone must have been considerable and a modern Whitehead or Schwartz- kopf costs from five to eight thousand dollars and takes several months to build. How many of the " U-boats " themselves have fallen prey to the British patroling craft, traps, mines, and drag-nets cannot be computed with any accuracy, but by the first of September, 1915, the num- ber declared to be lost " on the authority of a high of- ficial in the British Admiralty " ran anywhere from thirty to fifty. Even if she has been completing a new submarine every week since the war began, Germany cannot afford the loss of so much material, and still, less, of so many trained men. Captain Persius, one of the foremost German writers on naval affairs, pointed this out in a newspaper article that brought a hurricane of angry criticism about his ears. How great has been the wear and tear on the nervous systems of the submarine crews is shown by the following extract from the state- ment of Captain Hansen of the captured U-i6. " It is fearfully trying on the nerves. Not every man can endure it. While running under the sea there is deathlike stillness in the boats, as the electrical machinery is noiseless. ... As the air becomes heated it gets poor and mixed with the odor of oil from the machinery. 184 The Story of the Submarine The atmosphere becomes fearful. An overpowering sleepiness often attacks new men and one requires the utmost will power to keep awake. I have had men who did not want to eat during the first three days out be- cause they did not want to lose that amount of time from sleep. Day after day spent in such cramped quarters, where there is hardly room to stretch your legs, and re- maining constantly on the alert, is a tremendous strain on the nerves." But if there is discomfort below the surface there is peril of death above. Yet a submarine must spend as much time as possible 6n top of the water, even off the enemy's coast, to spare the precious storage batteries and let the Diesel engines grind oil into electricity by using the electric motor as a dynamo. If she could renew her batteries under water or pick up a useable supply of cur- rent as she can pick up a drum of oil from a given spot on the sea-bottom, then the modern submarine would in- deed be a hard fish to catch. As it is, great ingenuity has been shown by the German skippers in minimizing the dangers of surface cruising and at the same time stalking their prey. One big submarine masqueraded as a steamer, with dummy masts and funnel. Inno- cent-looking steam trawlers flying neutral flags acted as screens and lookouts, besides carrying supplies. One of these boldly entered a British harbor, where it was no- ticed that her decks were cumbered with very many coils of rope. The authorities investigated and found snugly stowed in the center of each a large can of fuel-oil. An- other trawler, flying the Dutch flag, was stopped in the The Submarine Blockade 185 North Sea by a British cruiser and searched by a board- ing-party. They were going back into their boat, after finding everything apparently as it should be, when one of the Englishmen noticed a mysterious pipe sticking out of the- trawler's side. They swarmed on board again and discovered that the fishing-boat had a complete double hull, the space between being filled with oil. The trawler's crew were removed to the cruiser and a strong detachment of bluejackets left in their place. A few hours afterwards, there was a swirl of water alongside and a German submarine came up for refreshments. It was promptly captured and so was another that pres- ently followed it: a good day's catch for one small fish- ing-boat. Because of the uncertainty and danger of depending on underwater caches and tenders, each blockader usually returned at the end of two or three weeks to Heligoland, Zeebruge, Ostend, or some other base to take on sup- plies, report progress and rest the crew. This of course reduces the number of submarines actually on guard. How large that number may have been at any particular time since the blockade began is unknown to everybody except a few persons in Berlin. At the outbreak of the war, Germany had between twenty and twenty-five sub- marines in commission and a dozen or so under construc- tion. If, as is claimed, the Germans have been complet- ing a new undersea boat every week since the war began, that would have given them by August i, 1915, a flotilla of seventy-seven, exclusive of losses. If only thirty had been lost, that would have left fewer than fifty subma- 186 The Story of the Submarine /ines to blockade more than fifty seaports, great and small, scattered over more than twenty-five hundred miles of coast. Moreover, these widely scattered blockaders would have to be on duty by night as well as by day. But at night or in fog the periscope is useless; to intercept an incoming steamer, running swiftly and without lights, the submarine must rise and cruise on the surface. It cannot use a searchlight to locate the blockade-runner without consuming much precious voltage and at the same time attracting the nearest patrol-boat. The same disadvantages apply to sending wireless mes- sages from one blockading submarine to another. And as the wireless apparatus of an undersea boat is neces- sarily low-powered and has a narrow radius, while " os- cillators," bells, and other underwater signaling devices are still in their infancy, it would seem as if the German " U-boats " in British waters must have been suffering from lack of cooperation and team-play. If the captain of a Union gunboat, lying off Charleston during the Civil War, caught a glimpse of a blockade runner, he could alarm the rest of the fleet with rockets and signal guns, but the commander of the U-pp off Queenstown cannot count on his consorts if he himself fails to sink an ap- proaching liner. Perhaps the most notable shortcoming of the subma- rine blockade has been its failure to inspire terror. Con- trary to the expectations of nearly every forecaster from Robert Fulton to Conan Doyle, the sinking of the first merchant vessels by submarines failed to frighten away any others. Cargo rates are high in war-time and in- The Submarine Blockade 187 surance covers the owners' risk, so few sailing orders were canceled. As for the captains, they are not noted for timidity, and professional pride is strong among them; most of them have families to provide for, and every one of them knows that behind him stands an eager young mate with a master's ticket, ready to take the risk and take out the ship if the skipper quits. So the merchant marine accepted the submarine as one of the risks of the trade. When a big German submarine rose up off the Irish coast within easy gunshot of the homeward-bound British steamer Anglo-Calif ornian and signaled for her to heave to, the plucky English skipper slammed his en- gine-room telegraph over to " Full speed ahead." Away dashed the steamer and after her came the submarine, 2 making good practice with her 8.8 centimeter gun. Twenty shrapnel shells burst over the Anglo-Calif ornian, riddling her upper works, slaughtering thirty of her cargo of horses, killing seven of her crew and wound- ing eight more. Steering with his own hands, Captain Archibald Panlow held his vessel on her course till a shrapnel bullet killed him, when the wheel was taken by his son, the second mate, who brought the Anglo-Cali- f ornian safely into Queenstown. It is men of this breed who have kept Admiral von Tirpitz from saying, in the words of the fictitious Captain John Sirius, 2 This submarine was the U-39. On board her was an American boy, Carl Frank List, who was taken off a Norwegian ship and spent eleven days on the U-39, during which time she sank eleven ships. In each case the crew were given ample time to take to the boats. List's intensely interesting narrative appeared in the " New York American " for September 3, 5, and 7, 1915. i88 The Story of the Submarine " The terror I had caused had cleared the channel/' But because the " Campaign of Frightfulness " has failed and a few score of unsupported submarines have been unable to blockade the British Isles, it is stupid to pretend that there has been no progress since 1901 and say as Admiral von Tirpitz said then, " Submarines are as useless as ever." Like every other type of naval craft, submarines are useful but not omnipotent. We have seen what they can do in action and what they have failed to do. As scouts in the enemy's waters they are invaluable. As commerce destroyers, they do the work of the swift-sail- ing privateers of a century ago. In the fall of 1915, British submarines in the Baltic almost put a stop to the trade between Germany and Sweden. But to blockade a coast effectively, submarines must have tenders, which must have destroyers and light cruisers to defend them, which in turn require the support of battle-cruisers and dreadnoughts, with their attendant host of colliers, hos- pital ships and air-scouts. Nor can a coast be long de- fended by submarines, mine-fields and shore-batteries, if there are not enough trained troops to keep the enemy, who can always land at some remote spot, from march- ing round to the rear of the coast-defenses. This war is simply repeating the old, old lesson that there are no cheap and easy substitutes for a real army and a real navy. -CHAPTER XIV THE SUBMARINE AND NEUTRALS BOTH Admiral von Tirpitz and the Austrian Ad- miralty seem to have begun their submarine cam- paigns after the method of Captain John Sirius : to starve the enemy any way they could and let the lawyers argue about it afterwards. From the beginning of the block- ade, Scandinavian, Dutch, and Spanish vessels, even when bound from one neutral port to another, were torpedoed and sunk without warning by the German submarines. Their governments protested vigorously but without ef- fect. Then came the turn of the United States. The Falaba, a small British passenger steamer outward bound from Liverpool to the west coast of Africa was pursued and overtaken off the coast of Wales on March 28, 1915, by the fast German submarine U-28. Realiz- ing that their vessel would be sunk but expecting that their lives would be spared, the crew and passengers be- gan filling and lowering away the boats as rapidly as pos- sible but without panic. The wireless operator had been sending calls for help but ceased when ordered to by the captain of the U-28. No patrol boats were in sight and the submarine was standing by on the surface, with both gun and torpedo-tubes trained on the motionless steamer and in absolute command of the situation. Without the slightest excuse or warning, a torpedo was then dis- 189 1QO The Story of the Submarine charged and exploded against the Falaba's side, directly beneath a half -lowered and crowded lifeboat. The life- boat was blown to pieces and the steamer sunk, with the loss of one hundred and twelve lives, including that of an American citizen, Mr. Leon C. Thrasher, of Hard- wick, Massachusetts. Photo by Brown Bros. British Submarine, showing one type of disappearing deck-gun now in use. This cold-blooded slaughter of the helpless horrified the rest of the world and did Germany's cause an in- calculable amount of harm. The German people were in no state of mind to realize this, for they had gone literally submarine-mad. They rejoiced in the cartoons depicting John Bull marooned on his island or dragged under and drowned by the swarming " U-boats/' They The Submarine and Neutrals 191 sincerely believed that within a few months the power of the British navy would be broken forever and that in the meanwhile the German submarines could do no wrong. This feeling was presently intensified by the loss of their hero, the gallant von Weddigen. Decorated, together with every man of his crew, with the Iron Cross and pro- moted to the command of a fine new submarine, the Urzp, he did effective work as a blockader and captured and sank several prizes, but only after carefully remov- ing those on board. Then the U-2p was "sunk with all hands, by an armed patrol boat, the British declare: treacherously, the German people believe, by a mer- chant ship whose crew von Weddigen was trying to spare. 1 No attempt was made to warn the American tank steamer Gtilflight, bound for Rouen, France, with a con- traband cargo of oil, when she was torpedoed by a Ger- man submarine on May i. The vessel stayed afloat but the wireless operator and one of the sailors, terrified by the shock, jumped overboard and were both drowned, while the captain died of heart failure a few hours later on board the British patrol boat that took off the crew and brought the Gulflight into port. On the same day that the Gulflight was torpedoed, these two advertisements appeared together in the New York newspapers: ia Von Weddigen, I was told, met his death chasing an armed British steamer. Commanding the U-2Q, he went after a whale of a British freighter in the Irish Sea, signaled her to stop. She stopped but hoisted the Spanish flag. As he came alongside, the steamer let drive with her two four-point-sevens at the sub- marine, sinking it immediately." Statement of Carl Frank List. OCEAN STEAMSHIPS. v ^ rf ^ 1 ^ lll ^ - ,^,^^v^^^^-^X^X^X^^^^^-^^^^^^^^^^^ CUNA.RD EUROPE VIA LIVERPOOL LUSITANIA Fastest and Largest Steamer now in Atlantic Service Sails SATURDAY, MAY i, 10 A. M. Transylvania, . . .Fri., May 7, 5 Orduna, .... Tues., May 18, Tuscania, . . . Fri., LUSITANIA, . . Sat, Transylvania, . . Fri., May May May 21, 29, P. A. P. A. M. M. M. M. June 4, 5 Gibraltar Genoa Naples Piraeus S.S. Carpathia, Thur., May 13, Noon. ROUND THE WORLD TOURS Through bookings to all principal Ports of the World. Company's Office, 21-24 State St., N. Y. NOTICE:! TRAVELERS intending to embark on the At- lantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war in- cludes the waters adjacent to the British isles; that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or of any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travelers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk. IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY, WASHINGTON, D. C., APRIL 22, igis. Ip2 The Submarine and Neutrals 193 This warning was not taken seriously. It was pointed out that the German submarines had sunk only com- paratively small and slow steamers, and generally be- lieved that it would be impossible for them to hit a fast- moving vessel. Not a single passenger canceled his pas- sage on the Lusitania, though all admitted that the Ger- many would have a perfect right to sink her if they could, as she was laden with rifle-cartridges and shell- cases for the Allies. But every passenger knew that he had a perfect right to be taken off first, and trusted to the Government that had given him his passports to maintain it. The Lusitania left New York on the first of May. At two o'clock on the afternoon of Friday, May 7, she was about ten miles from the Irish coast, off the Old Head of Kinsale, and running slowly to avoid reaching Queens- town at an unfavorable turn of the tide, when Captain Turner and many others saw a periscope rise out of the water about half a mile away. " I saw a torpeido speeding toward us," declared the captain afterwards, " and immediately I tried to change our course, but was unable to manceuver out of the way. There was a terrible impact as the torpedo struck the starboard side of the vessel, and a second torpedo fol- lowed almost immediately. This one struck squarely over the boilers. " I tried to turn the Lusitania shoreward, hoping to beach her, but her engines were crippled and it was im- possible. " There has been some criticism because I did not order the lifeboats out sooner, but no matter what may 194 The Story of the Submarine be done there are always some to criticize. Until the Lusitania came to a standstill it was absolutely impos- sible to launch the boats they would have been swamped." The great ship heeled over to port so rapidly that by the time she could be brought to a stop it was no longer possible to lower the boats on the starboard side. There was no panic-stricken rush for the boats that could be lowered ; all was order and seemliness and quiet heroism. Alfred Vanderbilt stripped off the lifebelt that might have saved him and buckled it about a woman ; Lindon Bates, Jr., was last seen trying to save three children. Elbert Hubbard, Charles Klein, Justus Miles Forman, and more than a hundred other Americans died, and died bravely. As the Lusitania went down beneath them, Charles Frohman smiled at his companion and said: " Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure of life." " I turned around to watch the great ship heel over," said a passenger who had dived overboard and swum to a safe distance. " The monster took a sudden plunge, and I saw a crowd still on her decks, and boats filled with helpless women and children glued to her side. I sickened with horror at the sight. " There was a thunderous roar, as of the collapse of a great building on fire; then she disappeared, drag- ging with her hundreds of fellow-creatures into the vor- tex. Many never rose to the surface, but the sea rapidly grew thick with the figures of struggling men and women and children." The Submarine and Neutrals 195 The total number of deaths was more than a thou- sand. The most fitting comment on the sinking of the Lusi- tania were the words of Tinkling Cloud, a full-blooded Sioux Indian: " Now you white men can never call us red men sav- ages 'again." Resting its case on " Many sacred principles of justice and humanity/' refusing to accept the warning published in the advertising columns of the newspapers by the German embassy either " as an excuse or palliation/' and assuming that the commanders of submarines guilty of torpedoing without warning vessels carrying non-com- batants had acted " under a misapprehension of orders," the United States concluded its note to Germany, six days after the sinking of the Lusitania, with these words of warning: " The Imperial German government will not expect the government of the Unit.ed States to omit any word or act necessary to the performance of its sacred duty of maintaining the rights of the United States and its citi- zens and of safeguarding their free exercise and enjoy- ment." Before any reply had been made to this, a German submarine torpedoed without warning the American freight steamer Nebraskan, on May 25, a few hours after she had left Liverpool in ballast for the United States. Fortunately no lives were lost, and although the Nebraskan' 's bows had been blown wide open by the explosion, she remained afloat and was brought back to Liverpool under her own steam. The attack was tardily 196 The Story of the Submarine admitted by Germany and explained by the fact that it had been made at dusk, when the commander of the sub- marine had been unable to recognize the steamer's na- tionality. On the last day of May, Germany's answer was re- ceived. The Imperial government declared that the Lusitania had not been an unarmed merchantman but an auxiliary cruiser of the British navy. That she had had masked guns mounted on her lower deck, that she had Canadian troops among her passengers, and that in vio- lation of American law she had been laden with high explosives which were the real cause of her destruction because they were set off by the detonation of the single torpedo that had been discharged by the submarine. To these allegations, unaccompanied by the slightest proof and contradicted by the testimony both of British and American eye-witnesses, the United States replied calmly and categorically. It was pointed out that if the German ambassador at Washington or the German con- sul at New York had complained to the Federal authori- ties before the Lusitania sailed and either guns or troops had been found concealed on her, she would have been interned. The statement of Mr. Dudley Field Malone, collector of the Port of New York, that the Lusitania was not armed, may be accepted as final. Gustav Stahl, the German reservist who signed an affidavit that he had seen guns on board her, later pleaded guilty to a charge of perjury and was sentenced to eighteen months in a Federal penitentiary. As for her cargo, every passenger train and steamer in this country is allowed to transport boxes of revolver and rifle cartridges the only ex- The Submarine and Neutrals 197 plosives carried on the Lusitania because it is ex- tremely difficult to set off any number of them together, either by heat or concussion. Dropping these points, Germany then pledged the safety of American ships in the war zone, if distinctly marked, and to facilitate American travel offered to per- mit the United States to hoist its flag on four belligerent passenger steamers. This, if accepted, would by im- plication have made Americans fair game anywhere else on the high seas, and was accordingly rejected in the strong American note of July 21. " The rights of neutrals in time of war/' declared President Wilson through the medium of Secretary Lan- sing, " are based upon principle, not upon expediency, and the principles are immutable. It is the duty and obligation of belligerents to find a way to adapt the new circumstances to them. " The events of the past two months have clearly in- dicated that it is possible and practicable to conduct such submarine operations as have characterized the activity of the Imperial German naval commanders within the so-called war-zone in substantial accord with the accepted practices of regulated warfare. The whole world has looked with interest and increasing satisfaction at the demonstration of that possibility by German naval com- manders. It is manifestly possible, therefore, to lift the whole practice of submarine attack above the criti- cism which it has aroused and remove the chief causes of offense." Repetition by the commanders of German naval ves- sels of acts contravening neutral rights " must be re- 198 The Story of the Submarine garded by the Government of the United States, where they effect American citizens, as deliberately unfriendly." On July 9, a German submarine discharged a torpedo at the west-bound Cunard liner Orditna, narrowly missed her, rose to the surface and fired some twenty shells before the steamer got out of range. Fortunately, none of these took effect. There were American pas- sengers on board and nothing but bad marksmanship averted another Lusitania horror. Three days later, another German submarine stopped an American freight steamer, the Leelanlaw, and had her visited and searched by a boarding party, who reported that she was carrying contraband to Great Britain. Be- cause the vessel could not be taken into a German port and there was no time to throw her cargo overboard, the crew were taken off and she was sunk. Here was a perfectly proper procedure, where no neu- tral lives had been endangered and the question of the damage to property could be settled amicably in a court of law. It was to the practice in the Leelanlaw case that President Wilson referred to so hopefully in his note of July 21. Though the weeks went by without any answer from Germany, it was hoped that the Imperial government had quietly amended the orders to its sub- marine commanders and that no more passenger ships would be attacked without warning. But on the iQth of August, the White Star- liner Arabic sighted and went to the rescue of a sinking ship. This proved to be the British steamer Dunsley, which had been torpedoed by a German submarine. As the Arabic came up and prepared to lower her boats, an- The Submarine and Neutrals 199 other torpedo from the same submarine exploded against the liner's side, killing several of her crew and sending her to the bottom in eleven minutes. She went down within fifty miles of the resting place of the Lusitania. She was sunk without warning and without cause, for she had been bound to New York, with neither arms nor ammunition on board, nor had she made the slightest at- tempt either to escape or attack the submarine. She carried one hundred and eighty-one passengers, twenty- five of whom were Americans. Two Americans were drowned. The German government at once asked for time in which to explain, and the Imperial chancellor hinted that the commander of the submarine that sank the Arabic might have " gone beyond his instructions, in which case the Imperial government would not hesitate to give such complete satisfaction to the United States as would con- form to the friendly relations existing between both governments/' Great was the rejoicing on the first of September, when Ambassador von Bernstorff declared himself au- thorized to say to the State Department that : " Liners will not be sunk by our submarines without warning and without safety of the lives of noncombat- ants, provided that the liners do not try to escape or offer resistance." But only three days afterwards, the west-bound Canadian liner Hesperian was sunk by the explosion of what seemed to have been a torpedo launched without warning from a hostile submarine. And on top of this disturbing incident came the German note on the sink- 20O The Story of the Submarine ing of the Arabic, the perusal of which sent a chill through every peace-lover in America. Affirming that the captain of the Arabic had tried to ram the submarine, the note declared that orders had been issued to com- manders of German submarines not to sink liners with- out provocation, but added that if by mistake or other- wise liners were sunk without provocation, Germany would not be responsible. " The German government," it ran, " is unable to ac- knowledge any obligation to grant indemnity in the mat- ter, even if the commander should have been mistaken as to the aggressive intention of the Arabic. " If it should prove to be the case that it is impossible for the German and American governments to reach a harmonious opinion on this point, the German govern- ment would be prepared to submit the difference of opin- ion, as being a question of international law, to The Hague Tribunal for arbitration. . . . " In so doing, it assumes that, as matter of course, the arbitral decision shall not be admitted to have the im- portance of a general decision on the permissibility . . . under international law of German submarine warfare." Assuming that this extraordinary stand was based on a misapprehension of the facts, the United States sub- mitted to Germany the testimony of American passen- gers on the Arabic, and the sworn affidavits of her officers, that the submarine had not been sighted from the steamer and that no attempt had been made to ram the undersea boat or do anything but rescue the crew of the Dunsley. By this time a change had come over the spirit of the The Submarine and Neutrals 201 Imperial German government. It realized that the sub- marine blockade of the British Isles had broken down, and that further examples of " Frightfulness " on the high seas would do Germany no good and would prob- ably force the United States into the ranks of Germany's enemies. The sensible and obvious thing to do was to take the easy and honorable way out the American gov- ernment was holding open. On October 6, Ambassador von Bernstorff gave out the following statement : " Prompted by the desire to reach a satisfactory agree- ment with regard to the Arabic incident, my government has given me the following instructions : " The order issued by His Majesty the Emperor to the commanders of the German submarines, of which I notified you on a previous occasion, has been made so stringent that the recurrence of incidents similar to the Arabic case is considered out of the question. " According to the report of Commander Schneider of the submarine which sank the Arabic, and his affidavit, as well as those of his men, Commander Schneider was convinced that the Arabic intended to ram the submarine. " On the other hand, the Imperial government does not doubt the good faith of the affidavit of the British officers of the Arabic, according to which the Arabic did not intend to ram the submarine. The attack of the submarine was undertaken against the instructions issued to the commander. The Imperial government regrets and disavows this act, and has notified Commander Schneider accordingly. " Under these circumstances, my government is pre- pared to pay an indemnity for American lives which, to 2O2 The Story of the Submarine its deep regret, have been lost on the Arabic. I am au- thorized to negotiate with you about the amount of this indemnity." In the meantime, fragments of the metal box of high explosives that had blown in the side of the Hesperian had been picked up on her deck, and forwarded by the British government to America. United States naval experts examined the twisted bits of metal and declared them to have been pieces, not of a mine, as the German government insists, but of an automobile torpedo. However, in view of the fact that the Hesperian was armed with a 4.7 gun, and because of the happy outcome of the Arabic affair, it seems unlikely that anything will be done about it. But only a month later there was begun another " Campaign of Frightfulness," this time by Austrian submarines in the Mediterranean. As the passengers on the Italian liner Ancona, one day out from Naples to New York, were sitting at luncheon on November 7th, they " felt a tremor through the ship as her engines stopped and reversed." l Then, while we were stopping, there was an explosion forward. A shell had struck us. " When I reached the deck," continues Dr. Greil, " shell was fairly pouring into us from the submarine, which we could see through the fog, about 100 yards away. I hurried below to pack a few things in my trunk. As I was standing over it, a shell came through the porthole and struck my maid, who was standing at my side. It tore away her scalp and part of her skull 1 Statement of Dr. Cecile L. Greil, the only native-born American on board. The Submarine and Neutrals 203 and went on through the wall, bursting somewhere in- side the ship. " When I went on deck again I found the wildest ex- citement. It was like the old-time stories one used to read of shipwrecks at sea. I will not say anything about the crew because I could not say anything good. They launched fifteen boats but only eight got away. I was in one of these. ... I do not believe the submarine fired deliberately on the lifeboats. They were trying to sink the Ancona with shells, but they finally used a tor- pedo to send her to the bottom. I looked at my watch when she took her last plunge. It was 12.45. We were picked up by the French cruiser Pluton about midnight/' The commander of the submarine declared, in his offi- cial report, that he had fired only because the Ancona had tried to escape, that he had ceased firing as soon as she came to a stop, that the loss of life was due to the incompetence of the panic-stricken crew of the liner, whom the Austrian officer allowed forty-five minutes in which to launch the lifeboats. He admitted, however, that at the expiration of this time he had torpedoed and sunk the Ancona, while there were still a number of people on her decks. About two hundred of the passengers and crew were drowned or killed by shellfire. Among them were sev- eral American citizens. " The conduct of the commander/' declared the strongly-worded American note of December 6th, " can only be characterized as wanton slaughter of defenseless non-combatants/' . . . The government of the United States is unwilling ... to credit the Austro-Hungarian 204 The Story of the Submarine government with an intention to permit its submarines to destroy the lives of helpless men, women, and chil- dren. It prefers to believe that the commander of the submarine committed this outrage without authority and contrary to the general or special instructions which he had received. " As the good relations of the two countries must rest upon a common regard for law and humanity, the gov- ernment of the United States cannot be expected to do otherwise than to denounce the sinking of the Ancona as an illegal and indefensible act, and to demand that the officer who perpetrated the deed be punished, and that reparation by the payment of an indemnity be made for the citizens of the United States who were killed or in- jured by the attack on the vessel/' This undiplomatic language caused no little resentment in Vienna. But after a restatement of the Austrian case, and a much milder rejoinder from Washington, the American demands were apparently acceded to. In the second Austro-Hungarian note, which was published in America on January ist, 1915, the government of the Dual-Monarchy disavowed the act of its submarine com- mander, declared that he had acted in violation of his orders and would be punished therefore, and agreed to pay an indemnity for the American citizens who had been killed or injured. " The Imperial and Royal Government/' the note con- tinued, " agrees thoroughly with the American Cabinet that the sacred commandments of humanity must be ob- served also in war. . . . The Imperial and Royal Gov- ernment can also substantially concur in the principle ex- The Submarine and Neutrals 205 pressed . . . that private ships, in so far as they do not attempt to escape or offer resistance, may not be de- stroyed without the persons aboard being brought into safety." Like the settlement of the Arabic case, this was hailed as a great diplomatic victory for the United States. Unlike it, there was no question of sharing the credit with the anti-submarine activities of the Allies, whose merchant ships in the Mediterranean were being tor- pedoed with startling frequency. On December 2ist, the new 12,000 ton Japanese liner Yasaka Maru was sunk without warning, near Port Said. Thanks to the splendid discipline of her crew, no lives were lost. There was an alleged American on board, but there was some irreg- ularity about his citizenship papers. Nor were there any Americans aboard the French passenger ship Ville de la do tat, torpedoed on Christmas Eve, with the loss of seventy lives. There was nothing to mar the^smug satis- faction of the American people on New Year's Day. Then came the news of the sinking of the Peninsular and Oriental liner Persia, on December 3Oth, off the Island of Crete. " I was in the dining room of the Persia at 1.05 P.M.," declares Mr. Charles Grant of Boston, who was one of the two Americans on board. " I had just finished my soup, and the steward was asking me what I would take for my second course, when a terrific explosion occurred. " The saloon became filled with smoke, broken glass and steam from the boiler, which appeared to have burst. There was no panic on board. We went on deck as though we were at drill, and reported at the lifeboats on 206 The Story of the Submarine the starboard side, as the vessel had listed to port. . . . " The last I saw of the Persia, she had her bow in the air, five minutes after the explosion. . . . " Robert McNeely, American Consul at Aden, sat at the same table with me on the voyage. He was not seen, probably because his cabin was on the port side. " It was a horrible scene. The water was black as ink. Some passengers were screaming, others were calling out good-by. Those in one boat sang hymns." The Persia was apparently torpedoed, without warn- ing. Like the Hesperian, she was armed with a 4.7 gun. One of the ship's officers saw the white wake of the torpedo. But no one saw the submarine. The commander of that submarine evidently believed, like Captain Sirius, in striking first and letting the law- yers talk about it afterwards. INDEX A-i, 124. A-s, 124, 135. A-s, 125. A-7, 124. A-8, 124, 126. Aboukir, 160, 169. Accidents, 124. Aeroplanes, 17, 71, 172. Air-chamber, 47. Alabama, 70. Albemarle, 43, 166. ;4/?t, 136. Alkmaar, 4. Alstitt's submarine, 75. Ancona, 202. Anglo -Calif ornian, 187. ApostolofFs submarine, 66. Arabic, 198, 205. Argo, 92. Argonaut, 85, 92, 98. Argonaut, Jr., 85. Argus, 34. Asia, 12. Aube, Admiral, 59. Audacious, 161, 169. Awash condition, 127. -;?, 124. -u, 165. Badger, 168. Baker's submarine, 82. Balance-chamber, 44, 48. Ballast-tanks, 16, 38, 57, 82, in, 138. Baralong case, i6J, note. Barber, Lieutenant F. M., 16. Barlow, Joel, 26, 34. Bates, Jr., Lindon, 194. " Battle of the Kegs," 23. Bauer, Wilhelm, 56, 65, 120, note. Beatty, Admiral, 175. Beauregard, General, 39. Belridge, 148. Berwick Castle, 124. Bigskorth, Squadron Command- er, 172. Birmingham, 159. Blake, Mr., 10. Blockade, 177 et seq. "Blowing the tanks," 63, 112, 122, 128. Booms, 92, 171. Borelli, 10. Boucher's submarine, 66. Bourgois, Captain, 57. Bourne, William, 4. Boush, Rear Admiral, 137. Bouvet, 154. Boyle, Robert, 7. British Hollands, 80. British Navy, 30, 70, 72, 175, 178. Brun, Monsieur, 57. Bulwark, 161. Buoyancy chamber, 49. Bushnell, David, 6, 13 to 25, 28, 95, 128, 154. C-n, 124. C-I4, 124. Cable-cutting, 89, 95. Cairo, 144. Caldwell, Lieutenant H. C, 78, 79. Caprivi, 148. Carlson, Captain, 40. Cerberus, 22. Chandler, Mr. Edward F., 53. Chlprin gas, 126, 129, 137. Clairmont, 34, 81. Commodore Jones, 144. Compass, 18, 113. Compensation-tank, 79, 118. Compressed-air tank, 30, 57, 131. Conning-tower, 12, 15, 28, 78, 207 208 Index Constantin's submarine, 66. Cooking, 108. Copper sheathing, 18, 35. Cressy, 160, 169. Crilley, Frank, 137. Cushing, Lieutenant, 43, 166. D-5, 155- Daniels, Secretary, 81, 138. Dardanelles, the, 64, 147, 154, 165. David, 36, 43, 61. Davis, Commander, 52. Day, J,, 10, 128. Delaying-valve, 47. Demologos, 35. Depth-control, 113. Destroyers, 35, 104, 168, 170. Delfin, 124. Dewey, Admiral, 79, 145. Diable Marin, 65, 120, note. Diesel, Dr., 108. Diesel engines, 104, 135, 184. Divers, 14, 40, 56, 136. Diving-bells, 4. Diving compartment, 83, 88, 94, 130, 132. Diving-planes, 28, 38, 48, 71, 72, 78, ill. Dixon, Lieutenant, 40. Dorothea, 32. Doughty, Thomas, 115. Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 178, 186. Drzewiecki, 64, 71. Dunsely, 198. Dubilier, Mr. W., 171. E-4, 160. E-5, 124. E-9, 156. E-JI, 165. E-is, 164. E-I5, 165. Eagle, 12, 18. Edison battery, 126. Eel-boats, 4, 14. Electric Boat Company, 81, 96. Electric motors, 108, 184. Electric submarines, 59, 60, 66, 83, note. Emerald Isle, 72. Emergency drop-keel, 10, 15, 83, 128. Enver Pasha, 166. Ericsson, John, 82, 104. Escape from sunken submarine, 130. Even-keel submergence, 61, 96. F-4, 124, 136. Falaba, 189. Faotomu, Lieutenant Takuma, 128. Farfadet, 124. Farragut, Admiral, 142. Fenian Brotherhood, 71. Fenian Ram, 73. Fessenden oscillator, 119, 125. Fishing for submarines, 170, 183. Foca, 124. Folger, Commander, 82. Forman, Justus Miles, 194. Formidable, 162, 169. Frohman, Charles, 194. Fulton, 135. Fulton, Robert, 26 to 35, 69, 139, 186. Gages, 20, 112, 129. Garett, Rev. Mr., 61. Gasoline engines, 86, 105. Gasoline fumes, 90, 107, 125. German contributions, 107, 115. Gimlets, 16, 18, 64. Goubet submarines, 60. Grant, Charles, 205. Greased leather, 6, 9. Greil, Dr. Cecile L., 202. Giuseppe Garibaldi, 169. GulHight, 191. Guns, 83, 102, 174, 187, 202. Guncotton, 46. Gustave Zede, 59. Gymnote, 59. Gyroscope, 50, 53, 114. Gyroscopic compass, 113. Hague Tribunal, 148, 200. Halstead, 56. Index 209 Hammond, Jr., Mr. John Hays, 55- Hanson, Captain, 183. Harsdoffer, 5, 6. Hatsuse, 147. Hautefeullie, Abbe de, 7. Hela, 155. Hermes, 161, 168. Hesperian, 199, 202, 206. Hogue, 1 60, 169. Holbrook, Commander, 165. Holland, John P., 68 to 81, 95, 104, 115, 175- Holland, 76 to 81, 86, 103, 104, 125. Holland No. i, 70. Holland No. 2, 71. Holland No. 8, 76. Holland Torpedo-boat Company, 75, 79, 81. " Horn of the Nautilus," 29. Housatonic, 40. Howard, Ensign, 36. Hovgaard, Commander, 75. Huascar, 50. Hubbard, Elbert, 194. Hundley, 38 to 41. Hydroplanes, 84, 95. Hydrostatic valve, 48, 128, 154. Intelligent Whale, 56, 81, 86. International law, 178, 179, 200. Irresistible, 154, 161. James I, 5. " Jammer," the, 46. Jefferson, Thomas, 14, 16, 22, 25. Jonson, Ben, 3, 64. X"-class, 138. Kambala, 124. Kearsarge, 78. Kheyr-el-din, 165. Klein, Charles, 194. Krupps, the, 99. Labeuf, Monsieur, 91. Lacavalerier, Senor, 66. Lacomme, Dr., 64. Lake, Mr. Simon, 82 to 99, 175. Laurenti, Major Cesare, 134. Laurenti dock, 1^4. Le Son, 9. Lee, Ezra, 15 to 22. Leelanlaw, 198. Leon Gambetta, 169. Leveling-vanes, 96. Lifeboats, 131. List, Carl Frank, 187, 191. Lord St. Vincent, Admiral, 32. Lupuis, Captain, 44. Lusitania, 181, 192 to 198. Lutin, 124. McNeely, Robert, 206. Maine, 76. Majestic, 166. Makaroff, Admiral, 147. Malone, Mr. Dudley Field, 196. Marblehead, 146. Maryland, 137. Merrimac, 69. Mersenne, 6, 91. Messudieh, 165. Microphones, 171. Mines, Confederate, 143, 154, note, contact, 139, 144, 148 to 155, 179. drifting, 23, 139, 154. electric, 89, 144, 151. observation, 144. Mine-field, 151, 165. Mine-planter, 146, 149. Mine-sweeping, 139, 152. Moltke, 164. Monitor, 42, 69, 81. Mother-ship, 100, in, 135. Mute, 35. Napier, John, 4. Napoleon, 27, 32, 33. Narval, 91. Nautilus, Fulton's, 27 to 31, 56, 72. Nautilus, Jules Verne's, 59. Navigating bridge, 103, in. Nebraskan, 195. Nemo, Captain, 59. New Ironsides, 36, 144. 210 Index New York, 78. Nordenfeldt, 28, 61, 74, 95. Nordenfeldt II, 62, 78, 83. Notes, American, 180, 195 to 197, 200, 203. Austrian, 204. British, 181. German, 191, 199. No. 6, 124, 128. Oars, 6, 9, 16, 17, 66. Ocean, 154. Oil-engine, 60, 78, 104. Olympic, 162, 178. Orduna, 198. Osage, 115. Oxygen, 7, 131. Ozark, loo. Panlow, Captain Archibald, 187. Panoramas, 26. Payne, Lieutenant, 39. Pendulum, 49, 53. Peral, 64, 66. " Peripatetic Coffin," 39. Persia, 205. Persius, Captain, 183. Periscope, 78, 83, 114, 125, 186. Petropavlosk, 147. Philip, Captain, 146. Phosphorescence, 6, 19. Pipe-masts, 86, 95. Pitt, 32. Plongeur, 57, 132. Plunger, 75. Pluton, 203. Plumose, 124, 125, 134. Pneumatic gun, 79. Pommern, 163. " Porpoise dive," 78, 160.. Porter, Admiral David, 40. " Primer," the, 46. Propellers, adjustable, 82. primitive, 16, 28. transverse, 83. vertical-acting, 16, 28, 61, 83, 95 154. Protector, 95. Pumps, 1 6, 28, in. Ramillies, 35. Ramming, 124, 168, 200. Reducing-valve, 48. Rescuing, 125, 156. Resurgam, 61. Riou, Olivier, 59. Rogers, Commodore, 34. Rotterdam Boat, 9, 14, 69. Royal Edward, 166. Rudders, bow, 96, HI. horizontal (see diving-planes). $-126, 169. San Francisco, 149. Safety-buoy, 132. catch, 47. helmets, 130. jackets, 130. Sails, 29, 31. Salvage docks, 134. Sampson, Admiral, 89, 146. Schneider, Commander, 201. Scope, Lieutenant Perry, 100. Searchlight, 86, 186. Self ridge, Rear-admiral, 115. Servo-motor, 49, 53. Sirius, Captain John, 177, 187, 189, 206. Skerrett, Mr. R. G., 135. Spuyten Duyvil, 42. Stahl, Gustav, 196. " Staple of News, the/' 3. Steam submarine, 61. Steamboat, 32, 34. Storage-batteries, 59, 126, 184. " Striker," the, 46. Stromboli, 42. Submarine fighting submarine, I74-. Submarine railroad, 64. Submersible, 91. Superstructure, 90, 102. Symons's submarine, 9. Taylor, D. W., Chief Construc- tor, U. S. N., 96. Telephoning from submarines, 88, 132. Tecumseh, 142. Templo, Alvary, 71. Index 211 Texas, 146. Thrasher, Leon C., 190. Tinkling Cloud, 195. Tissot, Professor, 171. Torpedo, automobile, 44 to 55. boats, 45, 103. Brennan, 59. Chandler, 53. controllable, 43, 54, 55. cost of, 47, 103. Davis gun-, 52. Fulton's anchored, 139. Hammond wireless, 55. Torpedo-nets, 34, 170. origin of name, 29. practice, 116. recovering, 47, 123. Schwartzkopf, 52, 160. Sims-Edison, 54. spar, 37, 43. tubes, 45, 46, 63, 117, 118, 133, 138. wake of, 49, 206. " Torpedo War and Submarine Explosions," 35, 139. ' Torpedo, Whitehead, 44 to 52, 117. Transports, 166, 171, 178. Trim, 96. Trimming-tanks, 117. Trinitrotuluol, 52. Triumph, 166. Trumbull, Governor, 14. Turner, Captain, 193. Turtle, 12, 14 to 22. U-i, 108. U-3, 124, 132. U-9, 1 60. U-12, 169. U-15, 159. U-i6, 183. U-28, 189. U-29, 191. U-39, 187, note. U-si, 166. Vanderbilt, Alfred, 194. Vand der Wonde, Cornelius, 6. Van D rebel, Cornelius, 4 to 9, 41. Vendemiaire, 124. Vereshchagin, 147. Vickers Sons & Maxim, 80. Ville de la do tat, 205. Von Weddigen, Lieutenant-com- mander, 18, 160, 191. Von Bernstorff, Ambassador, 199-. Von Tirpitz, Admiral, 69, 177, 187, 189. Vulcan, 132. Waddington, Mr. J. R, 83, note. War-head, 47, 52. War Zone> 30, 179. Washington, George, 13, 17, 25. Wheeled submarines, 84. White mice, 13, no. Whitehead, Mr., 44. Whitney, Secretary, 74. Wilson, President, 180, 197, 198. Wright brothers, 71. X-4, 102 to 123. Yasaka Maru, 205. Yenisei, 146. Zeppelins, 172. RETURN LOAN PERIOD 1 2 3 4 5 6 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS DUE AS STAMPED BELOW CL F MAR 1 2 i 981 ADD aflor nc MrK 6 *> 1 U3 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY FORM NO. DDO. 4m, 1 1 778 BERKELEY, CA 94720 YB 04195