Smoke and Mirrors E-Book

Deborah Lake

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

Seitenzahl: 474

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

The Q-ship, an ordinary merchant vessel with concealed guns, came into its own during the First World War, when the Royal Navy to trap and destroy German U-boats. Deborah Lake uses a wide range of primary and secondary source material drawn from archives in the UK, Germany and the USA to tell the compelling story of the Q-ships and their U-boat adversaries. The Q-ship operations themselves will be covered by following the careers of the eight men who won the Victoria Cross on Special Service Operations; and by accounts of German U-boat crews being on the receiving end. No book on Q-ships can avoid the Baralong incident in which a Q-ship's crew allegedly executed the survivors of the German submarine U-27, on 19 August 1915. In a subsequent encounter with U-41, more British atrocities were alleged by the only two German survivors. Revealing extracts from the diary of a Royal Marine who served on board the Baralong are reproduced in the book together with other first-hand accounts. With charge and counter-charge, this incident provides a fascinating story.

Leseprobe

In memory of those who went down to the sea in ships in the turbulent years of the First World War;who fought because words like Duty, Honour, Sacrifice had meaning.

First published 2006

This edition first published 2009

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2016

All rights reserved

© Deborah Lake, 2006, 2009

The right of Deborah Lake to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7509 7907 8

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface

Map showing U-boat and Q-ship waters in the First World War

Prologue

1. The Djinn Escapes the Bottle

2. Friends in Peace. Friends for Ever

3. Quit Ye like Men. Be Strong

4. A Weapon to Turn the Tide

5. Boil Prisoners in Oil – if You Take Any

6. And the Sea Turned Red

7. A Black and Bloody Ocean

8. The Ace in the Hole

9. Targets for the Plucking

10. Very Good Piece of Work. Well Done

11. Like Rats in a Trap

12. Fortitude. Valour. Duty. Determination

13. Glory in Dark Waters

14. Throw the Confidential Books Overboard and Throw Me after Them

15. The Oceans Became Bare and Empty

16. Blue Smoke Came Out of Her

17. A Nice Cup of English Tea

Epilogue

Bibliography and Sources

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Any writer who treads the paths and lanes of military non-fiction rapidly runs into debt: a debt of gratitude to curators, librarians, enthusiasts and others who all freely give their time and willing assistance. The list that follows is not in any way an order of merit. Every name is on a level par with every other.

Simply for convenience, I first thank the staffs of the Imperial War Museum in Documents Section, Printed Books, and the Photographic Department. Close on their heels come the staff of the National Maritime Museum and those of the National Archives (which I feel should still be called the Public Records Office) at Kew. Without exception, every member of staff provided willing help during my visits with even the most irritating and abstruse enquiries.

When it comes to enormous collections, I have to single out Kurt Erdmann of the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv at Freiburg. He dealt with my e-mail requests with charm and politeness, hunted down a particular U-boat war diary, and assisted my researches with considerable professional tolerance.

I also record an ongoing debt of gratitude to the Central Branch of the Northumberland County Library at Morpeth. Municipal libraries remain the jewel in the crown of Victorian civic endeavour; that some politicians seem to believe that they are irrelevant and expensive in the modern age is simply a sad reflection of misguided priorities.

If I mention other individuals, it is because they preside over smaller kingdoms with rather fewer staff. Despite this, they give a personal service with charm and efficiency. My thanks go to George Malcolmson of the RN Submarine Museum; to Allison Wareham of the RN Museum Library; and to Matt Little of the Royal Marines Archive at Eastney. All of them have suffered my e-mails and telephone requests for sometimes esoteric information; they all have displayed enviable patience and good humour. And, again, they willingly ransacked their collections for the answers.

I also owe thanks to Emile Ramakers of the Bibliotheek Maastricht in the Netherlands. He triumphantly produced documents that the world may have thought had vanished long ago. Among my Dutch contacts, Caspar Nijland spent several long hours on my behalf tracking down information in the deepest recesses of the Dutch shipping archives. I also thank Bernd Langensiepen whose knowledge of Goethe makes mine appear puny.

I must also thank Sue Satterthwaite for her courtesy in drawing my attention to her account of the life and career of Lieutenant Charles Bonner who served with Gordon Campbell on Pargust in 1917. This has enabled me to revise this text to ensure greater accuracy in respect of the officer’s career. Details of her book are in the bibliography.

If no man is a hero to his valet, it is possibly also true that no author is a heroine to their agent. Malcolm Imrie deserves a special vote of thanks for his patience and efforts on my behalf. I also have to thank Jonathan Falconer of Sutton Publishing for his help and encouragement.

Michael Lowrey very generously, without hesitation, made available almost any U-boat diary for which I asked. He also read this book in its early manuscript version to steer me away from the more hideous mistakes that I made in U-boat actions.

Michael Forsyth also read the manuscript with a clinical gaze that saved me from various bear-traps. He also transcribed and translated some of the more illegible entries of watch officers in the German Imperial Navy as well as correcting my elementary errors.

That said, all and any inaccuracies in translation are entirely my responsibility.

I thank copyright holders for their permission to quote material; it was impossible to trace some owners. If anybody feels their copyright has been infringed, I will be happy to include the appropriate acknowledgement in further editions.

As always, I thank Vanessa Stead for her steadfast support. Not only has she proofed the manuscript several times in its various incarnations; she has also shielded me from domestic routine including telephone calls from people who wish to sell double glazing, demands for food from hungry cats, and a variety of other distractions.

PREFACE

This book is about valiant men. It deals with British decoy vessels in the First World War, the ‘Q-ships’ and their opponents, the German U-boats. Readers who seek a long list of vessels used as decoys must search elsewhere. For this book is about the men who fought. Enthusiasts who desire excruciating detail as to how many rivets held a conning tower to a U-boat hull will look in vain for such information here. These pages look at the human story of one aspect of the 1914–18 war at sea.

Most books about Q-ships that appeared between the two world wars were in English. Not surprisingly, they often seem to be written in red, white and blue ink, with a dust jacket of the Union flag. Even later books tend to be one-dimensional.

Without doubt, the men who served on decoys performed great deeds. Other heroes also sailed the seas. The men of the Imperial German Navy’s underwater arm, too, fought with valour for their country. They, too, faced the prospect of an unpleasant death.

Any book that touches on the First Battle of the Atlantic needs to nod in the direction of the gorilla that squatted firmly outside the offices of the British and German Admiralties. That was the land war. For both sides, destruction of the enemy’s supply lines meant, eventually, that his fighting soldiers would starve. In essence, it was siege warfare on an epic scale. The land war dominated. The land war decided priorities.

The men who went to sea helped decide the outcome on the Western Front, the Dardanelles and the Mediterranean, and the fate of Austria-Hungary. Politicians on both sides accepted that the civilian population might face hardships. That was regrettable. If men, munitions, supplies did not reach the trenches, the inevitable result was defeat.

One perennial problem in writing about the period is the simple one of measurement. The British employed the imperial system of feet and inches; Germany used the metric system. With naval affairs, further complications arise. Both sides used knots or nautical miles per hour. Both sides used sea miles to express distance, although this is rarely stated in logbooks. It is taken for granted.

I have chosen the easy option and left all measurements as they were originally written, even when I have paraphrased sources. In practice, this makes little difference. A comparison of a U-boat’s war diary and that of a Q-ship reveals that the Kapitänleutnant declares he opened fire from 6,000m. His opposite number informs his admiral that the range was 6,000yd. The U-boat commander commends his gunners for their accuracy at 3 nautical miles. The Q-ship captain agrees. The landlubber with an extremely long tape measure would accept 3½ miles as accurate. To litter the text with conversions on every page is impractical. Better by far to retain the measurements with which those who fought, and sometimes died, were familiar.

For non-metric English-language readers, therefore, I suggest that it is useful to remember that 10cm equates to 4in; that 80 yd is very close to 74m; and that 8km is indistinguishable from 5 miles except by the arithmetically obsessed.

Minor liberties occur with both British and German ranks. In the Royal Navy, the rank known today as lieutenant commander did not appear until shortly before the war began. It was a grade, designed to distinguish between lieutenants. All received the advancement when they reached eight years’ seniority. It was not a promotion. It was an automatic process to mark a senior lieutenant. The rank, originally, was written as ‘lieutenant-commander’; other navies had a similar ranking. The German equivalent was Kapitän-Leutnant. In both instances, I have simply adopted current practice and ditched the hyphen.

The 24-hour clock has only become familiar in recent years. During 1914–18, logbooks, diaries, documents of all kinds stuck to a.m. and p.m. or their equivalents in other tongues. Where these times appear in original texts, I have retained them. Otherwise, I have used the present version of the clock, hence 1410hr, not 14.10 or 2.10 p.m.

For readers who may wonder about the relative importance of the letters RN, RNR and RNVR that follow a British naval officer’s name, the rule is essentially simple. RN means a regular officer. RNR means an officer of the Reserve. This is not some superannuated mariner but a merchant navy officer who has agreed to serve in the Royal Navy in the event of war. RNVR applies to Volunteer Reserve officers who, unlike the RNR, usually had no formal qualifications but were enthusiastic amateur yachtsmen and the like.

As usual, the lower deck, the ratings, summed up the differences in simple language: ‘A naval officer is an officer and a gentleman. An RNR officer is a seaman but no gentleman, and an RNVR officer is a gentleman but no seaman.’

I also ask the indulgence of Scottish, Irish and Welsh readers. It is a fact that the inhabitants of Continental Europe habitually refer to ‘England’ and the ‘English’ when they mean ‘British’. When a Fregattenkapitän refers to the ‘English Navy’, he intends no insult to Gaels and Celts. In the interests of accuracy, I have not corrected quotations where this occurs; and I use it when paraphrasing recorded thoughts of mainland Europeans.

Place names familiar to the men of 1914–18 have remained. Queenstown has not changed to Cobh, nor has Danzig become Gdansk. Astute readers will find others. This is not because I wish to deny developments in world political history. Simply, it is more convenient for the reader and, I believe, more accurate, to keep the names that the men of the Q-ships and U-boats knew and used.

Readers may occasionally notice an apparent enormous discrepancy between a U-boat commander’s estimate of a ship’s size and its register size. This brings us into the thorny area of tonnage. This apparently simple measurement is, in fact, strewn with maritime caltraps. I have, in general, attempted to use ‘displacement tonnage’ which is the actual weight of the vessel and its contents. This is the figure normally quoted for naval vessels. Merchant ships follow a more esoteric course.

Reference sources, from varied authorities, use different measurements. Ships are described by ‘gross registered tonnage’, which is the internal volume of a vessel plus cargo space available on deck; the same ship may also be defined by ‘net registered tonnage’. This is the ‘gross registered tonnage’ less the volume of space that does not hold cargo, such as the engine rooms, bunkers and so forth. To confuse matters even more, these tonnages, based on volume, are expressed in gross tons, measurement tons or cubic metres. As these sizes often influenced port and pilotage fees, owners preferred low tonnage assessments. Governments opted for higher ones.

When gross, net or displacement tonnage do not serve, a ship can be specified by its ‘deadweight tonnage’. This is the maximum weight the ship can safely carry when fully loaded. This includes the crew, fuel, water and other stores.

As a final complication a ton may be long, short or metric; a measurement ton or a freight ton.

Luckily, U-boat commanders had a simple way to calculate size. All they had to do was to estimate how many litres of water the hull beneath the surface displaced. As 1 litre weighs almost precisely 1 kilogram, the answer in metric tons was immediate.

It was all exceedingly simple. As long the captain got the first bit right.

For submarines, tonnage varies simply as to whether the boat is above or below the surface. In general, I have used surface tonnage. It is for this reason that figures of tonnage sunk is, at best, an uneasy compromise between several sets of conflicting figures. Any readers who wish to quarrel with my statistics, therefore, are asked to refrain from sending rude letters via the publisher.

U-boat and Q-ship waters in the First World War.

PROLOGUE

On 15 October 1918, HMS Cymric, based at Granton on the Forth, sank the final victim to fall to the Admiralty’s Special Service Ships, the mystery vessels known as ‘Q-ships’. Cymric, a barquentine of 226 gross tonnage, carried one 4in gun, two 12-pounder guns and a single 7½in howitzer, each one concealed from sight.

At 1520, approximately 50 miles out to sea from the Northumberland port of Blyth, in visibility of 6,000yd, her captain and lookouts spotted a large submarine, dead ahead on an opposite course. The alarm sounded. The crew went to action stations.

When the suspect was off the starboard bow, the Cymric’s captain decided she was friendly. He told his gun crews to stand by, nonetheless, in case the stranger proved hostile.

U 6. A German U-boat. The letter and number showed clearly on her conning tower. More, crewmen manned it, close to a large gun on a platform in front of the tower. An ensign flew from a short mast, indistinguishable against the sky. The submarine came up on the beam, at an angle of 90 degrees. The captain stared hard. So did the other men on the bridge. U 6. Nobody doubted it. Clearly unable to dive, she showed a bold front, making off to Germany as fast as she could on the surface.

Cymric hoisted the White Ensign. Rumours of peace suggested that the war would soon end. No reason, all the same, to let a Hun escape. The stranger did not react to the Royal Navy’s battle flag. Seconds ticked away. U 6 continued on her escape course.

The Q-ship opened fire a near half-minute later. The starboard 12-pounder fired twice, both shells falling short. The 4in gun made a direct hit with its first round. Its shot flew into the hull on the waterline in front of the conning tower. The 12-pounder found the range. Its third effort also smacked into the pressure hull on the waterline, this time some 10ft behind the conning tower.

Both guns continued to fire. After about ten rounds, a man on the after deck waved a white object. At the same time, a thread of black smoke curled into the air above the conning tower. Cymric ceased fire.

The submarine maintained its speed and course. It was close to vanishing in the smoke and haze when the decoy opened fire again. Escape was not an option.

ONE

THE DJINN ESCAPES THE BOTTLE

Their Victorian Lordships at the Admiralty detested underwater craft by whatever fancy name their inventors called them. The world’s most powerful navy had no interest in crackpot contraptions. The Admiralty saw no point in devices whose purpose was to destroy proper warships by stealth. Only inferior fleets had any interest in such infernal machines. The Russians, perhaps, who envied Britain’s hold on India. The French, almost certainly. Despite their status as allies in the Crimea, they were not totally to be trusted.

The designers of such imbecilities were cranks, eccentrics, wild-eyed visionaries, even lunatics, according to taste. Certainly not serious inventors. So said the Lords Commissioners to anyone who cared to listen.

A Dutchman produced the first practical submarine. Employed at the Court of James I, Cornelis Jacobszoon Drebbel invented a whole series of useful products. He formulated a scarlet dye, devised a thermostat for a self-regulating oven, easily adapted to control a successful incubator for duck and chicken eggs, produced a perpetual motion machine, developed the double convex lens microscope and designed a chimney.

One day in 1621, before the king and thousands of onlookers, he and some intrepid oarsmen demonstrated a wooden rowing boat, encased in greased leather, on the Thames. They submerged and moved underwater 12ft below the surface. Hollow tubes poking above the water solved the vital problem of air supply. Although these failed to keep the air fresh, Cornelis had a trick of his own. He uncorked a large jar in which was the result of another experiment. ‘Salt-petre,’ Cornelis explained vaguely, ‘broken up by the power of fire, was thus changed into something of the nature of the air.’ In simple terms, he had discovered how to make oxygen a mere 150 years before anybody else.

Drebbel produced three submersibles. Rumour later claimed that James I actually took a journey in one. This was probably an inspired piece of royalist propaganda. The shambling, uncouth, tobacco-loathing, honours-hawking, penny-pinching, buttocks-fondling James I and VI was no by-word for heroism. Reviled by many Scots because he left his own country to enjoy the luxury of the English throne, he inspired precisely the same emotion in many of his new subjects.

The Jacobean Navy took no interest in the Dutchman’s invention. No lucrative orders for wooden submarines came his way. Despite his achievements, Drebbel ended his days a poor man, the keeper of a tavern. His wife, Sophia, may have been responsible. She allegedly spent their money ‘entertaining sundry lovers’.

Drebbel spawned imitators. A number of craft, usually converted rowing boats that sank on command, entranced the public. On rare occasions, the boats returned to the surface, an even more fascinating achievement. In the century after Drebbel showed the way, inventors filed some fourteen or more patents in England for submersibles.

In 1747, one Nathaniel Symons developed a ballast tank. Water flowed into leather bags. The vessel sank. Strong hands wrung out the bags. The boat rose. It was a technological triumph, a small step on the road of progress.

War produces inventions. The severe unpleasantness between the American Colonies and the British government from 1775 to 1786 inspired an Irish emigrant, David Bushnell, a graduate of Yale. He decided to destroy the British fleet in Boston Harbour by underwater attack. George Washington declared that he was ‘of great mechanical powers, fertile in invention and a master of execution’. He undoubtedly made an impression. The parsimonious Washington personally financed Bushnell’s experiments.

The inventor named his underwater machine American Turtle. With no massive industrial base to support him, he nonetheless produced a watertight hull; propulsion that drove the submersible forwards, backwards, upwards and downwards; a steering system; variable ballast; a primitive breathing device; what modern military men call a weapons delivery system; and a two-bladed screw to drive it along.

Bushnell weighted Turtle with a lead-filled base to both stop it rolling wildly in rough water and to achieve neutral buoyancy. As an engineer, he could recite, without thinking hard, Archimedes’ great discovery. If the weight of a body submerged in water equals the weight of the water it displaces, it will tend neither to sink nor to rise. Neutral buoyancy – the principle that enables all submarines to work. By taking on water to make it heavier, developing negative buoyancy, the submarine goes down. Pumping out the same water produces positive buoyancy. The submarine rises.

Made of oak, American Turtle, a mere 7ft long and 4ft wide, looked like two vertical tortoiseshells joined together. Others considered that it resembled an enormous upright walnut. To make it watertight, Bushnell bound the machine with iron bands, then covered it with pitch.

The single operator perched upright on a seat akin to a bicycle saddle. With the hatch closed, he saw nothing. A judicious coating of phosphorescent fox-fire, more properly known to botanists as bioluminescent rhizomorphs, remedied the problem.

On top of Turtle, vents provided air when the hatch was clear of the surface. Two flaps closed as the vessel submerged. Once it was under water, the air supply lasted for about thirty minutes.

The crewman sat behind an oar that turned the screw to move the vessel. A similar oar above him gave extra control for descending or surfacing, as well as the ability to stay at a particular depth. Bushnell had thoughtfully provided a depth gauge of his own design. A foot-operated rudder took care of the steering. A compass told the operator in which direction he pedalled.

In early 1776, Bushnell decided that American Turtle was ready to annihilate the Royal Navy. Most of the British fleet had already sailed from rebellious Boston to a more welcoming Halifax in Nova Scotia. A few vessels, though, remained in New York Harbour.

Turtle moved to The Battery in Manhattan, where General Israel Putnam and 9,000 Continental soldiers stood guard. Ezra Bushnell, the inventor’s brother, could operate Turtle with nonchalant skill but he needed several weeks to adjust to the intricate tidal conditions between The Battery and Governor’s Island. Finally, David and Ezra were satisfied. Turtle was ready to destroy the British fleet.

The brothers chose HMS Eagle, the flagship of Lord Howe, the British commander, as their target. Putnam authorised the venture. Ezra fell sick with fever, but another Ezra stepped forward. Sergeant Ezra Lee of the Connecticut Militia volunteered to be the new operator.

Two months slipped by as Lee learned to master Turtle. Close to midnight on 6 September 1776, a rowing boat towed the submarine halfway to Staten Island. Lee lowered himself into the wooden submarine, fastened the hatch, and so became the first and only non-commissioned officer ever to command a United States submarine.

Lee pedalled. He kept going until he reached the 64-gun Eagle unobserved. In the dark, the one-third of the egg-shaped contraption above the water scarcely showed. Lee took in ballast and Turtle submerged. The sergeant inched forward until certain he was under Eagle. Ezra gently pumped out water until Turtle bumped against the flagship’s keel.

Bushnell’s ingenious weapons system came into play. In theory, an iron auger bit, worked from inside the vessel, fixed a screw to the enemy hull. A rope ran from the screw to a mine of Bushnell’s own design. When the submarine retired, the mine detached itself from Turtle. This started the clockwork of the tethered mine.

Lee drilled without success. Bushnell either forgot, or never knew, that England’s wooden walls were sheathed in copper. Where marine weeds did not penetrate, neither did a primitive corkscrew.

The sergeant surfaced, gulped air, tried again. More failure. At last, exhausted, sweating, aware that the tide was on the turn, he gave in. Lee dumped all his ballast water to pedal furiously for safety in the growing dawn. Turtle showed up starkly in the early light. An inquisitive British patrol set out from Governor’s Island to investigate the unusual shape in the water. Lee abandoned the 250lb burden of the mine. His aching thigh muscles, with less weight to move, pushed the Turtle towards safety.

The mine exploded.

Howe prudently moved his ships to lower New York Bay. The Royal Navy apparently took little notice of the new threat. No ships’ logs or reports to London mention the incident. But, whether myth, truth or simple exaggeration, naval warfare had changed. The submarine menace had arrived.

Turtle made two more attempts to sink a British ship. On one, tide and currents overcame willing muscles. On the other, in the calmer waters of the Connecticut river, the frigate HMS Cerberus escaped unscathed although a schooner close by blew up with the loss of several lives.

George Washington, as a mark of esteem, personally authorised Bushnell’s commission into the Continental Army’s Corps of Engineers. When the war ended, Bushnell went to France to sell his design. He returned, disillusioned, in 1795. Before he left, though, Bushnell published details of his invention. Another American, Robert Fulton, who lived in Paris, seized on the idea.

Fulton, an accomplished miniature painter, a builder of canals, designer of a rope-making machine and practical engineer, tackled the problems with skill and determination. As the infant Republic grappled with its new calendar, Fulton wrote to the French Directory on 22 Frimaire in Year 6 of the Republic, more easily recognised as 13 December 1797:

Considering the great importance of diminishing the power of the British Fleets, I have Contemplated the Construction of a Mechanical Nautulus: A Machine which flatters me with much hope of being Able to Annihilate their Navy; hence feeling confident that Practice will bring the Apparatus to perfection; The Magnitude of the object has excited in me an Ardent desire to Prove the experiment: For this Purpose, and to Avoid troubling you with the Investigation of a new Project, or the Expense of Carrying it into effect; I have Arranged a Company who are willing to bear the Expense, and undertake the Expedition on the following Conditions:

After which, the American got down to business. He wanted 400 livres, or £1,400, per gun for every destroyed ship that carried more than forty guns. For ships less than 40 tons, which carried less armament, he required 2,000 livres, or £6,000, per gun. No paper money accepted. Cargoes and property from every ship would pass to Fulton and his company. In a final flourish, he asked for letters of marque for all his men so that, if they were captured, an enemy would treat them as prisoners of war and not pirates.

The French haggled. As Fulton had not built a ‘Nautulus’, this was hardly surprising. In a further letter, the inventor shrewdly emphasised that the ‘destruction of the English Navy will ensure the independence of the seas and France, the nation which has the most natural resources and population, will alone and without a rival, hold the balance of power in Europe’.

Compelling words. If the ‘diving boat’ achieved this, it was worth consideration, especially as payment was strictly by results. The Minister of Marine, Vice-Admiral Eustache Bruix, appointed a committee to consider the pestering inventor’s idea. They duly produced a long and detailed report.

Fulton’s idea, they decided, was feasible and highly desirable. It was, they agreed, ‘a terrible means of destruction’, but one particularly suitable for France as the British had a much stronger navy. Even the entire destruction of both fleets would favour the French. The committee approved construction.

Fulton’s machine would hardly have looked totally out of place a century later. Roughly cigar-shaped with pointed bow and tapering stern, it showed off a conning tower that served as both hatch and periscope. It had a snorkel tube. The space between the double hull contained the water ballast. The submarine also had a forward diving plane and a vertical rudder. In a leap of technology, compressed air spat out the water ballast. Nautilus also pioneered the use of two propulsion systems, one for surface use and one for under water. Submerged, the boat relied on muscle power from her crew of three. A hand crank turned a four-bladed propeller. Above the waves, a sail provided the push.

In 1801, the craft sailed 70 miles in five days. The crew attempted to close on two English brigs. They made off as soon as the strange vessel appeared. Royal Navy captains knew about the ‘Mechanical Nautulus’. British spies kept the Lords of the Admiralty fully informed of developments in the enemy camp.

Fulton’s original design had an iron drill, like Turtle. By 1802, he had abandoned this idea. He also replaced the candles that lit the interior with a glass porthole which, he claimed, let in sufficient light to read a watch 25ft down.

General Napoleon Bonaparte, now modestly enjoying the title of First Consul of the Republic, showed keen interest in Fulton’s efforts. The American had, indeed, solved most of the problems associated with underwater craft.

Unfortunately for Fulton, Napoleon appointed a new Minister of Marine. The choleric Admiral Decrès wasted little time on Bonaparte’s fad. He flatly rejected the idea. France had not yielded the seas to England. The invention had no future in naval warfare, although it might be useful against pirates or Algerian corsairs.

A depressed Fulton decided to try his luck in England. He now had not only a working submarine to sell. He had his own brand of mines as well. Once more, he wrote to the highest in the country with his proposals and, helpfully, his scale of payment.

Again, a committee considered the ideas. His underwater craft met with rather less enthusiasm than it had in France. The politicians, though, liked his mines. These were a long way from black spheres with horns. Fulton’s largest creation was 18ft long, square-sectioned with wedge-shaped ends. It weighed 2 tons. All of his mines used clockwork detonators. Fastened to an enemy hull by a grapnel, they seemed an excellent way to attack the French invasion fleet at Boulogne.

A first attempt, in October 1804, failed. Only one of five bombs destroyed a target. A small pinnace and crew were blown to pieces. Despite the secrecy that surrounded the expedition, the news rapidly reached the popular press. Much indignation ensued. Not for the failure but for the underhand method. Public and Navy alike considered it unfair. It broke the rules of warfare.

A second attempt at Calais in December also achieved nothing.

Fulton, undismayed, badgered Pitt for action. The American, with some reason, believed that the Royal Navy deliberately hampered his efforts. Two public demonstrations that satisfactorily destroyed the targets persuaded the government to finance a third expedition.

Fulton met Admiral Lord St Vincent. He wanted to tell the admiral how mines would wipe out the French fleet. The acerbic naval officer gave him short shrift. ‘Pitt’, he told the inventor, ‘was the greatest fool that ever existed, to encourage a mode of war which they who commanded the seas did not want, and which, if successful, would deprive them of it.’ With those words, he set the official policy of the Royal Navy for decades to come.

Pitt, ever the pragmatic politician, considered it better to have Fulton on the British side than on the French. St Vincent, like practical military men throughout the ages, wasted no time on those who mouthed theory but were woefully short of experience.

The third expedition on 27 October 1805, once more against Boulogne, achieved nothing. Days later, news of Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar convulsed the whole of Britain. The invasion threat vanished. Fulton’s schemes withered.

He returned to America. Seven years later, rumours of his ‘submarine bombs’ during the War of 1812 ensured that British naval officers remained extremely wary of attack when anchored in harbour.

Four decades later, another inventor decided that the way to destroy enemy ships was from beneath the surface. In 1840, 18-year-old Wilhelm Sebastian Valentin Bauer, the son of a corporal in the Bavarian army, joined the military himself. A serious youth, he studied mathematics, chemistry and physics in his spare time.

In 1848, he volunteered to serve in the German Federation Corps in the First Schleswig-Holstein War against Denmark. Bauer ended up on the island of Alsen, where the Danes defended a vital bridge. The Germans wished to destroy it. The Danes, equally determined, preferred it intact. With a fine field of fire, Danish guns menaced anything that approached. The Bavarian, having watched cavorting seals around Alsen, decided that a submersible vessel would serve the purpose very well indeed. That could arrive undetected, plant explosives, and leave unchallenged. The problem was solved. All he had to do was to design a mechanical seal.

In 1849, the Germans and Denmark agreed peace terms, and the Bavarian volunteers returned home. Schleswig-Holstein continued to fight alone for independence. Bauer left the Bavarian army to sign for the Schleswig-Holstein service.

The Danes blockaded Kiel. Bauer produced plans for a submersible to attach mines to the besieging ships. He called his invention Der Brandtaucher, which satisfactorily translates as ‘Firediver’.

In return for thirty gold marks from the War Ministry, Bauer produced a working model, shaped roughly like the inspirational seals, in which an oversized clockwork motor drove a three-bladed screw to produce an impressive performance. A large lead weight on a threaded bar that ran almost the full length of the model boat controlled horizontal trim. Ballast tanks, operated by hand pumps, allowed Brandtaucher to submerge or surface. In the bow, a pair of leather gloves, operated from inside the submarine, allowed a man to fix mines to enemy hulls.

All Bauer needed for a full-size boat was money. The Schleswig-Holstein treasury had none to spare. An undaunted Bauer did what visionary inventors have always done: he appealed to the public. The citizens chipped in, as did the army who rather wanted to win the war. Despite everyone’s efforts, they failed to raise enough to build Brandtaucher as originally conceived.

The Schweffel und Howalt iron foundry, given the task of building Brandtaucher on a limited budget, cut corners. Thinner sheets than specified made up the metal hull. Loose weights replaced adjustable ones. Water ballast, once carefully contained in compartments, sloshed around the keel instead.

The finished vessel, 8m long, flat-sided, weighed 30 tons. On the bright, moonlit night of 18 December 1850, Bauer, with Ingenieur Hest, Steurmann Wiedemann and Matrosen Witt and Thomsen, displayed Brandtaucher to a large and admiring crowd. The craft did not submerge, as there was no on-board ballast. Instead of clockwork, a large treadmill that would not have disgraced the local jail drove Brandtaucher across the bitterly cold water of Kiel Harbour.

The submarine ambled at a majestic 3 knots through drift ice. The crew panted to turn the treadmill at twenty revolutions per minute. The crowd cheered. The Danish spies among them made mental notes. News of Bauer’s invention swiftly reached the Danish fleet. Equally smartly, the Danish ships withdrew further out to sea.

During the next weeks, Bauer and his two seamen pedalled around Kiel Harbour to test the machine. The authorities became impatient. They wanted Brandtaucher to dive, destroy Danish ships and return in triumph. Wars are, after all, for winning.

On 1 February 1851, Brandtaucher eased her way into the harbour. With the hatch firmly closed, Bauer prepared to dive. He opened the ballast valves. Water gurgled in. The loose weights slid towards the tail. Everything not nailed down slid towards the stern. The flat iron plates buckled under the strain. Rivets popped. The North Sea sieved in through the seams.

After fifty-four seconds of terror, Brandtaucher hit the seabed, sterndown, at an angle of 34 degrees. The treadmill had broken free. The pumps could not cope. In the darkness, the three men heard only the ominous trickling of water as it flowed into the hull.

Bauer was a remarkable man. He did not panic. Self-taught in physics, he knew they could escape. He needed only to persuade his companions to encourage the water to come in. The external and internal pressures would equalise as the hull filled. When they matched, the crew could open the hatch to escape. Whether sweet reason or the brutally large spanner that Bauer meaningfully waved convinced Witt and Thomsen, the inventor got his way. They opened the valves. Water rushed in. The air compressed. The hatch opened. The three intrepid adventurers hurtled to the surface in a bubble of air.

Unshakeable in his ideas, Bauer hawked them around the courts and palaces of Europe. He demonstrated a model to Prince Albert, an irrepressible enthusiast for technical devices, at Osborne. With royal backing, the Thames-side yard of John Scott Russell, a leading naval architect, began work on Bauer’s new boat. Increasing suspicion on both sides caused the Bavarian to leave England before completion of his design. Scott Russell’s men finished the submarine. They took it to the river for tests. It sank.

Bauer found more encouragement in Russia. The Tsar and his advisers, locked in the Crimean conflict with Britain and France, needed something, anything, to threaten the Allied fleets that blockaded their coast. Bauer designed a new submarine, Der Seeteufel although the Russians preferred the French rendering of Diable-Marin. Twice the size of Brandtaucher, her most warlike excursion honoured Tsar Alexander II’s coronation. A quartet, dignified by the title of orchestra, played patriotic melodies from the bottom of the harbour.

Allegedly, Bauer conducted 134 diving trials of his boat. They appear to have achieved little. The vessel spent her days either on the surface or motionless on the ocean floor. Movement under water was a major problem.

Bauer designed a 24-gun submersible, powered by steam. The Russians decided that it would not work. In any event, the Crimean War had ended. A disappointed designer left Russia in 1858, but he continued to preach the values of underwater vessels. When Prussia went to war against the old enemy, Denmark, Bauer volunteered for the Navy. His flow of new ideas, some extremely perceptive, failed to reach fruition. He never built another submarine.

In the American Civil War, only the North had an effective navy. The Confederates faced the familiar challenge of breaking a blockade. Less industrialised than the Union, the South nonetheless countered the Federal Navy’s supremacy with commerce raiders, armoured ships, rifled naval guns and mines.

The war was the first conflict in which mass production and technology played a significant part. The production of muskets, previously largely made by hand, became almost fully automated. Machines shaped the elaborate wooden stocks and butts, metal parts flowed from specially designed equipment.

In the South, private inventors flourished. A government with little formal routine supported their efforts. In the North, an entrenched bureaucracy that also supplied funds hampered rapid development. War was no excuse for bending established rules.

A New Orleans consortium that included Horace Lawson Hunley, a Customs officer, and two practical engineers, James McLintock and Baxter Watson, designed a submarine. When New Orleans fell to the Union in 1862, the three men hastily moved to Mobile, Alabama, to continue their work. They launched their third prototype, known variously as ‘the fish boat’ or ‘the porpoise’ in July 1863.

After successful trials, she moved to Charleston in South Carolina. Good financial reasons pushed them there. The South Atlantic Blockading Squadron of the Federal Navy patrolled the coast with iron resolution. The destruction of a Union ship brought a high cash bounty. Smashing the blockade was essential for Southern victory.

In August 1863, Lieutenant George Gift of the Confederate Navy helped prepare the ‘very curious machine for destroying vessels’ for despatch by train. With cheerful disregard for secrecy, he described the 40ft ‘torpedo fish-boat’ in a letter to his fiancée:

In the first place imagine a high pressure steam boiler, not quite round, say 4 feet in diameter in one way and 3½ feet the other – draw each end of the boiler down to a sharp wedge shaped point. The 4 feet is the depth of the hold and the 3½ feet the breadth of beam. On the bottom of the boat is riveted an iron keel weighing 4000 lbs which throws the center of gravity on one side and makes her swim steadily that side down. On top and opposite the keel is placed two man hole plates or hatches with heavy glass tops.

These plates are water tight when covered over. They are just large enough for a man to go in and out. At one end is fitted a very neat little propeller 3½ feet in diameter worked by men sitting in the boat and turning the shaft by hand cranks being fitted on it for that purpose. She also has a rudder and steering apparatus.

Embarked and under ordinary circumstances with men, ballast etc. she floats about half way out of the water & resembles a whale. But when it is necessary to go under the water there are apartments into which the water is allowed to flow, which causes the boat to sink to any required depth, the same being accurately indicated by a column of mercury. Air is supplied by means of pipes that turn up until they get below a depth of 10 feet, when they must depend upon the supply carried down which is sufficient for 3 hours! During which time she could have been propelled 15 miles!

The secret weapon was, indeed, made from a steam boiler. Lengthened and deepened, she took a crew of nine. The craft had two hatches, one forward and one aft, diving planes, removable iron ballast in addition to her water tanks, and a compass. General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, the Confederate commander at Charleston, found one innovation particularly fascinating. ‘Light’, he noted, ‘was afforded through the means of bull’s-eyes placed in the manholes.’

The general liked unusual weapons. Under his aegis, the Confederates developed a steam-driven vessel, with a crew of four, known as the David design. About 18ft long, it had a 134lb spar torpedo, the standard mine on a pole. As it merely rode low in the water, rather than submerge, it was hardly a submarine.

Nonetheless, a David attacked a Union ironclad, New Ironsides, on 5 October 1863. The Confederates killed an ensign on watch with a shotgun blast before they detonated the mine. In the explosion, a cascade of seawater extinguished the David’s boiler. Outraged Federal sailors captured two of the crew. Sent to the North in chains to face a threatened court martial for using a devilish weapon, they never faced trial. Both sides soon agreed to an exchange of prisoners.

New Ironsides escaped relatively unscathed. The threat kept Union lookouts on edge. Anything in the water could be a floating bomb.

Like her predecessors, the Mobile blockade buster carried a spar torpedo. Once this was placed close to an enemy hull, the submarine would leave and detonate the mine from a safe distance. James McLintock had gone to Charleston with the boat. His cautious handling, allied with technical difficulties, exasperated the military. The Army seized her and replaced the civilian crew with Confederate Navy volunteers. On an early trial, unfamiliarity with the boat sent her to the bottom of the harbour when she dived with her hatch covers open. Five sailors died. An embarrassed military raised the wreck. Repaired, she underwent more trials, this time with a civilian crew from Mobile. Horace Hunley himself captained them.

Everything went well until 15 October 1863. On that day, submerged, Hunley made a simple error with the forward ballast tank. The boat buried its nose in the harbour silt and mud. She stuck fast. Water flooded in. This time, nobody had time to equalise the pressure. All eight crew drowned.

Fresh volunteers continued training and trials with the salvaged submarine, renamed CSS H.L. Hunley. Finally, on the chill, cold night of 17 February 1864, the submarine reached the sloop USS Housatonic, at anchor off Charleston. A vigilant lookout spotted Hunley in the moonlight as she approached. Despite a smattering of rifle and shotgun fire she reached the ship. The submersible planted her 135lb mine and backed away. Minutes slithered by as Hunley cleared the ironclad. The night split apart with a roar of flame.

The explosion shattered the Housatonic. She sank in less than three minutes with the loss of five sailors. For the first time in history, an enemy submarine had sunk a warship.

Hunley did not return home for 136 years. She went down on the return journey. Found in 1995 in almost perfect condition, raised in 2000, she is now preserved. Her crew of eight received honoured burial in Charleston’s Magnolia cemetery. The first two crews of the Hunley lie close by.

While men in grey and men in blue fought and died at Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg, Chickamauga and the Wilderness, Europe watched the creation of a truly monstrous machine: the French Le Plongeur.

She had the right credentials. Designed in 1858 by a naval officer, Captain Simon Bourgois, the design gained the approval of the Corps of Naval Constructors. One member of the Corps, a naval commander, Charles Brun, who later became Director of Naval Construction, gave the project his full support to the extent of designing an amazing engine.

Work began on Plongeur in 1860. The boat was 45m long and displaced 420 tons, far more than any previous design. Iron plates fastened to a stunningly heavy keel formed her hull. The important development was an alternative to strong men with monstrous thighs to work pedals. She had an engine, driven by compressed air. One remarkable feature was a boat, bolted in position inside the hull, to carry twelve men. Internal pressure was kept slightly higher than that of the water outside to prevent seepage at the bolt fastenings.

On the surface, the French submarine behaved with decorum. Submerged, she became a recalcitrant beast. Plongeur employed a network of pipes, valves and pistons to move water ballast from one end of the hull to the other. This worked only slowly. The unfortunate creature, long, flat, unwieldy, had little grace as she porpoised through the water, apparently changing her depth as Gallic fancy took her.

The engine developed 80hp. The need to carry enormous bottles of ‘fuel’ dictated Plongeur’s size. Her bulk overwhelmed the engine while her traditional spar torpedo was hardly worth the weight of vessel behind it. It took no heart-searching for the French navy to abandon the project, despite the many advances incorporated in the design.

In 1872, the implacable Confederate James McLintock tried to sell an improved Hunley to the Royal Navy. The Admiralty, updating its plans for a war with the United States, intended to enforce the time-honoured blockade, should hostilities occur. Anything that challenged their plans interested them.

In the event, nothing came from McLintock’s approach. It seems certain, though, that the papers reached the Royal Navy’s Torpedo School, HMS Vernon. Arthur Knyvet Wilson, whose lower-deck nickname of ‘Old ’Ard ’Art’ succinctly describes his disciplinarian reputation, took command of the school in 1876. More technically minded than many of his contemporaries, Wilson later wrote, in 1901, that during his time at the Torpedo School

. . . a very well thought out design for a submarine boat was brought to my notice . . . which only required one small addition . . . to make it efficient. Experiments were carried out which proved the practicability of the one point in this invention which was novel, and the inventor was given no further encouragement. . . . A very similar course has been adopted with all the various submarine boats which have been brought forward since. Each design has been carefully examined and sufficient experiment has been made in each case to ascertain its probable value. It has then been quietly dropped with the result of delaying the development of the submarine boat for about 20 years.

Wilson let a modest cat out of a dark bag. Their Lordships did indeed keep wary eyes on submersible development. They discouraged any progress for good reasons as Wilson made clear: ‘Now, we cannot delay its introduction any longer, but we should still avoid doing anything to assist in its improvement in order that our means of trapping and destroying it may develop at a greater rate than the submarine boats themselves.’

Not only the submersible started to assume practicality. The spar torpedo, the mine on the end of a long stick, had limited use as a weapon. To place it involved difficulty as well as danger. Neither could it successfully cope with a moving target. As the American Civil War ended, Captain Giovanni Luppis of the Austro-Hungarian navy produced the answer. He designed a small boat that carried an explosive charge. Steam or clockwork powered his invention, which, vitally, could be steered by cords from its parent vessel.

A small propeller and pistol detonator on the nose provided a brilliant firing mechanism. While the boat approached its target, the propeller spun. As the propeller spun, it unscrewed a safety lock on the detonator. When the lock opened fully, the charge exploded.

Luppis found it hard to convince his admirals that his invention had a use. An Englishman, Robert Whitehead, boss of a marine engineering firm in the Adriatic port of Fiume, believed it had. In 1868, the pair unveiled their self-propelled or ‘auto-motive torpedo’. Driven by a compressed-air motor, retaining the original firing device, the 135kg weapon had an 8.2kg warhead. A range of 180m, allied to a speed of 6 knots, scrawled a warning to surface ships. An improved prototype with a 270m range soon appeared.

The Royal Navy took notice. The new invention might be slow. It might not go very far. Improvements, however, were no more than a matter of time, of money. The essential fact was that the Luppis– Whitehead torpedo carried explosives to a distant target.

By 1870, the production version had a length of 4.9m, carried a 35kg guncotton warhead at 8 knots over 360m. Whitehead travelled to England. One hundred test firings amply convinced the Admiralty. They promptly bought rights to manufacture the design themselves. The ideal weapon for the submarine had arrived.

In the United States, an Irish immigrant, John Philip Holland, a New Jersey schoolteacher, peered at his students through wire-rimmed spectacles and dreamed dreams. Always interested in the potential of submarines, he sent his plans for a one-man submersible to the Secretary of the Navy. A blunt reply told him that it was not something to which anyone would trust himself.

Undeterred, the walrus-moustached Holland looked for financial support. An Irish nationalist, he did not need to look too far. The Fenians, revolutionaries for Irish freedom, came to his aid. Anything that could strike the detested Queen Victoria and her military a telling blow interested them. Holland I duly appeared. A mere 15½ft long, the boat took after a pencil, sharpened at both ends. The single operator necessarily wore ‘diving dress’. The control room flooded each time the craft submerged.

There was one great advance. Holland’s boat used a petrol engine. It did not work brilliantly but engineering had finally made the pedal genuinely obsolete. The prototype performed well enough to encourage the building of a larger version.

The Reverend George Garrett, an Anglican clergyman in Manchester, forked out £1,500 in 1879, to build a submarine to his own design. At 45ft long and 10ft in diameter, she similarly resembled a short stub of pencil, pointed at each end. With a deft touch of divine inspiration, Garrett named his creation Resurgam: ‘I shall rise again’. A patent closed-system steam engine gave enough power to drive the boat underwater for four hours.

After successful trials of the vessel at Wallasey, the Royal Navy took an interest. Resurgam set out for Portsmouth in February 1880. Technical problems forced her into Rhyl. Repaired, but towed by a steam yacht, she left harbour on a gale-swept night. The steam yacht broke down. Resurgam’s crew left their boat to transfer to the yacht to lend a hand.

Since the conning tower hatch closed only from the inside, the submarine shipped water. The towrope parted. Down went Resurgam.

Garrett, low on funds like inventors before and after him, turned his eyes, not to heaven, but to Sweden. Thorsten Nordenfelt, an arms manufacturer, had an interest in submarines. They were the weapon of the future, and weapons turned a profit.

In 1881, Holland produced his second boat, 31ft long, armed with an air-powered cannon. Tests dragged on. The Fenians, anxious to send the Royal Navy to perdition, became impatient. Eventually, they stole their own boat, hiding it in a shed in Connecticut, where it stayed for thirty-five years.

Holland formed his own company, the Nautilus Submarine Boat Company. It took two years to produce its first boat, the Zalinski. Holland named it after Captain Edmund Zalinski, his major investor as well as inventor of the terrifying air-powered gun of the earlier boat.

In Europe, in the United States, designers of submersibles tried out their ideas. Claude Goubet of France built two generally ineffective boats that incorporated another innovation: power came from electric batteries. Technology spurred its way into creative minds.

Less useful than an electric boat was Josiah Tuck’s Peacemaker. The American used caustic soda to propel his creature through the water. His anxious relatives, probably more concerned that he squandered the family’s substantial wealth on his inventions, committed him to an asylum for the insane. Years later, hard-headed German designers investigated the same technique.

Thorsten Nordenfelt launched his submarine in 1885 in Stockholm. She used the same pattern steam engine as Garrett’s Resurgam. Nordenfelt I weighed 60 tons, measured 64ft in length and carried a single torpedo tube. Speed and manoeuvrability were not her main assets. It needed twelve hours to build up sufficient steam for underwater travel. She took thirty minutes to submerge. Once under the surface, the Nordenfelt design behaved like an eccentric aunt with a mind of her own.

The Swede did not become wealthy by allowing such minor details as poor design to impede his progress. Specially trained, carefully chosen men demonstrated the invention before royalty, presidents and prime ministers. It always impressed.

The Greek navy bought one. Nothing more was heard of her.

Nordenfelt moved to England, establishing his works at Barrow.

The Turkish navy acquired two of his later design, Nordenfelt II, to counteract the threat from the Greek boat. Bigger and better, at 100ft long with twin torpedo tubes, Barrow built them in sections. They were shipped to Constantinople for final assembly. When the first boat tested her torpedo, she unhesitatingly tipped backwards to slide, stern first, to the bottom of the Bosporus. The second boat then languished in pieces for years at the Constantinople navy yard, before reappearing in August 1916. Originally named Abdul Hamid, she became the Yunusbaligi or ‘Porpoise’. She entered the water. She sank.

Russia stumped up for Nordenfelt III. This was bigger still, at 123ft long, with a surface speed claimed to be 14 knots. On the delivery trip, she ran aground. The Tsar’s navy took the opportunity to cancel their order.

Nordenfelt lost interest in submarines when they failed to make money. Rather than build them at a loss, he sold plans to interested governments. Germany was one.

The French designer Gustave Zede produced Gymnote, named for a species of electric eel, in 1888. She, like Goubet’s boats, used batteries, an attribute that inspired her name. She managed 8 knots on the surface but the inventor had not allowed for recharging batteries at sea. This rather limited her usefulness.

The following year, Isaac Peral, a Spanish navy lieutenant, designed and built a fully functional submarine that successfully fired three of Whitehead’s improved torpedoes during her trials. Officialdom failed to pursue his innovation.

The hunt for a practical submarine, a genuine weapon of war, quickened. The minuet of tranquil evolution gave way to the waltz, the quickstep, the polka of furious development as science expanded the horizons. The accumulator battery. The internal combustion engine. Mass production. Powered machinery. All made their mark.

In 1893, the United States government announced a competition for a new submarine. Holland entered his latest proposed design. The two other competitors were Simon Lake and George Baker. Lake’s design was only on paper but Baker had a real, functioning submarine. Its steam engine for surface use also powered an electric motor that acted as a dynamo to charge batteries for underwater running. Lake’s design incorporated wheels to allow the boat to run on the seabed. His knowledge of the ocean floor was, observers felt, limited.

Holland won the competition but no official orders followed. The Irishman copied Nordenfelt’s approach. He inspired the rumour that foreign navies wanted his submarine. On 3 March 1895, the John P. Holland Torpedo Boat Company received a $200,000 contract for a steam-powered submarine. Holland fell out with the authorities over putting a steam engine into his design but there was no turning back. The US navy wanted submarines with steam engines, not dangerous petrol gadgets.

Holland was proved right. The ‘official’ boat, Plunger, never made it to the open water. She was launched in 1897, but the temperature in the fire room reached 137 degrees Fahrenheit at only two-thirds power. Not even American stokers could work in that temperature. Holland had already started work on a new boat, powered by a petrol engine.

In 1898, Simon Lake demonstrated his Argonaut I with a voyage across the open sea from Norfolk, Virginia, to Sandy Hook, New Jersey. At no point did his boat trundle along the bottom. The feat attracted a telegram from Jules Verne. The exploit, he enthused, would spur submersible development across the world. The famous author added that ‘the next war may be largely a contest between submarine boats’.

Europe was not far behind the USA. In France, the Gustav Zede