ANOTHER SUBMARINE "TERROR."

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7417, 31 May 1902, Page 6

ANOTHER SUBMARINE "TERROR."

■ . — — ■♦ — ~ •■.'■■'■ A good deal of money is being spent- by the United States on small vessels, which are able to plunge beneath the surface andcome up -when tbey like (says -tie correspondent of an English paper). They are certainly able to dot-bis. I saw the first successful boat of the kind, the Holland, give a remarkable performance several years ago, and since the acceptance of the idea . by the naval authorities the general plan of her construction has been followed in the six vessels which will soon be ins commission. One of this half-dozen^ the Plunger, j took her first dip Recently, ■at the Crescent Shipyards, Elizabethport, wliioh are j owned by Lewis Nixon, who no ,wis the i leader of Tammany, in the place of Richard Croker. The Plunger has the same broad horizontal 1 rudders stretching out behind the j as were carried by the Holland ; and it is with these that* the course of the craft is directed away from the surface, or to- j wards it when she is down deep. If left j entirely to themselves, these boats float | when in mimic warfare with the little conning- tower just visible above the surface, \ and the hull being out of sight. Thus, no I matter how far they may be driven into I the depths when the horizontal rudder is curved downward, like, a bird's tail, they j will rise to the surface of their own flota- | tion when all power is shut off — that is, \ to the extent, of, exposing their manhole or I turret — so that the danger of making the : plunge in such a craft is not* really so great as it looks. ; ! The Plunger is the sister ship of the Adder, Moccasin, Porpoise, Shark, and Fulton, and 64ft 4in long over all, with lift 9in beam.' Except in the conningturret, which is of bronze, the Plunger is built of steel throughout, and when, entirely submerged she will be driven by a 70 horsepower electric motor, able to drive her at the rate of seven knots an hour, as claimed, with a radius under water of about forty miles. When at the surface, which is almost a total submersion, she has a radius of about five hundred miles, at a speed of eight knots an hour — being at this time driven by an' Otto four-cylinder gasolene engine of 160 horse-power. Seven men, all' told, comprise the crew, and the armament consists of one torpedo tube. Each vessel will carry three Whitehead torpedoes. A good deal more information, will be necessary before implicit belief can be placed in the reports that these vessels can discharge a torpedo under water with precision and effect. A man who was at the head of the -mechanical construction of the Holland told me, when she was getting altered at Morris Heights, that the plans for this had never been successful, and that although a dummy torpedo could be ejected in a weak Way, and with a small power, the performance was far from what was desired. .He did not conceal his opinion th^t the offensive character of the boat was on this one point a failure, up to that time; and since then there has been nothing to show that the plan then in use has been much improved. This, however, does not greatly detract from the exceedingly dangerous abilities of the boats while. travelling in the dark, witih nothing but a few inches of a black turret exposed. If a small pine box, such as is thrown over from anchored vessels, were placed over the little turret, so that it wo*uld have" the appearance of floating, one of these marine assassins could probably drift with the tide in the daytime through an anchored fleet without creating suspicion. At present their chief threat seems to be that tihey can let go automatic torpedoes from their outside, which in many cases might be quite sufficient for their purposes, thus avoiding the great doubts as to the efficacy of the wholly submerged discharge.