A CRUISE BENEATH THE SEA.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1680, 11 May 1904, Page 15

A CRUISE BENEATH THE SEA.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, Maircli 25. What it feels like to be under water in a submarine is described in an interesting fashion by a correspondent of the “Daily Chronicle.” The writer recently took a voyage in a French submarine, a vessel of 130 tons, driven by an electric motor at a maximum speed of sixteen .knots on the surface, aiyl about eight knots when submerged. The interior was “not provided with _ the luxurious saloons and state rooms that the travellex’s in the wonderful little Nautilus so much appreciated.” The boat seemed to the visitor to be a mass of handles, pipes and gauges, and everythiug appeared for warlike uses. The moment he entered, and the little trap-door in the doane above was screwed tightly down, he frankly wished himself back, on dry land. “The thought that we were going to sink, auyi that if the machinery went wrong we would all be drowned like rats in a trap, was intense,” he says, “and I felt- like a man on his way to execution.” The confidence of the commander and his crew, on the other hand, was unbounded, and the former cheered the timid landsman with the assurance that the little ciraft was “safe as a house.” The submarine sank slowly to a depth of thirty feet, and then darted forward with a lurch that sent the visitors heart, so to speak, into life boots. “If she turns over —?” lie queried anxiously. “If she does,” said her commander, “we shall dine down here on aiir, and save the worry and expense of a public funeral.” The boat sank lower, with a hissing of air and a .curious grating of machinery. Looking through one c-f the portholes, the visiter could ’see shoals of fish nibbing against the glasses, and one monster butted the pane he was gazing through. “Up again!” and with a touch of a lever the vessel shot upwards for a few moments, to stop with a sadden jerk some feet beneath the: surface. An .electric light was switched on outside the boat, and the voyagers saw the dark shadow of a shipfe’hull. They were beneath.a British. .yesseT just outside the English Channel. “They haven’t the slightest

notion we are here, monsieur,” said the commander, “and I couid, if I wished, » blow the vessel to pieces in a second.” Presointiy ‘the submarine sheered off and sank again, and then came the tnfSfeme moment of the voyage.. One of the levers hitched, and instead ot rising the vessel stuck anil wobbled about in ominous fashion. “Here we were,” says the writer, “thirty-live feet beiow water, sealed up like sardines in a box, • and no means of communicating with the world above —anrl the machinery gone wrong! The commander alone was cool and daring, but when lie tackled the working gear and it would! not shift, lie paled a trifle, too. For over five minutes we remained motionless in the deadly stillness of the sea. I wanted to open the trap and clamber out!” But the machinery worked at last and the vessel rose to the surface, to the intense relief of the petrspinng landsman. The commander merely rubbed hife hands and remarked in cheerful fashion, “A fine voyage, monsieur!”