Diver Salving a Gun
(From a print of 1613)
A comparison between the two sketches over page will, I think, go far to prove me right, since the so-called "Diver's Helmet" is taken from Vegetius' De Re Militari, not published before 1511. The earliest picture of a diving-helmet of this kind I have been able to find is in a German work published in 1500: both are therefore of a later date than the "Swimming Jacket". This "jacket" was intended to be worn as follows: The lower rectangular part was to be placed at the back, the oval portion to the front of the body. When the swimmer wished to remain at the surface he inflated his jacket by means of the tube; when he required to dive out of sight he would let the air out. Look at the position of the buckles and straps in the two drawings and you will see that there is a strong presumption that the later artist deliberately made the alteration in order to support his bogus picture of a diving-helmet.
 Swimming Jacket (from a fourteenth-century MS.) |  Diver's Helmet from Vegetius (sixteenth century) |
Observe the close similarity between these two nominally very different articles.The shape of the earlier drawing has suggested a helmet to the illustrator of De ReMilitari by Vegetius, and he has therefore done away with two straps and buckles andaltered the positions of the other two. It is not clear how they are to be fastenedtogether; but the use of the straps and buckles on the jacket is apparent. | |
The earliest mention of a submarine boat occurs in "Salman[49] and Morolf", a German poem of 1190. This was, of course, an imaginary one, like the famous Nautilus in Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues under the Sea; but in the days of "good Queen Bess" one William Bourne, a naval gunner, published a detailed description of how to make "a shippe or boate that may goe under the water unto the bottome, and so to come up againe at your pleasure". The "device", as he calls it, had some quite practical points.[50]
In the following reign a Dutchman, Corneilius Van Drebbel by name, seems actually to have built a submarine vessel, which is stated to have gone under water from Westminster to Greenwich, and with which James I was so pleased that he not only had a duplicate one built, sending it as a present to the Tsar of Russia, but so far overcame his constitutional timidity as to adventure his precious and royal person in a submarine trip in the Dutchman's invention. Then followed many suggestions for submarines, but between Van Drebbel's boat in 1620 and Fulton's in 1800 probably not more than half a dozen were actually constructed.
Van Drebbel was probably responsible for the "water mines, water petards, forged cases to be shot with fireworks, and boates to goe under water" which Buckingham took with his fleet on the ill-managed and inglorious expedition to La Rochelle in 1626. The water-petards or floating mines were of a very feeble description. The following is a French contemporary account of what they were like.
"The composition of these petards was of Lattin (i.e. Brass) filled with powder, laid upon certain pieces of timber, crosse which there was a spring, which touching any vessel would flie off and give fire to the petards, but only one took effect, which did no great hurt, only cast water into the ship, and that was all, the rest being taken by the King's boats."
About 1771 David Bushnell, a native of Maine, built a curious little submarine not unlike a walnut in shape, if you imagine a walnut floating with the point downwards. It was propelled by a hand-turned screw and carried a case of powder provided with a clockwork apparatus for exploding it at the required moment. There was an ingenious arrangement for screwing this mine to the bottom of a ship, and by its means the navigator of Bushnell's submarine very nearly succeeded in blowing up H.M.S. Eagle when lying in the Hudson River in charge of a convoy of transports bringing troops for the campaign against the revolted American colonists. Other attempts were made by the Americans to blow up our men-of-war in the course of the war, but without success. In the war with the United States (1812-14) the Americans again attacked our ships in a similar manner. The Ramillies in particular seems to have been singled out for these attempts. She was attacked both by a submarine boat and by various explosive contrivances. The British retaliated by embarking in her 100 American prisoners and notifying their presence on board to the United States Government. They also bombarded the town of Stonington for being "conspicuous in preparing and harbouring torpedoes".
Between this time and the latter portion of the century innumerable submarine boats were designed and a considerable number of experimental ones actually built. A few of them promised very well, though most were failures, the principal reason of their non-success being the want of a suitable means of propulsion. Every conceivable method was attempted, but it was not till the advent of the internal-combustion engine that the submarine became a really practical proposition. Space forbids mention of even a tithe of these inventions, but among the most notable was that invented by the German Bauer, between 1850 and 1860, when he made a futile attempt to blow up a Danish man-of-war. Then there were the Davids, used by the Confederates in the Civil War in America. Most of these drowned their crews. One, however, succeeded in torpedoing the Federal sloop Housatonic, but accompanied her to "Davy Jones's locker". A Swede, Mr. Nordenfeldt, built about half a dozen submarines between 1880 and 1890, one for this country, one—his first experimental one—which was eventually purchased by Greece, two for the Turkish Government, and, lastly, two or three for the German Admiralty. All of these may be regarded as experimental craft, but they are noteworthy as being the first submarines to be equipped with Whitehead torpedoes, and certainly marked a step forward in the science of underwater navigation.