266 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



SUBMABINE NAVIGATION 1 



By Sir WILLIAM H. WHITE 



SUBMARINE navigation has engaged the attention of inventors and 

 attracted general interest for a very long period. Its practical ap- 

 plication to purposes of war was made about 130 years ago. The main 

 object of that application was to threaten, or if possible destroy, an 

 enemy's battleships engaged in blockade by means of under-water 

 attacks, delivered by vessels of small dimensions and cost, which could 

 dive and navigate when submerged. From the first, submarines were 

 admittedly weapons favored by the weaker naval power; and as a 

 consequence their construction found little favor with our naval au- 

 thorities. Under the conditions which prevailed a century ago in 

 regard to materials of construction, propelling apparatus and explo- 

 sives, the construction of submarines necessarily proceeded on a limited 

 scale, and the type practically died out of use, almost at its birth. 

 Enough had been done, however, to demonstrate its practicability and 

 to make it a favorite field of investigation for inventors, some of whom 

 contemplated wide extensions of submarine navigation. Every naval 

 war gave fresh incentive to these proposals, and led to the construction 

 of experimental vessels. This was the case during the Crimean War, 

 when the Admiralty had a submarine vessel secretly built and tried by 

 a special committee, on which, amongst others, Mr. Scott-Bussell and 

 Sir Charles Fox served. Again, during the civil war in America, the 

 Confederates constructed a submarine vessel, and used it against the 

 blockading squadron off Charlestown. After several abortive attempts, 

 and a considerable loss of life, they succeeded in destroying the Federal 

 Eousatonic, but their submarine with all its crew perished in the enter- 

 prise. 



It is impossible to give even a summarized statement of other 

 efforts made in this direction from 1860 onwards to 1880; but one 

 cannot leave unnoticed the work done in the United States by Mr. 

 Holland, who devoted himself for a quarter of a century to continuous 

 experiment on submarines and eventually achieved success. The Hol- 

 land type was first adopted by the United States Navy, and was 

 subsequently accepted by the British Admiralty as the point of de- 

 parture for our subsequent construction of submarines. In France 

 also successive designs for submarines were prepared by competent 

 naval architects, and a few vessels were built and tried. The Plongeur, 

 of 1860, was a submarine of large size, considerable cost and well- 

 considered design; but her limited radius of action and comparatively 

 1 An address before the Royal Institution of Great Britain. 



