The difficulties are divided into three heads:—
1. “The letting-out or receiving in anything as there shall be occasion without the admission of Water. If it hath not such a convenience these kind of Voyages must needs be very dangerous and uncomfortable both by Reason of many noisome and offensive Things which should be thrust out, and many other needful Things which should be received in. Now herein will consist the Difficulty, for to contrive the opening of the Vessel so that anything may be put in or out, and yet the Water not rush into it with much Violence as it doth usually in the leak of a Ship.”
The learned Doctor’s remedy is as follows: “Let there,” he says, “be certain leather bags made of several bignesses, long and open at both ends, and answerable to these let there be divers windows made in open places in the frame of the ship round the sides, to which one end of these bags might be fixed, the other end coming within the ship. The bag being thus fastened and tied close about towards the window, then any thing that is to be sent out might be safely put into that end within the ship: this being again close shut, and the other end loosened, the thing may be safely sent out without the admission of any water.”
In taking anything in, it was to be first received into that part of the bag towards the window, which being close tied down at the other end may then be safely opened.
A CONCERT IN A SUBMARINE.
The Diable Marin of W. Bauer.
(1855.)
“It is easy to conceive, how by such means as these a Person may be sent out or received in, as there shall be occasion; how the water which will perhaps by Degrees leak into several parts may be emptied out again, with divers other like advantages. Tho’ if there should be a leak at the bottom of the vessel, yet very little Water would get in, because the Air would get out.”
The fate of the unhappy Person thrust out of the Vessel by means of the leather bags is too dreadful to contemplate, and the sailors called upon to man a modern war submarine may congratulate themselves that this convenient contrivance imagined by the ingenious prelate has not come into use. As to the taking in of things into the boat one does not quite gather how they would get into the bag, or how the bag would be first untied and then tied again by those inside the vessel.
The second difficulty in such an Ark is “the Motion or fixing of it according to occasion: the directing of it to several places as the Voyage shall be designed, without which it would be very useless, if it were to remain only in one Place, and were to remove only blindfold, without any certain Direction: And the Contrivance of this may seem very difficult because these submarine Navigators will want the usual advantages of Wind and Tide for Motion, and the sight of the Heavens for direction.”
The progressive motion of the boat would be effected by the help of several oars made to contract and dilate like the fins of a fish, the holes through which they pass into the ship being tied about with the afore-mentioned Leather Bags.