John P. Holland at the time when he achieved his success was fifty-eight years old, Irish by birth and an early immigrant to the United States. He had been deeply interested for many years in mechanical problems and especially in those connected with navigation. The change from the old wooden battleships to the new ironclads and the rapidly increasing development of steam-engines acted as a strong stimulus to the young Irishman's experiments. It is claimed that his interest in submarine navigation was due primarily to his desire to find a weapon strong enough to destroy or at least dominate the British navy; for at that time Holland was strongly anti-British, because he, like many other educated Irishmen of that period, desired before everything else to free Ireland. His plans for doing this by supplying to the proposed Irish Republic a means for overcoming the British navy found little support and a great deal of ridicule on the part of his Irish friends. In spite of this he kept on with his work and in 1875 he built and launched his first submarine boat at Paterson. This boat was far from being very revolutionary. She was only sixteen feet long and two feet in diameter, shaped like a cigar but with both ends sharply pointed. In many respects except in appearance she was similar to Bushnell's Turtle. Room for only one operator was provided and the latter was to turn the propeller by means of pedals to be worked by his feet. She accomplished little beyond giving an opportunity to her inventor and builder to gather experience in actual underwater navigation.
Two years later in 1877 the Holland No. 2 was built. In spite of the number of improvements represented by her she was not particularly successful. Her double hull, it is true, provided space for carrying water ballast. But the leaks from this ballast tank continuously threatened to drown the navigator sitting inside of the second hull. A small oil engine of four horse-power was soon discarded on account of its inefficiency.
The experience gathered by Holland in building and navigating these two boats strengthened his determination to build a thoroughly successful submarine and increased his faith in his ability to do so. He opened negotiations with the Fenian Brotherhood. This was a secret society founded for the purpose of freeing Ireland from British rule and creating an Irish Republic. Holland finally succeeded in persuading his Fenian friends to order from him two submarine boats and to supply him with the necessary means to build them. Both of these boats were built. The lack of success of the first one was due primarily to the inefficiency of her engine. The second boat which was really the Holland No. 4 was built in 1881. It is usually known as the Fenian Ram, and is still in existence at New Haven, Connecticut, where a series of financial and political complications finally landed her.
These two boats added vastly to Holland's knowledge concerning submarine navigation. A few others which he built with his own means increased this fund of knowledge and step by step he came nearer to his goal. By 1888 his reputation as a submarine engineer and navigator had grown to such an extent that Holland was asked by the famous Philadelphia shipbuilders, the Cramps, to submit to them designs for a submarine boat to be built by the United States Government. Only one other design was submitted and this was by the Scandinavian, Nordenfeldt.
William C. Whitney, then Secretary of the United States Navy, accepted Holland's design. Month after month passed by wasted by the usual governmental red tape, and when all preliminary arrangements had been made and the contract for the actual building of an experimental boat was to be drawn up, a sudden change in the administration resulted in the dropping of the entire plan.
Holland's faith in the future submarine and in his own ability was still unshaken, but this was not the case with his financial condition. None of the boats he had built so far had brought him any profits and on some he had lost everything that he had put into them. His financial support, for which he relied entirely upon relatives and friends, was practically exhausted. But fortunately on March 3, 1893, Congress appropriated a sum of money to defray the expenses of constructing an experimental submarine. Invitations to inventors were extended. So precarious was Holland's financial condition at that time that he found it necessary to borrow the small sum of money involved in making plans which he had to submit. It is claimed that he succeeded in doing this in a manner highly typical of his thoroughness.
He needed only about $350.00 but even this comparatively small sum was more than he had. However, he happened to be lunching with a young lawyer just about this time and began to tell him about his financial difficulties. Holland told him that if he only had $347.19 he could prepare the plans and pay the necessary fees. And that done, he was sure of being able to win the competition. His lawyer friend, of course, had been approached before by other people for loans. Invariably they had asked him for some round sum and Holland's request for $347.19 when he might just as well have asked for $350.00 aroused his interest. He asked the inventor what the nineteen cents were to be used for. Quick as a flash he was told that they were needed to pay for a particular type of ruler necessary to draw the required plans. So impressed was the lawyer with Holland's accuracy and honesty in asking not a cent more than he actually needed that he at once advanced the money. And a good investment it turned out to be. For in exchange he received a good-sized block of stock in the Holland Torpedo Boat Company which in later years made him a multi-millionaire.
Holland's plans did win the competition just as he asserted that they would; but, of course, winning a prize, offered by a government, and getting that government to do something about it, are two different matters. So two years went by before the Holland Torpedo Boat Company at last was able to start with the construction of the new submarine which was to be called the Plunger.
The principal feature of this new boat was that it was to have a steam engine for surface navigation and an electric motor for underwater navigation. This arrangement was not so much a new invention of Holland's as an adaptation of ideas which had been promulgated by others. Especially indebted was he in this respect to Commander Hovgaard of the Danish navy who, in 1887, had published an important book on the subject of double propulsion in submarines. Though Holland had made many improvements on these earlier theories, he soon found out that even at that there was going to be serious trouble with the Plunger's engines. The boat had been launched in 1897; but instead of finishing it, he persuaded the government to permit his company to build a new boat, and to return to the government all the money so far expended on the Plunger.
The new boat, Holland No. 8, was started immediately and completed in record time but she, too, was unsatisfactory to the inventor. So without loss of time he went ahead and built another boat, the Holland No. 9, which, as we have said, became the first United States submarine.