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. 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 lithograph 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 Holland persuaded the Fenians to have him build at their expense.
Rear-Admiral Philip Hichborn, former Chief Constructor, 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 retaining 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.[11] Her petroleum engine, provided for motive-power and for charging her compressed-air flasks, was inefficient, and the boat therefore failed as a practical craft; but in her were demonstrated all the chief principles of successful, brain-directed, submarine navigation. In 1881, Holland turned out a larger and better boat in which he led the world far and away in the 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 complications, she was taken to New Haven, where she now is.”
Photo by Brown Bros.
The Fenian Ram.
(Photographed by Mr. Simon Lake, in the shed at New Haven.)
Political as well as financial complications caused the internment of this submarine, which a New York reporter, 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 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 submarine, 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 submitted 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 administration 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 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 lawyer 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.”