It was not until a year later that the Narval, a large double-hulled submarine with a ship-shaped outer shell of light, perforated plating, was launched in France. She was propelled by steam on the surface and by storage batteries when submerged. To distinguish this sea-going torpedo-boat, that could be submerged, from the earlier and simpler submarines designed and engined for underwater work only, her designer, M. Labeuf, called the Narval a “submersible.” As the old type of boat soon became extinct, the distinction was not necessary and the old name “submarine” is still applied to all underwater craft. That Simon Lake and not M. Labeuf first gave the modern sea-going submarine its characteristic and essential superstructure is easily proved by dates. The Narval was launched in October, 1899, the Argonaut was remodeled in December, 1898, and on April 2, 1897, Mr. Lake applied for and was presently granted the pioneer patent on a “combined surface and submarine vessel,” the space between its cylindrical hull and the superstructure “being adapted to be filled with water when the vessel is submerged and thus rendered capable of resisting the pressure of the water.”
But though in her remodeled form she became the forerunner of the long grim submarine cruisers of to-day, the Argonaut herself had been built to serve not as a warship but as a commercial vessel. Like her namesakes who followed Jason in the Argo to far-off Colchis for the Golden Fleece, she was to go forth in search of hidden treasure. She was to have been the first of a fleet of wheeled bottom-workers, salvaging the cargoes of wrecked ships; from the mail-bags of the latest lost liner to ingots and pieces-of-eight from the sand-clogged hulks of long-sunk Spanish galleons, or bringing up sponges, coral, and pearls from the depths of the tropic seas. But though he investigated a few wrecks and ingeniously transferred a few tons of coal from one into a submarine lighter by means of a pipe-line and a powerful force-pump, Mr. Lake has done nothing more to develop the fascinating commercial possibilities of the submarine since 1901, because he has been kept too busy building undersea warships for the United States and other naval powers.
Courtesy of International Marine Engineering.
The Rebuilt Argonaut, Showing Pipe-masts and Ship-shaped Superstructure.
Mr. Lake declares that one of his up-to-date wheeled submarines could enter a harbor-mouth defended by booms and nettings that would keep out either surface torpedo boats or ordinary submarines. The smooth-backed bottom-worker of this special type would slip under the netting like a cat under a bead portière. If the netting were fastened down, a diver would step out through the door in the bottom of the submarine and either cut the netting from its moorings or attach a bomb to blow a hole for the bottom-worker to go in through. An ordinary submarine, entering a hostile harbor, would be in constant danger of running aground in shallow water and either sticking there or rebounding to the surface, to be seen and fired at by the enemy. Even if its commander succeeded in keeping to the deep channel by dead reckoning—a process akin to flying blindfolded in an aeroplane up a crooked ravine and remembering just when and where to turn—even if he dodged the rocks and sand bars, he would be liable to bump the nose of his boat against an anchored contact mine (see Chapter XI). But the Lake bottom-worker would trundle steadily along, sampling the bottom to find where it was, and passing safely under the mines floating far above it. The divers would make short work of cutting the mine cables, or they might plant mines of their own under the ships in the harbor and blow them up as Bushnell tried to. Using electric motors and storage air-flasks, with no pipe masts or other “surface-indications” to betray its presence, one of these boats could remain snugly hid at the bottom of an enemy’s harbor as long as its supplies held out.
Courtesy of Mr. Simon Lake.
Cross-section of Diving-compartment on a Lake Submarine.