Bygone Submarines.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 29, Issue 47, 19 June 1917, Page 2

Bygone Submarines.

According to researches which have been made by a French professor, it would appear that submarines have almost as hoary a past as aeroplanes, which, as is well known, involved ideas w'hich are centuries old. It appears that submarines were built as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century. The origin of the invention is older still. Aristotle tells how Alexander the Great made use of submarines during the siege of Tyre more than 300 years before Christ. A Dutchman named Cornelius Van Drebbel astounded London in 1620 with a submarine that held twelve oarsmen and some passengers, among whom was King James I. Previous to this, in 1534, a monk suggested the idea that a ship be constructed of metal so as to be watertight and able to resist the pressure of water. A submarine was constructed according to the monk’s idea, and was shown to be practicable to a certain degree. In 1537 a ship with twenty cannon, eighty sailors, and many bags of money on board blew up and sank in the port of Dieppe. Three years latei* a Frenchman, Jean Barrie, called Pradine, built, according to the old monk’s ideas, a submarine with which he promised to rescue the bags of gold and silver from the -wreck, and possibly some pieces of artillery. The great Pascal, then a little boy, was an eye-witness to the experiments of Pradine, which were carried on till 1650 with ultimate success.