Cover created by Transcriber and placed in the Public Domain.

THE STORY OF THE
SUBMARINE

Courtesy of the Electric Boat Company.

U. S. Submarine M-1.

THE STORY OF
THE SUBMARINE

BY
FARNHAM BISHOP
Author of “Panama, Past and Present,” etc.

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS
AND DRAWINGS

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1916

Copyright, 1916, by
The Century Co.
Published, February, 1916

To
MY MOTHER

PREFACE

This book has been written for the nontechnical reader—for the man or boy who is interested in submarines and torpedoes, and would like to know something about the men who invented these things and how they came to do it. Much has been omitted that I should have liked to have put in, for this is a small book and the story of the submarine is much longer than most people realize. It is perhaps astonishing to think of the launching of an underseaboat in the year the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, or George Washington watching his submarine attack the British fleet in 1776. But are these things as astonishing as the thought of European soldiers wearing steel helmets and fighting with crossbows and catapults in 1916?

The chapter on “A Trip in a Modern Submarine” is purely imaginative. There is no such boat in our submarine flotilla as the X-4. We ought to have plenty of big, fast, sea-going submarines, with plenty of big, fast sea-planes and battle-cruisers, so that if an invading army ever starts for this country we can meet it and smash it while it is cooped up on transports somewhere in mid-ocean. There, and not in shallow, off-shore waters, cumbered with nets and mines, is the true battlefield of the submarine.

The last part of this book has a broken-off and fragmentary appearance. This is almost unavoidable at a time when writing history is like trying to make a statue of a moving-picture. I have tried to do justice to both sides in the present war.

I wish to express my thanks to those whose kindness and courtesy have made it possible for me to write this book. To Mr. Kelby, Librarian of the New York Historical Society, I am indebted for much information about Bushnell’s Turtle, and to Mrs. Daniel Whitney, of Germantown, Pa., a descendant of Ezra Lee, for the portrait of her intrepid ancestor. Both the Electric Boat Company and Mr. Simon Lake have supplied me most generously with information and pictures. The Bureau of Construction, United States Navy, E. P. Dutton & Company, publishers of Mr. Alan H. Burgoyne’s “Submarine Navigation Past and Present”; the American Magazine, Flying, International Marine Engineering, the Scientific American, and the New York Sun have cheerfully given permission for the reproduction of many pictures of which they hold the copyright. Albert Frank & Company have given the cut of the advertisement of the last sailing of the Lusitania. Special thanks are due to Mr. A. Russell Bond, Associate Editor of the Scientific American, for expert advice and suggestion.

Some well-known pictures of submarines are herein credited for the first time to the man who made them: Captain Francis M. Barber, U. S. N. (retired). This officer published a little pink-backed pamphlet on submarine boats—the first book devoted exclusively to this subject—in 1875.

“The last time I heard of that pink pamphlet,” writes Captain Barber from Washington, “was when I was Naval Attache at Berlin in 1898. Admiral von Tirpitz was then head of the Torpedo Bureau in the Navy Department, and he was good enough to say that it was the foundation of his studies—and look what we have now in the terrible German production.”

Farnham Bishop.

New York,
January, 1916.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
IIn the Beginning[3]
IIDavid Bushnell’s “Turtle”[12]
IIIRobert Fulton’s “Nautilus”[26]
IVSubmarines in the Civil War[36]
VThe Whitehead Torpedo[43]
VIFreaks and Failures[56]
VIIJohn P. Holland[69]
VIIIThe Lake Submarines[82]
IXA Trip in a Modern Submarine[100]
XAccidents and Safety Devices[124]
XIMines[139]
XIIThe Submarine in Action[156]
XIIIThe Submarine Blockade[177]
XIVThe Submarine and Neutrals[189]
Index[207]

List of Illustrations

PAGE
U. S. Submarine M-1[Frontispiece]
Cornelius Van Drebel[5]
The Rotterdam Boat[8]
Symons’s Submarine[10]
The Submarine of 1776[13]
The Best-known Picture of Bushnell’s Turtle[16]
Another Idea of Bushnell’s Turtle[19]
Ezra Lee[21]
The Nautilus Invented by Robert Fulton[28]
Destruction of the Dorothea[33]
Views of a Confederate David[37]
C. S. S. Hundley[38]
Cross-section of a Whitehead Torpedo[51]
Davis Gun-torpedo After Discharge, Showing Eight-inch Gun Forward of Air-flask[53]
Effect of Davis Gun-torpedo on a Specially-constructed Target[54]
The Intelligent Whale[58]
Le Plongeur[59]
Steam Submarine Nordenfeldt II, at Constantinople, 1887[62]
Bauer’s Submarine Concert, Cronstadt Harbor, 1855[65]
Apostoloff’s Proposed Submarine[67]
The Holland No. 1[70]
The Fenian Ram[73]
U. S. S. Holland, in Drydock with the Russian Battleship Retvizan[77]
John P. Holland[80]
Lake 1893 Design as Submitted to the U. S. Navy Department[83]
The Argonaut Junior[84]
Argonaut as Originally Built[87]
Argonaut as Rebuilt[90]
The Rebuilt Argonaut, Showing Pipe-masts and Ship-shaped Superstructure[93]
Cross-section of Diving-compartment on a Lake Submarine[94]
Cross-section of the Protector[97]
Mr. Simon Lake[98]
U. S. Submarine E-2[101]
A Submarine Cruiser, or Fleet Submarine (Lake Type)[105]
Auxiliary Switchboard and Electric Cook-stove, in a U. S. Submarine[107]
Forward Deck of a U. S. Submarine, in Cruising Trim[109]
Same, Preparing to Submerge[110]
Depth-control Station, U. S. Submarine[113]
Cross-section of a Periscope[114]
Forward Torpedo-compartment, U. S. Submarine[117]
Fessenden Oscillator Outside the Hull of a Ship[120]
Professor Fessenden Receiving a Message Sent Through Several Miles of Sea-water by His “Oscillator”[121]
Side-elevation of a Modern Submarine[127]
One Type of Safety-jacket[131]
The Vulcan Salvaging the U-3[134]
Fulton’s Anchored Torpedoes[140]
Sinking of the U. S. S. Tecumseh, by a Confederate Mine, in Mobile Bay[143]
A Confederate “Keg-torpedo”[144]
First Warship Destroyed by a Mine[145]
A Confederate “Buoyant Torpedo” or Contact-mine[146]
Modern Contact-mine[150]
U. S. Mine-planter San Francisco[153]
English Submarine Rescuing English Sailors[157]
Engagement Between the Birmingham and the U-15[159]
Sinking of the Aboukir, Cressy, and Hogue[163]
Tiny Target Afforded by Periscopes in Rough Weather[167]
Photograph of a Submarine, Twenty Feet Below the Surface, Taken from the Aeroplane, Whose Shadow Is Shown in the Picture[173]
German Submarine Pursuing English Merchantman[182]
British Submarine, Showing One Type of Disappearing Deck-gun Now in Use[190]