CHAPTER XII
The Evolution of the Submarine and Submarine Mine
Thomas. They write here one Corneilius'[44] 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?
Cymbal. I'll show you, Sir.
It's 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[45] of a ship and sinks it straight.
Pennyboy. A most brave device
To murder their flat bottoms!
The Staple of News. Ben Jonson.
"Pitt", said the famous Admiral Lord St. Vincent, in the course of an interview with the American inventor Fulton, "is the greatest fool that ever existed, to encourage a mode of war which they who commanded the seas did not want, and which, if successful, would deprive them of it." Truer words were never spoken. Fulton had invented floating mines or torpedoes—"infernals" as they were then called—and even an ingenious form of submarine boat. The French, to whom he first offered them, to their honour be it spoken, would have nothing to do with them even though hard put to it to hold their own against the British fleet. Admiral Decrès reported that Fulton's inventions were "fit only for Algerines and pirates". The Maritime Prefect at Brest refused to allow him to attack an English frigate off the coast with his submarine, "because this type of warfare carries with it the objection that those who undertake it and those against whom it is made will all be lost. This cannot be called a gallant death", he said. Finally, Admiral Pléville le Pelly, the Minister of War, stated that it appeared to him to be "impossible to serve a Commission for Belligerency to men who employ such a method of destroying the fleet of an enemy".
It is a sad reflection that after a century of much-boasted "advance in civilization", we none of us appear to have any chivalric scruples of this kind. But, in spite of our tremendous ascendancy at sea, Pitt—being a politician and not a naval officer—was, as St. Vincent said, "fool" enough to listen to Fulton when, repulsed from France, he took the name of Francis and brought his schemes over to this country. Experiments were made in the Downs, and Lieutenant Robinson of the Royal Marines carried out a demonstration before Pitt with some of Fulton's torpedoes, or "carcasses" as they were called, by blowing up a brig anchored off Walmer Castle.
The famous Sir Sydney Smith was an aider and abettor of Fulton, though a naval officer, but his attitude may have been due to a desire to stand well with Mr. Pitt rather than to a conviction that the adoption of his proposed methods of warfare would be of real service to the navy. What doubtless attracted both men was the hope of destroying the French invasion flotillas at Boulogne and in the Basque Roads, which our fleet could not get at. Attempts were made, but ended in dismal failures. The public generally was dead against the employment of what were regarded as dastardly and underhand apparatus, and so were most naval officers. An officer, in a diary made at the time, describes[46] "six copper submarine carcasses, some to hold 540 pounds of powder and others 405 pounds" that were sent on board his ship for the purpose of being employed against the enemy's vessels. He says further that "Johnstone the smuggler laid one down near the gates of the new harbour before Flushing surrendered, but we never heard of any damage being done by it. As for our part we never tried them—indeed, our Admiral said it was not a fair proceeding."
The idea of attacking an enemy under water was, however, by no means a novel one. Attempts in this direction have been made almost from time immemorial. Swimming under water and diving seem to have been often resorted to in order to cut ships' cables, and even for the purpose of boring holes in their bottoms; but the latter would appear to be rather an impossible performance.[47] The Romans are said to have had a corps or society of divers known as Urinatores. Then there are legends of diving-apparatus employed by Alexander the Great, who himself is frequently depicted in mediæval manuscripts being lowered to the bottom of the sea in a glass barrel.
In manuscripts and woodcuts of the Middle Ages there are to be found several pictures representing men in a species of diver's costume, supposed to have been made of leather, with air-tubes leading to the surface of the water, where they are buoyed by bladders. Some, instead of tubes, are provided with flasks of air. Personally I should doubt whether such dresses ever had any actual existence. I fancy they are originally derived from a species of swimming-jacket or life-belt which is depicted in a fourteenth-century manuscript in the Imperial Historical Museum at Vienna.[48]
