Sea Devils E-Book

John Swinfield

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 464

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Sea Devils is a compelling account of pioneer submariners and their astonishing underwater contraptions. Some made perilous voyages. Others sank like stones. Craft were propelled by muscle-power or had steam engines with chimneys. Some had wheels to trundle along the seabed. Others were used as underwater aircraft carriers. Here John Swinfield traces the history of early submarines and the personalities who built and sailed them. From a plethora of madcap inventors emerged a bizarre machine that navies of the world reluctantly acquired but viewed with distaste. It matured into a weapon that would usurp the mighty battleship, which had for centuries enjoyed an unchallenged command of the oceans. In its long and perilous history the submarine became subject to fierce business, military and political shenanigans. It won eventual acceptance amidst the chaos and carnage of the First World War, in which pathfinder submariners achieved an extraordinarily high tally of five Victoria Crosses, Britain's highest military decoration. Sea Devils brims with daring characters and their unflinching determination to make hazardous underwater voyages: an immensely readable, entertaining and authoritative chronicle of low cunning, high politics, wondrous heroism and appalling tragedy.

Leseprobe

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the staffs of the National Maritime Museum; Royal Navy Museum; Greenwich Maritime Institute (University of Greenwich); George Malcolmson, Royal Navy Submarine Museum; Andrew Choong, Brass Foundry (NMM); Imperial War Museum; Barrow-in-Furness Submariners Association; Cambridge University Library; Churchill Archives. Special thanks go to: Anna, Luis, Dominic and Helen; Dick Richards; Shaun Barrington, Rebecca Newton and Paul Baillie-Lane at The History Press; a legion more who so generously offered their time, patience, reassurance and constant encouragement. Inundation would have been certain without Bridgit. To all the submariners past and present, whose ceaseless courage and fortitude still astonish: distant sentries in sunless depths, their silent vigil offers security to all those who lead more sheltered lives.

Contents

Title

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note: Quixotic Machines

Prologue

Dramatis Personae

1To Take the Plunge

2Ducks and Devotions

3The United States, Holland Submarines and Torpedoes

4Great Britain Finds Her Stride

5Disaster

6Before the Tumult

7Pioneers at War

8The Ill-fated K-class

Epilogue

Appendices

A. Airships and Submarines

B. Charles Dennistoun Burney

C. Flying Warships

D. John Arbuthnot Fisher

E. Louis Mountbatten

F. The Torpedo: A Musical Interlude

G. Bacon, Fisher and the Beresford Affair

H. Roger Keyes

J. Submarines as Aircraft Carriers

K. M-class, Surcouf; Specifications

L. The Dardanelles Campaign

M. Fessenden, Rutherford: Communications

N. The Mine and Depth Charge

O. Godfrey Herbert and Q-boats

Bibliography

Plates

Copyright

Author’s Note: Quixotic Machines

After a lengthy period writing a history of the military and commercial airship, I learned that dirigibles were one of the most fickle forms of transport yet devised. I have not changed my view, though I now appreciate that, in its caprice, coquettishness and complexity, the early submarine matched that of the airship. The distinct parallels between the two are touched upon in this volume: while the airship flew without wings, the submarine, curious in many ways, is a ship that travels not on but beneath the water. I wanted this work to appeal to a lay as well as a scholarly audience: consequently, there is as much emphasis on the politics, culture and personalities, the scheming, shenanigans and skirmishing, as there is on the technicalities and hardware. I have included a list of participants, which serves as a brief guide to who did what where and sometimes when, and extensive appendices to amplify and illuminate if the reader seeks further clarification. There is a comprehensive guide to other submarine books, some of them first class, to whet the appetite of those caught in the thrall of the submarine; some I have shamelessly mined for nuggets of wisdom, as credited in the text, and to whose authors I am appreciative and indebted. The title of this work is taken from a quote in 1900 by the architect of the modern submarine: the rebellious and captivating Irish–American John Philip Holland (1840−1914). The submarine has a long, eventful history, rich in eccentricity. It made its mark, however, only comparatively recently. It was during the second half of the nineteenth century, with the developed world growing molten with invention, that the submarine benefited from a diversity of more general industrial breakthroughs. Metal replaced wood, and petrol and electric engines made previous forms of propulsion obsolete. Finally, the gradual refinement of the torpedo guaranteed that the submarine would become one of the world’s deadliest weapons. The potential of the submarine would be seen in the First World War when the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest military decoration, was awarded to no less than five commanders. Twenty years later, on the eve of the Second World War, the presence of the submarine had become cardinal to victory. As is so often the case, it was conflict which quickened development. Sea Devils traces the submarine’s evolution from embryo, a period haphazardly recorded and subject to fable, to the conclusion of the First World War, as, by this time, its principal characteristics had been established.

By 1918, it had become convention that the submarine required underwater propulsion that did not depend on air; thus batteries came into their own. The physics of buoyancy had been largely mastered: a submarine needed ballast tanks filled with water to make it dive and from which water could be expelled; the tanks were then replenished with air to ensure that it surfaced. Craft were fitted with tanks that could be partially filled, enabling it to be balanced or ‘trimmed’ − kept level, or at an angle required by its commander. Other fixtures were also developed: a rudder for steerage was positioned at the stern, as on surface vessels; horizontal rudders on either side of the craft facilitated diving and surfacing in a way not entirely dissimilar to the manner in which ailerons work on aeroplanes’ wings; a conning tower on the upper deck incorporated a periscope for a commander to take bearings and study surface activity without imperilling craft and crew, nor negating its axial advantage, that of stealth, by having to surface and reveal his presence. Such fundamentals had been established by the end of the Great War, but their achievement had taken 400 years of costly trial and considerable error.

Prologue

Errors like straws upon the surface flow; He who would search for pearls must dive below.

John Dryden (1631−1700)

Prologues and Epilogues: Prologue, All For Love.

In his desire to fly man has not been unduly inhibited by being devoid of wings. Nor has his ambition to swim with the fishes, not on but beneath the sea, been thwarted by an absence of gills, fins or tail. If one really could fly like a bird or swim like a whale, such compulsions might be more easily fathomed. While most would think of journeying in a submarine as the human equivalent of being a sardine trapped in a can, others have been beguiled. This is the story of those not content to go down to the sea in ships, but who yearned to voyage beneath it, performing astonishing feats to achieve their goal. The submarine began with a quirky carnival of hobbyists, engineers and scientists: obsessive, gifted, eccentric, and sometimes mad. As decades turned to centuries, bizarre craft metamorphosed into more practical vessels: fantasy slowly becoming reality. The starry-eyed were elbowed aside as businessmen moved in, driven more by profit than the unalloyed joy of virgin science. In its tortoise-like progress the submarine would become the dangerous plaything of the military, the novelty of its presence resented by navies hidebound by tradition, steeped in the belief that grandeur equalled might and that submariners were the wrong sort and their trade underhand. The chronicle of those besotted by getting underway underwater is one of fortitude and fantasy, imagination and innovation; it is a salute to the forgotten legions of long-dead from whose daring, ingenuity and tenacity would eventually emerge an extraordinary machine that was destined to change the course of maritime history and military thinking forever.

Dramatis Personae

ACKROYD-STEWART,HERBERT (1864−1927). Yorkshire-born creator of heavy oil engine, made by Richard Hornsby, Grantham, Lincolnsnhire.

ARNOLD-FORSTER,LIEUTENANT (later Rear Admiral) Delafield Frank (1828−59). Captain of the first British-built, American-designed Holland submarine, launched by Vickers of Barrow-in-Furness in 1901.

BACON,REGINALD (1863−1947). First British submarine chief. Cerebral, cautious and technically gifted.

BAUER,WILHELM (1822−75). German submarine creator, who took a band aboard which played music underwater to entertain a Russia tsar on his wedding day.

BLISS,ELIPHALET (1836−1903). American businessman. Leading New York-based maker of torpedoes, which transformed the war at sea when allied to the submarine.

BOURGEOIS,SIMEON (1815−87). French designer, with Charles Brun, of the steam-driven Le Plongeur submarine.

BOURNE,WILLIAM (c. 1535−82). Englishman and former innkeeper, who produced Britain’s first submarine design. Brilliant, self-taught and prescient.

BORELLI,GIOVANNI (1608−79). Italian priest and submarine designer. Used leather pouches as buoyancy bags.

BOYLE, Lieutenant Commander (later Rear Admiral) EDWARDCOURTNEY (1883−1967). Intrepid commander of the submarine E-14 in the Sea of Marmara during the Gallipoli Campaign. He was later awarded the VC.

BRUN,CHARLES (1821−97). French naval builder of Le Plongeur submarine.

BUSHNELL,DAVID (1740−1824). American builder of barrel-shaped Turtle submarine, which made the first attack on a warship.

CABLE,FRANK (1863−1945). Crucial in John Holland’s coterie. Captained first Holland submarine on American trials and tutored crews in England on British Hollands.

CALDWELL,HARRY (1873−1938). Distinguished US Navy officer. Captained the first Holland submarine and helped to establish its credentials.

DAY,JOHN. Eighteenth-century woodworker drowned in his sinking boat.

DESON. Frenchman and creator of the spear-pointed Rotterdam submarine with clockwork motor.

DIESEL,RUDOLPH (1858−1913). German inventor of diesel engine modified and used eventually in submarines. Its fitment transformed utility.

DREBBEL,CORNELIUS(1572−1633). Dutch alchemist influenced by Bourne. Built underwater rowing boat smeared in grease to make it waterproof.

DURSTON,SIRJOHN (1846−1917). Royal Navy Chief Engineer, 1889−1907. Critical and suspicious of petrol engines being used in submarines.

FISHER,JOHNARBUTHNOT (1841−1920). Mercurial reforming British admiral and champion of submarines.

FORSTMANN,KapitanleutnantWALTHER (1883−1973). Successful German U-boat commander. With Perière, he made test voyages using U-boats as aircraft carriers.

FOURNIER,GEORGES (1595−1652). French priest, writer and philosopher, who designed the wheeled submarine.

FROST,ELIHU (1860−1925). US lawyer. Promoted and helped fund John Holland. Formed Holland Torpedo Boat Company, which was taken over by Isaac Rice’s Electric Boat Company.

FULTON,ROBERT (1765−1815). American engineer who built Nautilus for the French to attack the Royal Navy. He later developed a commercially successful steamboat service.

GARRETT, the Reverend GEORGE (1826−1902). English clergyman and inventor of Resurgam (I will rise again) submarine. One version, however, did not rise again, and he and his crew drowned.

GOUBET,CLAUDE (1870−1914). French civil engineer who built battery-driven submarine with the novelty of two helmsmen sitting back to back.

GRUBB,SIRHOWARD (1844−1931). Dublin optical inventor of the periscope used by First World War soldiers and submariners; perfected in submarines by Lake in US and Bacon in Britain.

HOLBROOK, Lieutenant NORMANDOUGLAS (1888−1976). Commander of submarine B11 in the Dardanelles, and won the first VC of the Great War and submarine service. An Australian town was later named after him.

HOLLAND,JOHNPHILIP (1841−1914). Brilliant Irish–American inventor of Holland submarines, forerunner of contemporary boats, which were bought by US and British navies.

HORNSBY,RICHARD (1790−1864). Englishman and founder of Lincolnshire-based firm that made steam units and Ackroyd-Stewart heavy oil engines bought by the Admiralty for submarine trials.

HORTON, Lieutenant Commander (later Admiral) SIRMAXKENNEDY (1883−1951). Heroic commander of the submarine E9 during the Heligoland and Baltic campaigns. Also a submariner during the Second World War.

HOWELL,JOHNADAMS (1840−1918). US Navy officer who developed the self-steering torpedo guided by gyroscope.

HUNLEY,HORACELAWSON (1823−63). Revered American builder of Hunley hand-powered Confederate submarine in American Civil War. First submarine to sink a warship.

KEYES,ROGER (1872−1945). Inspecting Captain Submarines, later Admiral of the Fleet. Valiant and popular, though criticised for ordering steam submarines and buying foreign designs.

KIMBALL,WILLIAM (1848−1930). Ex-US Navy officer, torpedo expert, influential friend and supporter of John Holland.

LAKE,SIMON (1866−1945). Highly influential and successful American submarine builder, and main competitor to John Holland. Launched Argonaut.

LAUBEUF,MAXIME (1864−1939). Talented French builder of influential, twin-hulled, dual propulsion, steam reciprocating and battery-driven submarine Narval.

LITTLE, Lieutenant CHARLES ‘Tiny’ (1882−1973). An early submarine captain and, later, commander of the Grand Fleet Submarine Flotilla during the Great War, 1916−18.

LUPPIS,GIOVANNI (1813−75). Austrian Navy officer who initiated the idea of a torpedo. His idea was taken over and developed by Robert Whitehead.

MAHAN,ALFREDTHAYER (1840−1914). American naval strategist who influenced Tirpitz, the Kaiser and others. Writings led, in part, to arms-navy building race before the Great War.

MAXIM,HIRAM Sir (1840−1916). American-born naturalised British businessman: submarine innovator and inventor of the Maxim gun, the mousetrap, fairground rides and aircraft.

MERSENNE,MARIN (1588−1648). French priest who worked with Father Georges Fournier on the wheeled submarine.

MORRIS,CHARLES (1853−1914). Far-seeing American engineer. Important and gifted supporter of submarines and the endeavours of John Holland.

McCLINTOCK,JAMES and BAXTER,WILSON. American businessmen in consortium with Hunley, which built Pioneer and American Diver submarines in the American Civil War.

MOFFETT, Admiral WILLIAM (1869−1933). Father of US naval aviation. Much-loved, influential, a friend of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and a powerful submarine advocate.

NASMITH, Lieutenant Commander (later Admiral, Sir) MARTINDUNBAR (1883−1965). Daring British officer who served in both World Wars. Won the VC as commander of submarine E-11 at Gallipoli.

NIMITZ, Admiral CHESTERW. (1885−1966). Legendary US Navy chief. Captained early submarines and led US submarine fleet. Highly respected strategist and commander.

NIXON,LEWIS (1861−1940). Graduate of the US Naval Academy and respected naval architect who founded Crescent Shipyard, New Jersey. Built illustrious ships and submarines.

NORDENFELT,THORSTEN (1842−1920). Swedish industrialist, engineer and gun-maker who worked with the English submarine cleric George Garrett.

OTTO,AUGUST (1832−91). German inventor of internal combustion engine in 1876. Represented crucial progression for submarines.

PAPIN,DENIS (1647−c. 1712). French physicist and mathematician whose submarine looked like a watering can.

PARSONS,CHARLESALGERNON (1854−1931). British inventor of the steam turbine engine for marine propulsion. Built sleek-hulled, super-fast yacht Turbinia.

PERAL,ISAC (1851−95). Gifted Spanish Navy officer who built the innovative and advanced Peral submarine. This highly talented engineer was frustrated in his career and died prematurely.

PERIÈRE,LOTHARVONARNAULDDELA (1886−1941). Formidable German U-boat commander and Chief of the German Naval Air Service. He later conducted U-boat aeroplane-carrying trials.

RICE,ISSAC (1850−1915). An astute businessman who formed the Electric Boat Company and sold British Admiralty Holland designs. He also produced Holland and Plunger submarines for the US Navy.

SANDFORD, Lieutenant Commander RICHARDDOUGLAS (1891−1918). Captain of the submarine C3 during the Great War. He was killed on a mission to blow up a viaduct in the raid on Zeebrugge, Belgium, and was awarded a posthumous VC.

SCHWIEGER, KapitanleutnantWALTHER (1885−1917). German U-Boat commander who sank forty-nine ships, including the Lusitania, which helped bring the United States into the Great War.

SPEAR,LAWRENCE (1870−1950). American naval architect with the Electric Boat Company; one of those who forced Holland to quit the company. Spear went on to forge a powerful corporate career.

SYMONS,NATHANIEL. Eighteenth-century English carpenter who built a sinking and surfacing boat.

TIRPITZ,ALFREDVON (1849−1930). German Navy chief, arch exponent of powerful U-boat fleet and the driving force behind German fleet restructure pre-1914.

TUCK, Professor HORACE (1825−1900). American inventor of Peacemaker submarine powered by fireless steam engine. Relatives had him locked up in a lunatic asylum.

VILLEROI,BRUTUSDE (1794−1874). French inventor of the first US Navy submarine, Alligator, in 1862.

WEDDIGEN, KapitanleutnantOTTOEDUARD (1882−1915). German U-boat commander who sank three elderly British warships in an hour in 1915, killing 1,459 officers and men.

WHITE, Lieutenant Commander GEOFFREYSAXTON (1886−1918). Followed Boyle as commander of submarine E-14 in the Gallipoli Campaign. Killed by gunfire and awarded a posthumous VC.

WHITEHEAD,ROBERT (1823−1905). English engineer who invented the first properly effective naval torpedo.

ZÉDÉ,GUSTAVE (1825−1891). French naval architect who launched the technically advanced submarine Gymnote, and the larger and more ambitious Gustave Zédé.

‘Bateau sous-marin de M Bourg[e]ois Capitaine de Vaisseau et Brun Ingenieur de la Marine.’ See here.

1

To Take the Plunge

A monk builds a toy duck, watching it waddle, dive and swim back to the surface, his devotions rudely interrupted by thoughts of carnage and destruction. A submariner throws a switch, accidentally killing himself and others in a deafening explosion. A man pedals a glorified barrel with clever fitments through a harsh sea to fix explosives to a warship’s hull. A Frenchman builds a submarine disguised as a watering can. An American is committed to a lunatic asylum after spending his fortune on a steam-driven submarine. A British commander surfaces his boat to perch on its stern rail and answer the call of nature while a German Zeppelin drops bombs on him. Submariners are locked in a bread oven to see if any suffocate. Another departs his craft and swims after a torpedo which has failed to detonate, and, not wishing to see it wasted, chaperones it back to his boat. Three armoured cruisers are sunk in one hour. A liner is attacked and 1,200 drown. A submarine sinks without warning; its commander and crew are never seen again. Forty submariners gasp for oxygen trapped in a hulk on a seabed; fighting for breath, chests heaving, lungs imploding, they last fifty-seven hours, while thirty more are already dead. The saga of the submarine is one of tragedy and triumph, heroism and hardship, its inventors and operators as daring as their exploits.

Across the globe and down the centuries, a diversity of personalities would come to be recognised as central to the advancement of the submarine. They were from different backgrounds and spurred on by a galaxy of motives: some wanted money; others sought maritime supremacy; some were caught in the thrall of new technology; and others strove to go where nobody had gone before. With its powerful navy it was inevitable that Britain would play a central role, though the initial response of its Admiralty was tardy and steeped with suspicion. In the British and American navies, two names stand out in the annals of submarine progress. The first was the mercurial British admiral John Arbuthnot Fisher, who booted Britain’s obsolete, class-ridden Victorian navy into a modern fighting fleet. The second was an Irish–American, John Philip Holland, who was a persistent, steel-willed religious schoolteacher and Irish liberationist whose facility for engineering was honed by an animosity towards the British. Holland invented what is now generally accepted as the world’s first submarine, though others might claim the distinction. In Britain, Fisher’s endorsement ensured its evolution. From designer and believer came a weapon to force eventual obsolescence on the thinking and hardware which had preceded it; an instrument to transform all prevailing strategic and political opinion forever. However, the curious, tragic and sometimes farcical saga of the pioneer submarine pre-dates Fisher and Holland by nearly four centuries.

Though its history brims with sporadic interludes of lunacy, once the template of the contemporary submarine had been achieved then the changes it wrought laid waste to aeons of nautical convention. Before its inception, naval might had been gauged by simple arithmetic: numbers of ships in a fleet, their size, power and range; fortification in terms of thickness of hull and superstructure; numbers of guns, strength of arsenal, capabilities of commanders; and the sagacity of the armchair admirals who directed their deployment. This was a sensible, if prosaic, way of assessing naval potency, though the submarine, and swift ascendancy of the aeroplane, rendered such measurements largely redundant.

The early response from officers in the Royal Navy was imperious: submarines were small, silly and scruffy; their captains and crews the wrong sort. Naval intransigence to the novel was customary, though it would have taken a seer to imagine little ‘tin-fish’ would at some distant date usurp traditional maritime power, disproving entrenched notions about scale and firepower being immutable guarantees of security and effectiveness. Battleships had ruled supreme: oceanic colossi, their command unchallenged; a daunting invincibility exemplified by the density of their plating; each in its pomp and ceremony a personification of imperial glory. The submarine would eventually reduce the battleship to a state of wretched fragility.

It has become convention that, in charting the heritage of the submarine, the endeavours of a British former naval gunner and mathematician, William Bourne (c. 1535−82) of Gravesend, Kent, are taken as a starting point.1 Bourne produced what is considered one of the earliest designs for a submersible, though it is no surprise that Bourne was, in fact, pipped by the scientific prophet Leonardo da Vinci (1452−1519). Not content with sketching falling leaves envisaged as helicopters, da Vinci imagined diving suits and diving machines which, in all essentials, were submarines.2 The self-educated Bourne, a former innkeeper, served as a gunner under Admiral Sir William Monson (1569−1643) and it can be assumed he was greatly influenced by Monson, who was judged among the more enlightened and educated naval officers, as evidenced by his Naval Tracts penned during his final years. The Tracts, though arcane, assured Monson of his place in seafaring history, offering a lucid, if still esoteric insight into naval minutiae.

Bourne, too, wrote maritime articles designed to supplement a meagre living which he forged by addressing numerous technical and natural conundrums. He also researched and wrote navigational critiques which advanced the way sailors might plot and navigate their voyages. The story of the submarine and its lengthy creation is awash with inventive, courageous, largely forgotten souls: Bourne deserves his recognition for refining the navigational principles which enhanced the axioms of good seamanship which prevailed at the time. In 1574 he wrote an approachable, less academic treatise, which challenged those precepts defined in the Arte de Navegar, published in 1551 by the brilliant Spanish royal cosmographer, Martin Cortes de Albacar (1510−81). Arte de Navegar was one of the most important books on navigation in the sixteenth century; it was carried by the English adventurer and explorer Sir Francis Drake (1540−96), an indication of its central position in nautical thinking of the period.3 Bourne’s work, A Regiment of the Sea4 scrutinised de Albacar’s peregrinations and explored, drawing on his own mathematical prowess, the way in which mariners could take bearings using triangulation and, by the use of a cross-staff, determine their own position by plotting that of the stars and the sun.

In 1578, in his book Inventions or Devises, Very Necessary for all Generalles and Captaines, as well by Sea as by Land (usually called Inventions or Devises), Bourne described a submersible wooden-framed craft encased in leather and made waterproof by being smeared in a greased potion. It was to be rowed by its crew, though sadly it was never built. Almost fifty years would elapse before his underwater rowing boat was finally made flesh by an alchemist from the Netherlands, Cornelius Drebbel (1572−1633). Drebbel’s fame owed much to the patronage of James I (1566−1625), the first Stuart king. King James I had an inquiring mind and a penchant for filling his court with writers, philosophers, explorers and theologians. The king’s pursuit of those he felt could see beyond the accepted led to Drebbel, at the age of 32, being invited to England. Born at Alkmaar in the Netherlands, he had been apprenticed to the painter and engraver Hendrick Goltzius (1558−1617) who might have introduced him to alchemy.

Drebbel was ingenious and prolific. His most renowned innovation was a perpetual motion device in the form of a globe. He also invented a machine that recorded the season, year, day and hour, a contrivance which bewitched the king and his court and won the Dutchman international plaudits. It also caused him trouble. Its fame saw him twice invited to Prague in 1610 and 1619 by the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1552−1612), who had a keen interest in scientific development, immersing himself in alchemy, astrology and the occult. On each occasion Drebbel was thrown into jail, becoming ensnared in the volatile politics of the time. It was only royal intervention from England that secured his release.5

Drebbel had a cornucopia of amazing inventions: some were wizardly, with one supposedly able to magic up thunderstorms. Coupling his vivid imagination to innate technical flair, he turned his considerable intellect to nautical matters, and his subsequent craft would echo Bourne’s earlier ideas. Details about Drebbel’s submersible are absent: how he delivered an air supply is a mystery. Such gaps are a bane and apply to numerous aspects of submarine history. It was recorded, however, that he built three submarines, each larger and more capable than its predecessor, and that it is probable they were powered by rowing, with a crew of three or four labouring at their oars. Within the craft, pigskin bladders were tied at the throat by a length of rope. A web of pipes joined the bladders to the exterior of the craft. For it to submerge the ropes were untied, permitting the bladders to fill with water, creating sufficient weight for the vessel to sink. To raise the craft the crew squeezed the water from the bladders, leaving only air, lightening the boat and increasing its buoyancy. The use of animal organs, mixing the archaic with the advanced, played its part in aviation as well as maritime progress.*

Much of the thinking in airship technology is in early submarines. An airship’s hydrogen gas was held in impervious bags of goldbeaters’ skin scrupulously crafted from the intestine of cattle; a voluminous hydrogen bag comprised hundreds of skins sewn together. Large herds of cattle were bred specifically as the source of goldbeaters’ skin. Had Drebbel’s pigskin diving bladder caught on, doubtless the demand for home-reared swine would have rocketed.6

Drebbel’s third submarine caused a sensation. It carried a handful of passengers, inarguably intrepid though some questioned their sanity, with a crew of six frenziedly working the oars (others insist it was twelve). As with its two forerunners, the wooden frame of the boat had been encased in a leather shell and coated with layers of grease to make it impervious to water, though in initial tests it leaked like a sieve. It was fitted with a watertight hatch − though in the context of pioneer submarines such reassuring adjectives should be treated with caution − and a primitive rudder for some semblance of steering. In c. 1622, King James I, accompanied by the perfumed elite which comprised his court and thousands of excited Londoners, thronged the Thames to see Drebbel’s submersible disappear and, to much babbling and widespread astonishment, reappear. Supposedly it could stay submerged for three hours at 15 feet (ft) below the surface; it seems the problem of getting air to its occupants had been solved by the installation of two pipes which floated above the surface. This might have worked if the machine were to maintain a constant depth, but it would have been catastrophic had it dived more deeply. While the craft remained at a stable level it is feasible that one pipe could have supplied the vessel with fresh air, while used air would have been expelled through the other.

Maritime historians ponder if it was a true submarine capable of total or only partial submersion. There is also discussion about the breathing pipes: were they the first snorkels? It is an entertaining proposition, with the first snorkel not being seen until late in the Second World War, three centuries after the Drebbel’s invention. The premise is further clouded by reports that he had found a way of purifying contaminated air by heating salt petre to make oxygen, referred to as the magical distillation of a mysterious chemical. There is also speculation about the amount of oxygen which would have been consumed by a crew of six panting oarsmen − let alone twelve − plus the passengers, who would have been breathing heavily if only out of sheer terror; it seems unlikely a solitary pipe would have sufficed in preventing the voyagers being overcome by foul air.

It is usual for maritime historians to dwell on such arcane matters. Even if the detail has become hazy with the passing of centuries, Drebbel seems to have achieved some sort of amazing feat. All this could be wrong: a well-spun yarn romanticised over the years.7 Perhaps Drebbel’s craft was only a partially submerged rowing boat, sloped at the front so that when rowed it became partly awash, driven a few inches beneath the water by the forward motion as the rowers got into their stride. And if the oarsmen ceased at their labours it would have risen as any sodden log might do. We may never know.

Divine Intervention

In Drebbel’s wake came men of the cloth, with French and Italian priests producing designs. Though why the Church wished to swim with the fishes is an enigma; it would have been a miracle. Two centuries later, a technically minded English vicar, the Reverend (Rev.) George Garrett, made a significant contribution, but more of him later. Submersible history is rich with references to God and the Devil, the submarine being miraculous and unearthly.*

In the 1630s the French priests, thinkers and writers, Georges Fournier (1595−1652) and Marin Mersenne (1588−1648), designed an armed submarine made largely of copper, pointed at the stern and bow, and having wheels with which to trundle along the seabed; an arresting notion if not entirely practical, though wheeled submarines were still being explored two centuries later and are dealt with here. An Italian priest, Abbé Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (1608−79), another submarine hopeful, addressed the eternal problem, that of buoyancy, by squeezing out water from leather containers. While airships used the intestine of cattle and Drebbel employed his pig bladders, Borelli favoured goatskin. He would have made his submarine dive by filling a large quantity of goatskin bags with water and then squeezing them dry to make the craft rise, hopefully; there is no certainty it would have done. He had a knowledge of physics, and understood the theory of displacement and the conundrum of weight versus volume with which designers had to contend. Though strong on the academic and theoretical side, there is little evidence that Borelli ever built a submarine; to further confuse matters there is a well-known diagram of his creation. If in reality it is a work of fiction, nobody knows.

Bishop John Wilkins of Chester (1614−72), England, was another influential figure who recognised the possibilities of the submarine in his work Mathematicall Magick of 1648.10 Wilkins was a polymath, his book in part influenced by the writings of Marin Mersenne, with Fournier the designer of the wheeled submarine. His tome was concerned with engineering, mechanical and scientific breakthroughs, with some based on achievements of the time and others parts more speculative. If some references to submarines appear optimistic today − with the benefit of over 360 years of hindsight − his prophecies about the submarines’ strategic strengths were unerringly accurate. He wrote of the submarine:

Tis private: a man may thus go to any coast in the world invisibly, without discovery or prevented in his journey.

Tis safe, from the uncertainty of Tides, and the violence of Tempests, which do never move the sea above five or six paces deep. From Pirates and Robbers which do so infest other voyages; from ice and great frost, which do so much endanger the passages towards the Poles.

It may be of great advantages against a Navy of enemies, who by this may be undermined in the water and blown up.

It may be of special use for the relief of any place besieged by water, to convey unto them invisible supplies; and so likewise for the surprisal of any place that is accessible by water.

It may be of unspeakable benefit for submarine experiments.

Clockwork Motors and Kettle-like Submarines

Another seventeenth-century submarine was designed in 1653 by the Frenchman De Son. Driven by a clockwork motor, the Rotterdam was spear-shaped at either end in order to ram the English. With its pointed bow and stern, Rotterdam, its sponsors claimed, could punch holes in the hulls of British warships; an alarming strategy had it worked, which it did not. One of many drawbacks was fundamental: its clockwork motor was so limp that it was hardly capable of propulsion. Rotterdam’s designer, not famed for modesty, claimed that his clockwork ram, which was more a clockwork nudge, could race to and fro the English Channel in a day and sink a hundred ships en route.11

The French physicist and gifted mathematician Denis Papin (1647−c. 1712), who like others who dabbled in submersibles had at one time studied medicine − the link between killing and curing seems inexplicable − designed a submarine which from its drawings looked oddly like a kettle crossed with a watering can. In 1679 he invented the pressure cooker, its creation offering a clue as to why his submarine had something of the domestic in its profile. Papin is also credited with inventing the world’s first paddle steamer, another large claim which invites challenge.

In 1698 the English military inventor and engineer Thomas Savery (1650−1715), inspired by Papin’s pressure cooker, made the world’s first steam engine, less crude versions being used to power submarines.*

Papin was no slouch: a Calvinist moulded by a Jesuit education he was a renowned mathematician who mastered a clutch of disciplines. The creator of manifold inventions he was an authority on steam power and steam pumps, and their application in industry. There is speculation that his submarine bore little resemblance to existing drawings: concerned about plagiarism, as rife then as it is today, he perhaps camouflaged his submarine as a kettle; he may also have had a pronounced sense of humour. His solution to the problems of ballast in his culinary-reminiscent craft was far-seeing: a pump balanced the external water pressure with the pressure which existed in the craft. By engaging the pump he could achieve a level of buoyancy using water which would then flow unhindered in and out of his boat.13

Diving Carpenters

Nathaniel Symons, a carpenter from Devon in England, caused amazement in 1729 by creating a craft that utilised an idea which had been central to Bourne’s thinking. Bourne’s boat had been intended to shrink and sink. It was envisaged that the sides of his craft would close in, allowing water to enter and exit, with the watertight compartment of the operator diminishing in size as the walls contracted; thus the vessel would sink, becoming heavier than the water it displaced. It would surface as the sides of the craft were pushed out to expel the water, thus increasing buoyancy. However, Symons would rate as more showman than submariner. His boat was a device which dived and, with luck, surfaced again, while no attempt was made to propel it through the water. The Devonian performed sinking and, after several minutes, surfacing his vessel as a trick rather than any form of scientific endeavour. Spectators showed their appreciation by filling a hat with coins.

The story of the submarine is a medley of courage, tragedy and dark humour: in the 1770s, John Day, also a Devon woodworker, acquired the sloop Maria, a 50ft sailing boat which he refurbished as a diving ship. His incentive was the rash acceptance of a wager. He had made a previous dive, though not in the Maria, and its success had whetted his appetite for a more ambitious plunge. He secured and waterproofed an area amidships, the centre of the Maria being by his calculations the safest location: it would serve as his cabin which he furnished with books, bed, a candle to light the darkness of the depths, and provisions for what he anticipated would be a lengthy submersion.

Day’s nostrum for solving the riddle of buoyancy comprised a collection of large barrels attached to the hull, estimated at some seventy-five in number. To make the ship sink, two 10-ton weights were suspended from the keel. While submerged the weights could be detached by removing bolts and permitting the craft to rise to the surface. A signalling system would inform the curious on the surface about his progress: if he released a white buoy, it would indicate he was in fine fettle; a red buoy meant that his health was indifferent; and a black buoy would be symbolic of danger. In June 1774, John Day clambered aboard the Maria and sank like a stone in 170ft of water in Plymouth harbour. He was never seen again, and neither were his buoys.

The American Revolutionary War and Bushnell’s Turtle

Day’s folly and God’s disciples wanting to take a spin around the seabed lend colour to the submarine legend. Of a greater significance were the endeavours of the Americans David Bushnell and Robert Fulton; the first swathed in antagonism towards the British, the second driven by the zeal of the pacifist, though his fervour seems to have mellowed in later years. Bushnell, a science-minded citizen of Westbrook, Connecticut, wrote an influential chapter in submarine history. A Yale graduate, he had studied engineering, medicine and, somewhat contrarily, explosives; to heal or harm, death or doctoring, a dichotomy common to pioneer submariners, and one which rarely hindered them, if at all. He began building a submersible which he hoped would help vanquish the British oppressor, this being the time of the American Revolutionary War (1775−83). Variously described as egg-like, a barrel and by Bushnell himself as tortoise-shaped, it would be christened the Turtle, looking as if two turtle shells had been conjoined. Conflict quickens innovation and the war in America would bolster the submarine cause.14

The Turtle was accomplished and left its smudge on posterity as the first submarine (well, nearly a submarine) to attack an enemy ship, even though it ultimately failed. Its action obliged a legion of doubters, as well as a tiny band of believers, to recognise that the submarine, or in the case of the Turtle, a semi-submarine, could adopt an attack as well as a defensive posture. Made of wood, waterproofed by tarring as one would caulk the planking of a boat or barrel, the whole contraption held together with iron bands, the Turtle bobbed along with marginal buoyancy, a few inches of its shell revealed, which poked above the surface. From even close range in a placid sea it would have been difficult to identify from a target ship; in a heavy sea with cross currents and a swell it would have been well hidden, though difficult to control; on a starless night it would have been virtually impossible to detect from the deck of a ship bobbing quietly at its anchor. Though a significant advance, the Turtle was still alarmingly perilous, demanding in its operator a compendium of qualities: guile, strong nerves and Herculean exertion. It played well to the submarine’s greatest attribute, stealth, though its ingenuity went far beyond that of mere concealment.15

At a minuscule 7ft, with a diameter of 6ft, the Turtle could claim a pioneering first: it was driven by screw-propulsion, a marked progression on its predecessors which, in essence, casting aside romantic stories embroidered over the centuries, were underwater rowing boats, and which, most likely, achieved only partial submersion.

The Turtle had two propellers: one set horizontally from its side for lateral propulsion, activated by a foot pedal from within its restricted confines; and the second poked from its top and was controlled by an interior handle. Attached to it was an augur, at the end of which was a charge of 150 lb of gunpowder in the form of a limpet mine. The idea was that the augur could be screwed up into the wooden hull of an enemy ship and the mine attached. Once fixed, the explosive could be detonated by a primitive clockwork timer: a spectacularly dangerous procedure which threatened assailant as well as assailed. On the part of the Turtle’s commander, such an assault demanded a distinct madness and manic endeavour. He had to perform an array of monumentally difficult tasks in a very short space of time: pedalling furiously to achieve lateral propulsion, sometimes against tide and wind; steering by rudimentary rudder; attempting to screw the explosive into the enemies’ hull; and all this whilst maintaining an absolute quietness and discretion to avoid alerting sentries on the deck. Its captaincy would demand a Titan: enter Ezra Lee, an army sergeant.

The Turtle was towed by three whaling boats along the Hudson River to a point as close as was dared, at which juncture Lee scrambled aboard his floating egg. In his sights was the 64-gun HMS Eagle, the regal flagship of Admiral Richard ‘Black Dog’ Howe, which on the night of 7 September 1776 lay temptingly in New York harbour, a haughty reminder to the Patriot army of the despised British presence and its loathed, but successful, blockade of the thirteen rebellious colonies. The attack by Lee (1749−1821) was sanctioned by General George Washington (1732−99) – affirmation of his uncertain faith in Bushnell’s bizarre weapon.

Lee paddled along the Hudson to what is today called Governors Island, south of Manhattan, where the Hudson and the East rivers meet. He reached the Eagle, but fought in vain to attach the explosive to its hull, his efforts frustrated by the swirl of currents at the confluence of the waters. A minuscule glass porthole in the brass conning tower of his vessel allowed him only limited vision; were he to pedal with Olympian endeavour his craft had a top speed of 3 miles an hour. Ezra Lee’s inexperience played its part in the botched attack: Bushnell’s brother, also called Ezra, rather confusingly, had trained for a year on the machine, but illness forbade his presence as commander on the night. Why he failed to attach the charge is puzzling. Perhaps something simple had been overlooked: the ordinary curvature of the Eagle’s hull, for instance, which rendered the use of the augur impossible. Capricious tides would have hindered him. It is feasible he was rank unlucky: instead of screwing into wood, comprising the bulk of the hull, he hit iron banding which broke the augur. Another hypothesis is that the hull of the Eagle was sheathed in copper which the augur could not penetrate; coppering became common practice to counter the growth of weed which lessened speed and impaired manoeuvrability; coppering also inhibited infestations of worm and rot which, if left untended, made hulls friable, reducing them to dust. The explanation stood for two centuries, but recent research shows the Eagle’s hull had not been coppered until years after Lee’s fruitless attack. There could be other explanations: the cramped Turtle afforded limited breathing time; it is suggested Lee struggled for two hours trying to ready his assault. Though indisputably courageous and lion-hearted, his lungs were as others: if fighting for air he would have become lethargic, succumbing to an irresistible fatigue. Nevertheless, though forced to abandon his quarry, against all the odds he somehow managed to paddle himself and the Turtle to safety. The Turtle made two more attacks on British ships, neither of which were successful. Ironically, after its exploits, the craft met its end while being transported on a frigate which foundered.

A year after Lee’s attack on the Eagle, Bushnell tried a different approach in an attempt to sink the British frigate HMS Cerberus, moored off Connecticut, its name derived from the triple-headed dog with a snake’s tail which guarded the gates of Hell. A warship of the Coventry class, the sister ship of HMS Active, Cerberus was cruelly symbolic to Patriots, it being the first British vessel to enter North America after the revolutionary hostilities had erupted in 1775. Its commander carried the inflammatory Parliamentary Acts, certain to heighten tensions between the British and the Patriots, or rebels as the British insisted. His passengers included three figures destined to play crucial roles in the campaign to quell the American uprising: John Burgoyne, William Howe and Henry Clinton. In 1777, helped by the currents rather than being disadvantaged by them, Bushnell floated two barrels of gunpowder towards the Cerberus as she lay at anchor. The crew of a yacht moored close to her stern saw one of the barrels and pulled it aboard for a closer inspection. On its retrieval it blew up, killing three and injuring a fourth. This incident was logged by the Cerberus and listed by the Admiralty as an early example of mine warfare, a prophecy of things to come; unlike Cassandra, never to be believed, an inkling that submersibles and mines might be effective weapons had begun to register, though such impressions would not be wholly accepted for decades, and not until the submersible proved more deadly to an enemy than to its operators.16

European Conflict and the American Robert Fulton

The one-time pacifist Robert Fulton (1765−1815) from Little Britain, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, earned his place in maritime, not just submarine, history. His celebrity was assured through his later attainments as a steamboat pioneer, plying the rivers of New York. Earlier, around 1796, he had built a 21ft submarine, the Nautilus, its hull made of copper sheets stretched across iron ribs. Seventy-three years later, the name would acquire glory in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, written in 1870 by the French writer Jules Verne (1828−1905) with its legendary hero, Captain Nemo of the Nautilus.17

Fulton’s first ambition was to be an artist and, in pursuit of a painting career, he had travelled to Paris to advance his studies. Later his passion would turn from canvas to engineering. Ingenious, if idealistic, Fulton had at one time wished to build a submarine to destroy all the weaponry in the entire world, including the totality of ships in the all-conquering British fleet. The historian George Isles recognised Fulton’s abilities:

As he sketched new engines of battle, he believed that he was making engines of war so terrible so that soon it should wholly cease. He was a many-sided man and as he took up tasks widely diverse, each of his talents lent aid to the other. He was a capital draftsman and painter, a mechanic and an engineer, and inventor and a researcher. With all this variety of accomplishment he was a shrewd man of business and a warm friend. Now that fields of human action are divided, and sub-divided, minds of his inclusive horizon no longer appear, and, indeed, may no longer be possible.18

In trying to raise money and sponsorship, Fulton turned to France for support, which at the time was caught in revolutionary ferment. But his novel ideas were regarded as too costly; French coffers had been emptied by the incessant years of tumult. The Dutch, long reckoned to be a financially prudent nation, also considered his plans too grandiose and expensive for the carefully managed economy. He returned to France, modified his ideas and his budget, and finally secured financial backing: it was a highly intriguing union given the strength of his pacifism; he was working for Napoleon Bonaparte, who had emerged as Europe’s foremost belligerent

One of Napoleon’s several flaws, which would contribute to his eventual undoing, was his naive inability to appreciate naval strategy: the supremacy of whale over elephant. His instincts were those of a soldier, not a sailor, though one might wonder what he and his Minister of Marine had intended for Fulton’s creation. The relationship between the French and Fulton soured when Napoleon dismissed him as a charlatan; Fulton’s outré claims generally erred toward the fanciful. Nevertheless, the Nautilus was a significant achievement; with the blinding clarity lent by hindsight, Napoleon was perhaps peremptory in his abrupt discharge of machine and creator.

The elongated teardrop profile of the Nautilus – which would also become the name of the world’s first nuclear submarine in the US Navy, USS Nautilus (1954) – resembled that of a contemporary submarine. With a three-man crew, she was powered by a hand-operated screw propeller, the design of which was subsequently improved with the addition of more vanes. Two horizontal fins on the rudder determined her angle of dive; an innovation with distinct echoes of the diving planes found on today’s submarines.

Fulton designed a hollow keel which filled and emptied with water to control the buoyancy. On the surface, the vessel could be rowed or used as yacht; it had a collapsible sail which might be raised and utilised in appropriate airs. Its armaments were equally intriguing: Fulton devised a way in which his vessel could plunge a spiked metal eye into the hull of a target ship, through which a rope was looped dragging an explosive mine. The submarine would then attempt to make an exceedingly swift retreat from the target ship, pulling the line to its extremity, at which the mine would be hoisted up to the enemies’ hull and detonate by means of a gunlock contrivance.

Nautilus was tested in the Rouen and Seine rivers – in the Seine River, Fulton initiated tests with two small steam-powered surface craft, the results of which were pertinent to his subsequent career as a steamboat operator. In Le Havre, Nautilus reputedly submerged for more than an hour, with Fulton and two others using candles to try and gauge the degree of available air.19 The French were enthusiastic and envisaged Fulton building a larger version, but relations between the inventor and the French deteriorated and Fulton, coming full circle given his early idealism, found support in the British Admiralty, which would subsequently reveal itself more enamoured with his method of planting and detonating mines than in his construction of submarines.

Fulton and Early British Involvement

The British Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806), showed some support for the submarine and Robert Fulton’s endeavours. Pitt was confronted at the time by an assortment of economic and military problems: the submarine offered a novel solution to at least some of them. Assuming office in 1783 at the age of 24, Pitt was Britain’s youngest prime minister, and his youth made him less prejudiced about the adoption of experimental weapons.20 The decade-long turmoil of the French Revolution (1789–99) had cast an uncertain despair across Europe; and, too, the ceaseless struggles of Napoleon’s France with Britain had financially and militarily drained both nations.

Britain’s army had become depleted, with national security resting heavily on its navy. Among naval hindrances, however, was a shortage of sailors. To bolster the hated impressments (press gangs) – the strong-arm way the navy swelled its ranks – Pitt introduced the Quota System in 1795, in which each county in Britain offered a quota of men for naval service, with the number governed by the seaports and the size of population. Faced with such an array of difficulties, Pitt cast about for solutions. Building surface warships was forbiddingly expensive and took years, and, having built them, the next hurdle was in finding personnel to man them. The submarine offered an unconventional alternative, even if its technology was coarse and its capability limited. However, Pitt received scant support from naval chiefs for what they deemed his provocative interest in the submarine. His passing interest, for it was barely more than that, brought howls of opprobrium from stalwarts in the Royal Navy and Admiralty.

Leading the fray was the Staffordshire-born First Sea Lord, John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent (1735–1823).21 A veteran of the Seven Years War (1756–63), the American Revolutionary War (1775–83) and the Napoleonic Wars (1799–1815), his celebrity had been assured by his remarkable victory against all odds at the Battle of Cape St Vincent in 1797. His pronouncements had weight, and in 1800 Jervis was scathing about the submarine: ‘Pitt was the greatest fool that ever existed to encourage a mode of warfare which those who command the sea did not want and which, if successful, would deprive them of it.’22 With such illustrious foes the progress of the submarine would always be guaranteed a hostile passage.

There were plenty of other critics of the submarine, some of them being grandees of the American navy. Commodore John Rogers, a renowned figure in the US fleet, whose family became something of a US Navy dynasty, proved one of the most unsparing:

I leave the reader to make his own conclusions and to judge whether such torpid, unwieldy, six-feet-sided, fifteenth-sixteenth-sunk-water dungeons, are calculated to supersede the necessity of a navy, particularly when the men who manage them are confined to the limits of their holds, which will be under water, and in as perfect darkness as if shut up in the Black Hole of Calcutta.23

Napoleon’s rout and the British victory at Trafalgar in 1805 spelled the end for Fulton; Nelson’s magisterial success eliminated previous continental dangers against which Fulton’s boats may have featured. Though his ambitions for a more capable submarine with a six-man crew and armed with several mines would end in frustration, with Fulton packing his bags and returning to America a year after Trafalgar, fate had a further delight in store: he would burnish his reputation as a pioneer in the relatively new world of surface marine steam. In 1807 Fulton undercut the price of stagecoach fares with the first commercially viable passenger steamship service, which shuttled between Albany and New York on the Hudson River. His 142ft ship, the lithe and elegant paddle steamer the Clermont, has a special place in maritime affections. In 1812 he began building a steam-driven warship, Fulton the First, to help defend New York harbour. Sadly, he died before its completion; his memory is honoured in Statuary Hall, Washington DC. Fulton’s pacifism appears to have mellowed over time, though his idealism and dislike of militarism stayed intact. To some he remains a controversial figure, his flamboyant claims for his contraptions sometimes exceeding their capability. There is veracity in the charge, but it is too unforgiving; few pioneer submariners succeeded without ornate blandishment of their creations. Fulton thoroughly merits his maritime accolades for being resolute, resourceful and as the first commercially successful steamboat operator.24 Cadwallader Colden, Fulton’s biographer, wrote:

Nature had made him a gentleman and bestowed upon him ease and gracefulness. He had too much good sense for the least affectation. He expressed himself with energy, fluency and correctness, and as he owed more to his own experiences and reflections than to books, his sentiments were often interesting from their originality.25

Wilhelm Bauer and Tsarist Russia

Among a roll call of pathfinders it would be remiss to omit Wilhelm Bauer, a soldier in the once mighty Prussian army. In his time, Bauer ran the gamut of submarine experience: he enjoyed success, had a hair-raising escape and dreamed up a novel way of celebrating tsarist accession in pre-revolution Russia. Midway through the nineteenth century, in his extraordinary Brandtaucher (Fire Diver) submarine, he made an accomplished dive, which appeared to pose such a threat to the Danes that they lifted their blockade of Kiel harbour, in north Germany, during the Prussia–Denmark conflict. His craft was of metal, oblong and tank-like. Propeller-driven, operated by a wheel set within the vessel, its control while submerged depended on the crew’s movement of a sizeable weight, which slid from bow to stern and back, causing the craft to point up, or down, sometimes at an alarmingly sharper angle of incline than its operators intended.

Only days after his Danish offensive, Sergeant Bauer and two colleagues became the first to escape from a submarine when it sank in 200ft of water in Kiel harbour. On this there are two schools of thought: one insists that Bauer and his men waited coolly until their craft was inundated and blew apart, permitting them to shoot like corks out of a bottle in a bubble of air to the surface; this version is widely acknowledged, well chronicled and, with good fortune, even possible. There is, however, debate about the effects of divers’ palsy, the bends, which can be extremely painful and utterly debilitating, even fatal. The condition is triggered by sudden decompression caused by surfacing too rapidly, as the air pressure must be consistent with the depth pressure; today a decompression chamber would be used to balance the pressure levels in the event of surfacing swiftly. An alternative and more prosaic view is that the men scrambled to safety in shallower waters before their craft sank to the harbour floor.

In addition to their daring, it was a sign of the persistence and single-mindedness of submarine inventors that they were not averse to hawking designs across borders in a ceaseless safari to enlist capital and support; their pursuit was uninhibited by national loyalty or concern at their immersion in other peoples’ imbroglios. They were driven by one over-arching consideration: come Hell or high water their creations should be made flesh. There were those in high command in the world’s surface navies who thought an apt name for submarines, their creators and commanders, would be Perfidy.

Bauer tried to entertain the British and the Russians in submarine proposals, neither at the time being the closest of allies. However, he enjoyed a modicum of success with each. His involvement in Russian naval affairs led to one of the legends of the submarine chronicle: in a neoteric gesture he marked the coronation of Tsar Alexander II (1818–81) by persuading bandsmen in the seaport and naval hub of Kronshtadt, near St Petersburg, to take a dive (c. 1855–56) in his submarine, the ambitious 58ft Seeteufel (Sea Devil), which in all would make more than 130 successful dives. Beneath the water the musicians struck up a rousing version of the Russian national anthem, clearly audible on the surface and much to the merriment of Alexander II and his celebrants.*

Early Spanish and French Intervention