652 



SUBMARINE BOATS. 



Phillips, a shoemaker of Michigan City, Ind., made 

 several successful experiments, with boats of his 

 own invention. His fourth and largest boat, 

 built in 1864, was of boiler iron, with iron frames, 

 cigar-shaped, and about 90 feet long. It was pro- 

 vided with water-ballast tanks, which were emp- 

 tied by compressed air, stored in pipes along the 

 upper side of the vessel. It was propelled by man- 

 power, and, according to report, in it he made 

 many descents, sometimes taking with him his en- 

 tire family. He endeavored to sell this boat to 

 the United States navy and subsequently to the 

 German navy, but it was refused by -both. 



The only use of the submarine boat in actual 

 warfare was on the night of Feb. 17, 1864, when 

 the National sloop Housatonic was blown up and 

 sunk in the harbor of Charleston, S. C., by the 

 Confederate submarine David. This boat was 

 built by McClintock & Howgate in 1863. 



" It was about 42 feet long, and was built of 

 boiler-plate. The crew consisted of 8 men, of 

 which 1 man was at the helm, and the other men 

 turned the 2-bladed propeller by means of cranks. 

 The boat was supposed to have attained a 

 speed of 4 knots, and to dive to any depth, 

 and remain there a half-hour with the whole crew 

 in quiet water, although authentic reports of 

 her trials do not seem to agree with this 

 assertion. The idea of the boat was to tow a 

 mine close under the keel of an anchored 

 vessel, and to explode the mine through con- 

 tact with the bottom of the ship. Lieut. Paine, 

 of the Confederate navy, with 8 volunteers, un- 

 dertook to attack the Union vessels. While the 

 boat was being prepared the swell of a passing 

 steamboat splashed into the manhole, sinking 

 her. The 8 volunteers w r ere lost, and Lieut. Paine 

 succeeded in getting out, as he was standing at 

 the manhole at the time. After the boat had been 

 raised, Lieut. Paine made another attempt with 

 8 other volunteers, but the boat ran ashore at 

 Fort Sumter and capsized. On this occasion 

 there were 6 men lost of the crew, and only the 

 commander and 2 men were saved. After the 

 boat was raised for the second time and put into 

 shape, an engineer named Aunley, who had been 

 busy with the reconstruction, attempted a trial 

 trip in Cooper river. While totally submerged 

 his apparatus for getting to the surface must have 

 become deranged, as the boat did not rise again, 

 and it was only recovered three days later. The 

 entire crew were, of course, dead. The next trial 

 was undertaken by Lieut. Dixon, of the Twenty- 

 first Volunteer Regiment. He left the harbor 

 with 8 volunteers on Feb. 17, 1864, and succeeded 

 in destroying the Union sloop Housatonic, which 

 lay at anchor in the outward harbor of Charles- 

 ton. He had somewhat changed his plans, as the 

 attack was not made by means of mines, but was 

 made with a pole torpedo; also the boat was not 

 entirely submerged. During this time the man- 

 hole was left open so that the men could breathe 

 more easily. Aboard of the Housatonic the boat 

 first gave the appearance of a floating block of 

 wood, and the crew of that vessel only became 

 aware of their danger when it arrived within 

 about 300 feet. They immediately slipped their 

 anchor and started their engine, and called the 

 crew to the guns, but before a shot could be fired 

 it was about two minutes after the boat had 

 been sighted the explosion occurred, and the 

 Housatonic sank immediately. Of her crew only 

 5 men were killed ; the remainder saved themselves 

 by climbing into the rigging, which projected 

 above the water. The submarine boat, however, 

 did not succeed as well, as the wave caused by 

 the explosion washed into the open manhole, 



causing it to sink, and for the last time its en- 

 tire crew were buried under the waves. The Con- 

 federates had lost already 32 men by this trial, 

 while the Federals only lost 5 men, which would 

 not speak very well in favor of the submarine 

 boat." 



With the experiments of Wilhelm Bauer, a Ba- 

 varian officer of artillery, the first period of sub- 

 marine-boat building that of small boats im- 

 pelled entirely by man-power came to an end. 

 Bauer finished his first boat late in 1850. It \va< 

 cigar-shaped, 25 feet long, beam 6 feet, and height 

 9 feet, built of J-inch iron with iron frames and 

 impelled by a large wheel, balanced with weights 

 and geared to the propeller. At its first trial, in 

 the harbor of Kiel, February, 1851, it leaked and 

 sank, and Bauer and his crew of 2 men escaped 

 drowning almost by a miracle. The highly com- 

 pressed air in the hull forced open the manhole in. 

 the top of the vessel and the 3 men were shot to 

 the surface in the air-bubble. In 1855, at the in- 

 stance of the Russian Government, he built a sec- 

 pnd and larger boat, 50 feet long and 12 feet at its 

 greatest diameter. The plan was practically the 

 same as that of the first boat excepting that for 

 the 22 tons of iron ballast he substituted water 

 ballast. It took 12 men to drive the boat, and 

 fresh air was supplied by carrying compressed 

 oxygen in flasks, and by a spray of sea water 

 forced into the boat. Experiments with this boat 

 were carried on until 1858, and at one time Bauer 

 is said to have stayed under water with his 12 men 

 for nearly twenty hours, but it was finally re- 

 jected by the Russian navy. He afterward at- 

 tempted to interest the Prussian navy in a scheme 

 for a large submarine boat, but failed to convince 

 the Government of its availability. 



In 1863 an American inventor named Alstitt 

 drew plans for a submarine boat that, although 

 it never was constructed, began a new era in the 

 building of such craft. Alstitt proposed to use, 

 when at the surface, an ordinary steam-engine, 

 and when diving, after the smoke-stacks had been 

 sealed, to depend upon electricity for his power. 

 The boat was to carry water ballast and cylinders 

 of compressed air for ventilation during sub- 

 mergence, and thus involved nearly all the essen- 

 tial features of modern submarine construction. 

 About the same time Admiral Bourgois and Con- 

 structor Brun, of the French navy, were working 

 out their Plongeur, which was launched at Roche- 

 fort in May, 1863. It was 140 feet long, 11 feet 

 deep, and 20 feet wide, and had an engine driven 

 by compressed air, which was stored in tanks dis- 

 tributed throughout the vessel, the exhaust oi 

 which served the crew for ventilation. Two novel 

 features of the Plongeur were the return to the 

 use of the vertical screw in an attempt to control 

 the depth of the dive when water was let into the 

 ballast spaces, and a peculiarly constructed man- 

 hole, which was a life-boat set into a depression 

 in the top of the vessel, and connecting with the 

 interior by water-tight doors, and which could be 

 readily detached from the body of the larger l>.;it. 

 It also had a pair of horizontal rudders at the 

 stern. In its trials, owing to its great length, it 

 proved itself very unstable when sailing sub- 

 merged, and was soon put out of commission. 



In 1868 Herr Vogel, of Dresden, had built a boat 

 with an iron shell 16 feet long and 4 feet in depth. 

 driven by a 3-cylinder steam-engine. The boiler 

 was heated by oil fed by gravity to a burner of 

 perforated copper pipe. The diving was to be ac- 

 complished entirely by admitting water into the 

 double bottom, and to rise to the surface it was 

 necessary to force this out with a hand-pump. 

 He claimed for his boat that it was able to remain 



