In 1901 the English Admiralty gave orders to the firm of Vickers, Maxim & Sons, of Barrow, to construct five of the Holland type and subsequently several were constructed for the United States government.
To France belongs the credit of making submarine boats a real factor in naval warfare. In 1881 M. Goubet designed a small submarine boat, and in 1885 an improved Goubet, which was sixteen feet five inches in length, the motive power being electricity. Successful experiments led the French Admiralty to have the Gymnote constructed at Toulon in 1888; she was fifty-six feet five inches long, with a displacement of thirty tons, her motive power being electricity stored in accumulators, which gave her a radius of thirty-two miles at eight knots. Her trials decided the French authorities to have more vessels built, and by 1901 there were some eleven completed.
THE PERISCOPE OF THE SUBMARINE
is its ever watchful eye. Ordinarily the top of the periscope extends about eighteen inches above the waves. Continually revolved at a high rate of speed by an electric motor, the mirrors bring into focus the whole panorama of the upper seas so that the commander can follow in the smallest detail what is passing above him, locate vessels to be attacked, and submerge at will in the presence of danger.
In America, the Hollands have been similarly improved, but other types are also in use. The Lake type, named after the inventor, Simon Lake, contains an air-lock through which divers may [906] emerge. These vessels have been adopted by Russia.
Germany started with Hollands, which they have developed along their own lines. The submarine boat is found in all navies now, and has proved an enormously efficient craft; displacements of one thousand tons are not unusual and speeds as well as radius of action have shown great improvement. The Diesel engine has been largely responsible for this. In manœuvers the craft have come up to expectation completely, the experience in actual war has shown them to be among the most formidable of war craft.
There are two distinct types of submarine vessel—the submarine proper, and the submersible. The submarine sinks through the exhaustion of all its buoyancy, and she sinks at once; the submersibles are forced under.
The latter, though equipped to travel on the surface of the water, are specially equipped for sinking quickly out of sight as the occasion arises. The most improved types, such as the recent German U-boats, have lofty armor plated conning towers, torpedo tubes, mounted guns, periscopes, and wireless equipments.
While in the present European war the submarines have shown themselves to be formidable weapons in skillful hands, they are not so formidable as to ring the death-knell of the large battleship, still less perhaps of the swift battle cruiser. Victory has usually rested with the more powerful ship and the heavier guns.