provided with three wheels, two on either side forward and one aft, the latter acting as a steering wheel. When on the bottom the wheels were rotated by hand by one or two men inside the boat. Her displacement was about seven tons, yet she could be propelled at a moderate walking gait when on the bottom. She was also fitted with an air lock and diver's compartment, so arranged that by putting an air pressure on the diver's compartment equal to the water pressure outside, a bottom door could be opened and no water would come into the vessel. Then by putting on a pair of rubber boots the operator could walk around on the sea bottom and push the boat along with him and pick up objects, such as clams, oysters, etc. from the sea bottom.
So much interest was aroused by this little wooden boat that Mr. Lake was enabled to finance the building of a larger boat, called the Argonaut. It was designed in 1895 and built in 1897 at Baltimore.
Concerning the Argonaut Mr. Lake says in the same article:
The Argonaut as originally built was 36 feet long and 9 feet in diameter. She was the first submarine to be fitted with an internal-combustion engine. She was propelled with a thirty horse-power gasoline (petrol) engine driving a screw propeller. She was fitted with two toothed driving wheels forward which were revolved by suitable gearing when navigating on the waterbed, or they could be disconnected from this gearing and permitted to revolve freely, propulsion being secured by the screw propeller. A wheel in the rudder enabled her to be steered in any direction when on the bottom. She also had a diving compartment to enable divers to leave or enter the vessel when submerged, to operate on wrecks or to permit inspection of the bottom or to recover shellfish. She also had a lookout compartment in the extreme bow, with a powerful searchlight to light up a pathway in front of her as she moved along over the waterbed. This searchlight I later found of little value except for night work in clear water. In clear water the sunlight would permit of as good vision without the use of the light as with it, while if the water was not clear, no amount of light would permit of vision through it for any considerable distance.
In January, 1898 [says Mr. Lake], while the Argonaut was submerged, telephone conversation was held from submerged stations with Baltimore, Washington, and New York.
In 1898, also, the Argonaut made the trip from Norfolk to New York under her own power and unescorted. In her original form she was a cigar-shaped craft with only a small percentage of reserve buoyancy in her surface cruising condition. We were caught out in the severe November northeast storm of 1898 in which over 200 vessels were lost and we did not succeed in reaching a harbour in the "horseshoe" back of Sandy Hook until, of course, in the morning. The seas were so rough they would break over her conning tower in such masses I was obliged to lash myself fast to prevent being swept overboard. It was freezing weather and I was soaked and covered with ice on reaching harbour.
This experience caused me to apply to the Argonaut a further improvement for which I had already applied for a patent. This was, doubled around the usual pressure resisting body of a submarine, a ship-shape form of light plating which would give greater seaworthiness, better surface speed, and make the vessel more habitable for surface navigation. It would, in other words, make a "sea-going submarine," which the usual form of cigar-shaped vessel was not, as it would not have sufficient surface buoyancy to enable it to rise with the seas and the seas would sweep over it as they would sweep over a partly submerged rock.
The Argonaut was, therefore, taken to Brooklyn, twenty feet added to her length, and a light water-tight buoyancy superstructure of ship-shape form added. This superstructure was opened to the sea when it was desired to submerge the vessel, and water was permitted to enter the space between the light plating of the ship-shaped form and the heavy plating of the pressure resisting hull. This equalized pressure on the light plates and prevented their becoming deformed due to pressure. The superstructure increased her reserve of buoyancy in the surface cruising condition from about 10 per cent. to over 40 per cent. and lifted right up to the seas like any ordinary type of surface vessel, instead of being buried by them in rough weather.
This feature of construction has been adopted by the Germans, Italians, Russians, and in all the latest types of French boats. It is the principal feature which distinguishes them in their surface appearance from the earlier cigar-shaped boats of the diving type. This ship-shaped form of hull is only suited to the level keel submergence.
In those days submarine boats were a much more unusual sight than they are to-day and simple fishermen who had never read or heard about submarines undoubtedly experienced disturbing sensations when they ran across their first underwater boat. Mr. Lake, a short time ago, while addressing a meeting of electrical engineers in Brooklyn, told the following experience which he had on one of his trips in the Argonaut: