The above vessel, magazine, &c., were projected in the year 1771, but not completed until the year 1775.
The above account appears in the fourth volume of the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, and also in the fourth volume of Nicholson’s Journal of Natural Philosophy (1801).
Disappointed in the failure of his submarine boat to accomplish the things of which he felt sure it was capable, Bushnell went to France, and finally settled in Georgia, where he lived under the pseudonym of Dr. Bush until the year 1826, when he died at the ripe age of ninety.
General Washington, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson dated September 26, 1775, described Bushnell as “a man of great mechanical powers, fertile in inventions, and master of execution.” With regard to the submarine vessel he says, “I thought, and still think, that it was an effort of genius, but that too many things were necessary to be combined to expect much from the issue against an enemy who are always upon guard.”
Bushnell was undoubtedly the first inventor who combined in his design submarine navigation and torpedo warfare, and his invention, crude though it was, was the embryo of the modern diving torpedo-boat. The principles on which it was built may be traced in almost all the later submarine craft, and the improvements that have taken place have been mostly due to the general progress of engineering; the “oar placed near the top of the vessel” may be compared with Mr. Nordenfelt’s vertical screws.
CHAPTER XII
FULTON’S SUBMARINE BOATS
“What will become of navies, and where will sailors be found to man ships of war, when it is a physical certainty that they may at any moment be blown into the air by means of diving-boats, against which no human foresight can guard them?”—M. St. Aubin (in 1802).
Robert Fulton was born in 1765 in Little Britain, Pennsylvania, and died at New York on February 24, 1815. In the year 1796 Fulton went to Paris, residing at the house of Joel Barlow, then resident minister for the United States, for seven years. While in Paris two projects occupied a large portion of his time. The first was a carcass, or box, filled with combustibles which was to be propelled under water and made to explode beneath the bottom of a vessel.
The second was a submarine boat. In 1797 Fulton submitted his vessel to the approval of the Government of the Directory, promising to furnish them with an agent by which they could dispose of their enemies, particularly British, in all parts of the world. A Commission appointed to examine his ideas reported favourably on them, but the Minister of the Marine would have nothing to do with them. Fulton then made a model of his submarine, which met with the approval of another Commission, but again the Minister of Marine was obdurate. Fulton now tried the Dutch Government, but they did not look with any favour on the new methods of under-water warfare.
Three years later (in 1800), Fulton approached Napoleon, who appeared to think well of his schemes, for he appointed La Place, Mouge, and Volney to examine them, and also gave him 10,000 francs to carry out experiments.