THE ROMANCE OF THE SUBMARINE

New Zealand Tablet, 4 November 1909, Page 1732

THE ROMANCE OF THE SUBMARINE

There are probably many that look on the submarine as one of the latest of scientific marvels who will be surprised to learn that it was no great novelty to our ancestors three centuries ago, when Milton was in his cradle and Raleigh was busy writing. his History in the Tower of London. I The seventeenth century was but an infant when Cornelius Drebell, a clever Dutchman, brought his wonderful boat, which ' could swimme under the water like a fyshe,' to the Thames, and all London flocked to the riverside to watch the antics of this new monster. James I. was among the thousands of spectators, his Royal mouth agape with wonder; and probably Shakespeare and Bacon were also among the crowd. Drebell's boat was a weird-looking craft, carrying twelve rowers besides passengers; and she seems to have done all her designer claimed for her — sinking and rising and moving under the water like a fish. ''The chief marvel of this Dutch submarine was ' a liquid that would speedily restore to the air such a proportion of vital parts as would make it again for a good while fit for respiration.' But although a learned Bishop, in 1648, published a treatise ' Concerning the Possibility of Framing an Ark for Submarine Navigation,' we read nothing more of the submarine for a century and a quarter, when, in 1774, an inventor named Day startled the world by announcing that he would descend in a boat in Plymouth Sound and remain under water for a quarter of an hour. The descent was successfully made in the presence of thousands of onlookers, but the adventurous Mr. Day was seen no more. He was the first on the long roll of victims of the submarine. A Wonderful Vessel. In the following year an American inventor called Bushnell produced a really wonderful vessel for submarine use. . A strange-looking boat it was, it is true, resembling two upper tortoise shells joined together, the operator (there was only room for one man inside) entering through an opening in the head. It was sunk or raised by means of an oar in the form of a screw, and was propelW vanother oar. Such, in rough outline, ,was Busiineii's boat, in which he was able to remain under the surface for half an hour at a time, moving swiftly and easily in any direction. Behind the vessel was a magazine containing 1501 bof powder, for attachment, by means of a screw, to the hull of an enemy's ship. During the War of Independence an attempt was made to destroy the British warship Eagle, but through the operator's bungling the magazine floated away from the ship and exploded harmlessly. After Bushnell came Fulton, the clever Irishman, who was the first to make a success of steam navigation. In 1801 Fulton built three submarine boats, one of which, the Nautilus, was as far ahead of Bushnell' s - boat as that was in advance of her predecessors. In the ' Nautilus, which was propelled by manual power and supplied" with 'compressed air, Fulton once stayed under water for hours,

placing a torpedo, also of his own invention,,, under a vessel provided for the purpose and blowing it 'to atoms.' But Fulton, in spite of the pronounced success of his boat, received so little encouragement that he ' abandoned his experiments in disgust. Egg-shaped Boat. But submarines now began to follow one another in rapid succession. In 1859 Mr.^Delaney, a Chicago inventor, produced an ingenious vessel, shaped like an egg, and raised or sunk by the pumping of water out of or into a tank. Four years later the Plongeur, a vessel 146 ft long and driven by an 80-h.p. engine, appeared in France; and the following year saw the submarine fully launched -as a weapon of war. During the American Civil War a submarine called the David, after her designer, was expected to do deadly work against the enemy. She was a cigar-shaped vessel, made of boiler-plates, and propelled by hand by a crew of nine men, at a speed of four knots an hour. Three times she made a trial trip, and every time she sank and failed to rise again, drowning her crew. At her fourth attempt, however, she got successfully out of the harbor, launched a torpedo at the Federal ship Housatonic, and blew her up. But, alas! she was too slow in making her escape, and was carried to the bottom of the sea with her victim, having thus destroyed thirty-six lives during her brief and ill-starred existence.

They range from the £10,000 offered' to the man who flies from^London to Manchester in twenty-four hours with not more than two stops, to the £40 offered to the first Frenchman to beat Wright's high . fly .record. Amongst other interesting prizes might be mentioned the £1000 offered by Sir William Hartley to the first person to make - a successful flight in a heavier-than-air machine between Liverpool and Manchester, and the £4000 offered to the first Englishman who flies the Channel in an English aeroplane ; and if he cannot win this £4000, the British aviator might' try for the Cup and £500 offered to whoever before sunset, on March 31 each year shall have flown the greatest distance in the United Kingdom.