168 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



As may be inferred from the quotations at the beginning of this 

 article, the 'Holland' certainly embodies the highest attainments ever 

 made in a submarine war vessel. In the words of Eear Admiral 

 Hichborn, "The 'Holland' is an improvement upon anything that has 

 ever been built in the history of the world." She is fifty-four feet long 

 and is able with her forty-five H. P. gasoline engines to run consider- 

 ably more than a thousand miles on the surface without recourse to 

 any base of supplies, and, with her storage batteries and electric motors, 

 thirty miles under water. Her offensive equipment is represented by 

 an expulsion tube and three Whitehead torpedoes. 



Her plan of operations when in the presence of a hostile vessel is to 

 dive beneath the surface and steer by compass straight for the enemy. 

 At intervals of a mile or so she rises till the top of her conning tower 

 only protrudes, corrects her course and dives again. An emergence of 

 eight to ten seconds only is required. Having arrived within a few hun- 

 dred yards of the enemy the 'Holland' emerges for the last time, fires 

 her torpedo, dives, turns back on her course and runs home. 



During all this time she is perfectly protected by her invisibility. 

 Even when rising she exposes so small a surface and that so low in the 

 water that the chances are all against her being detected at all, espe- 

 cially as no one can tell when or where she will appear. Or if seen by the 

 enemy there is no time to train guns upon her, and if there were, the 

 chances are infinitesimal that so small an object could ever be hit. On 

 the other hand, no defensive armor could save from absolute destruction 

 a vessel once hit by the 'Holland's' torpedo. 



After all is said which may be, of the terribly destructive power of 

 the 'Holland,' or of any other submarine boat, it seems unquestionable 

 that the greatest argument in favor of her adoption into a navy is not 

 based thereupon, but rather upon the moral effect which would follow 

 the knowledge that a nation possessed such a boat at all. "There is 

 nothing more terrifying and demoralizing than to be attacked by an 

 invisible foe; nothing more trying, bewildering and ineffective than 

 striving to answer such an attack." If a captain of a battleship should 

 see the turret of a submarine appear at the surface, straighten her 

 course toward him, and then in ten seconds, before a shot could be 

 fired, sink out of sight again, what would be his duty as a brave man, 

 charged with responsibility for millions of property and hundreds of 

 lives and with the performance of effective service for his country? To 

 seek means of defense? There is no defense but flight, swift and im- 

 mediate. 



Hostile transports especially would not dare to approach a coast 

 where the proximity of such a boat was suspected. High authorities 

 insist that blockading also would be impossible if a harbor contained 

 half a dozen of these terrible engines, which strike where no armor can 



