The French navy was the first to tackle the problem of submarine navigation with any real enthusiasm. French inventors had been responsible for a very large proportion of the designs for submarines, which had continually increased in numbers as the nineteenth century progressed. After extensive experiments with the Gymnote (launched 1888), Gustave Zèdé (1893), and Morse (1899), France set about the construction of a regular submarine flotilla of considerable size, launching nearly thirty boats between 1900 and 1903. Other Powers, except perhaps Russia, held back from the new departure, and it is not impossible that it would have been politic for the British Government to have maintained that attitude, in accordance with the views of Lord St. Vincent, and to have announced that it would refuse to recognize the crews of submarines as legitimate belligerents. To have done this would not have been to enunciate any new theory, for from time immemorial this was the attitude adopted by all navies towards the crews of fire-ships, and that it was later on accepted to apply to those who made use of torpedoes and floating mines is evident by the following quotation from the naval officer's diary which has already been referred to.
He states that on the occasion of the attack on the French ships in the Basque Roads by Lord Cochrane, when explosion-ships as well as fire-ships were used, volunteers were called for to take them in, and "no one was compelled to go, as the enemy by the laws of war can put anyone to death who is taken belonging to a fire-ship". Had we refrained from following the example of the French most probably the Germans would have done so also, first because the French submarines sustained many accidents and did not appear very likely, to experts such as the German naval officers, to become a very valuable arm; and, secondly, because in naval matters they have always tried to follow our lead. But the newspaper "experts" and other laymen in this country to whom the idea of submarine navigation was most captivating as something mysterious, new, and strange, with great potentialities, not only for warfare but for "copy", clamoured in the Press for submarines. The Admiralty eventually ordered four "Holland" boats for "experimental purposes".
John P. Holland was an American inventor, and his first boat, built in 1875, "was a tiny affair with just enough room in her for one man to sit down amidships and work the pedals that turned the propeller. It was only 16 feet long, 2 feet deep, and 20 inches wide, and it is probably the smallest submarine ever constructed. The 'crew' had to wear a diving-dress, and drew air from reservoirs at either end of the vessel. Five little torpedoes were carried, which could be put out through the dome and fired from a distance by electricity."[51] Between this time and 1902 Holland was responsible for six more submarines and the design for another which was never built. The earlier ones were small, but the last two or three of considerable size.
The Holland VIII deserves some description, as she may be regarded as the prototype of the British earlier submarine vessels from which nearly all of our larger and later types have been evolved. "She was a porpoise-like vessel 65 feet long, nearly 11 feet in diameter, and of 75 tons displacement. Her single propeller was driven by a gas-engine when at the surface and by an electric motor when below, both being placed on the same shaft and connected or disconnected as required. She carried a torpedo-tube, a tube for throwing aerial torpedoes, and a submarine gun, the latter being placed aft and inclined upwards, as was the aerial torpedo-tube forward".[52] This vessel, after very considerable alterations had been made in her, was re-named the Holland IX and purchased for the United States navy.
A FLEET OF SUBMARINES IN PORTSMOUTH HARBOUR
Observe the Victory in the background. If Nelson were standing on the poop with his glass, what would he think and say of these "microbes of the sea"?
The First Lord of the Admiralty, in reply to a question asked in the House of Parliament in 1900, had replied "that the Admiralty had not designed a submarine boat, and did not propose to design one, because such a boat would be the weapon of an inferior power". Whether he was right or wrong, the statement was a straightforward and an understandable one. Possibly it struck the First Lord as being too straightforward for a politician, so he at once began to "hedge", and qualified what he had said by adding: "But if it could be produced as a working article, the Power which possessed such an article would no longer be an inferior but a superior Power". It is hard to reconcile the two statements; for if a submarine was an unworkable proposition it would be no good to any Power, strong or weak.
However, a couple of years later, as I have already mentioned, the Admiralty determined to acquire a few submarine boats, nominally with the view of finding out how their use by an enemy could be rendered abortive. First one and then four other practically similar ones, to be built on Holland's designs, were ordered from Vickers of Barrow-in-Furness. Their displacement—submerged—was 120 tons. It must be remembered that a submarine's surface displacement is always less than when she has filled her tanks to sink her deeper in the water. They were 63 feet 4 inches long and 11 feet 9 inches wide at their greatest beam; steamed from 8 to 10 knots above and 5 to 7 knots below water, carried a crew of seven men, and had a single torpedo-tube. Many experiments were carried out with these little vessels, the net result being that series after series of larger and larger submarines were constructed, each batch an improvement on the preceding one. Thus we had, after the first five "Hollands", the A, B, C, D, and E classes, and are now turning out the "F" class. The description of our latest submarines must be postponed till the chapter dealing with the fighting-ships of to-day; but it may be noted that up to 1914 all had been improved "Hollands". That is to say, that while some other naval powers, notably Germany, were building their submarines more and more on the lines of surface vessels with flat tops or decks, we remained faithful to the "porpoise" or "fat cigar" type, only modifying them by increasing their size and length, and by adding to the length of the narrow superstructure, which formed a deck and eventually a cut-water for use at the surface, but which was independent of the actual watertight hull or body of the vessel, since the water was allowed free access below the platform.