

SUBMARINE BOATS. 



653 



submerged for three hours, but up to 1872 it ap- 

 pears never to have received an under-water trial. 



Drzewiecki, a Russian engineer, built two boats: 

 one in 1877, 13 feet long, driven by treadles, 

 geared to a propeller, and carrying a single man, 

 who by means of water-proof leather gloves com- 

 municating with a dome on the top of the boat 

 was supposed to attach mines to the vessel at- 

 tacked; and another in 1879, 20 feet long, carry- 

 ing 4 men in addition to the commander. They 

 had the usual water-ballast tanks, and a device 

 of weights operated by chains and sliding the full 

 length of the boat to trim it to the angle desired 

 in diving or rising to the surface. In 1884 he built 

 a larger boat on the same principle, driven by a 

 motor and storage-batteries, which was favorably 

 reported on by the Russian Government. 



In 1884 Prof. Joseph Henry Tuck made experi- 

 ments with a submarine boat, 30 feet long, that 

 contained no essentially new constructional fea- 

 tures. It was driven by a dynamo and storage- 

 batteries, and is said to have attained a surface 

 speed of 6 knots. It carried 2 Fish torpedoes, at- 

 tached one on each side by magnetic claws, that 

 could be operated from the interior of the boat to 

 release the torpedoes at the proper moment. In 

 1886 Tuck built another boat, which he called 

 the Peacemaker, 30 feet long, 8^ feet beam, and 

 5 feet deep. She was propelled by a 14-horse- 

 power steam-engine, and attained a surface speed 

 of 8 knots. On either side of the dome and at 

 both ends were water-proof gloves, as in Drzewiec- 

 ki's boat. She also carried torpedoes in magnetic 

 claws in the same manner as Tuck's first boat. 

 While she made several more or less successful 

 trials, so many faults were found in the princi- 

 ples of her construction that she finally failed to 

 interest the United States navy in carrying on 

 experiments with her. 



Waddington, at Liverpool, in 1886, exhibited a 

 boat using electricity as the motive power. It 

 was fitted with 4 vertical propellers, 2 on a 

 shaft, placed in wells, 1 forward and 1 aft of 

 the main compartment of the boat. It also had 

 2 large horizontal rudders, 1 on each side, amid- 

 ships, and horizontal and vertical rudders and 

 a screw-propeller aft. The 45-cell storage-battery 

 was of 8-horse power and would develop at the 

 surface a speed of 8 knots for ten hours. There 

 were separate motors for each of the vertical pro- 

 pellers. The end compartments of the boat were 

 receptacles for compressed air for renewing the 

 air of the boat if it became necessary. The sur- 

 face trials of Waddington's boat \vere reported sat- 

 isfactory, but it is not known whether any sub- 

 surface tests were made. In November of the 

 same year a boat designed by Andrew Campbell 

 was tried in the West India Docks, London. It 

 was 57 feet long, had a maximum diameter of 7J 

 feet and a displacement of 52 tons when fully sub- 

 merged. It had twin screws driven by 45-horse- 

 power electric motors, and was fitted with an in- 

 genious system for increasing and diminishing 

 the displacement in order to dive or rise to the 

 surface. Four horizontal cylinders, 20 inches in 

 diameter and capable of being pushed out about 

 20 inches, were placed along each side of the ves- 

 sel, which, when so pushed out, increased the dis- 

 placement by about 1 a ton. These projecting 

 cylinders would, of course, be a great detriment 

 to speed at the surface, and there are no reports 

 further than that the scheme was successful in 

 sinking and raising the vessel. 



Nordenfelt completed his first boat in 1885. It 

 was 64 feet long, 9 feet beam, and 12 feet deep, 

 with a displacement of 60 tons when totally sub- 

 merged. At the after-end was a vertical rudder 



and the 4-bladed screw propeller, and at the for- 

 ward end a pair of horizontal rudders balanced by 

 weights. By this device Nordenfelt largely over- 

 came the fore-and-aft unstableness that had both- 

 ered his predecessors, and which to-day is not en- 

 tirely unavoidable. The boat was also fitted with 

 vertical driving propellers, 1 on each side amid- 

 ships, operated by separate engines. The speed 

 of these propellers was regulated by a com- 

 plicated mechanism, controlled by a piston acted 

 upon by the pressure of the water outside the boat. 

 The boat was propelled by a 100-horse-power com- 

 pound surface-condenser steam-engine. When at 

 the surface steam was generated in an ordinary 

 Scotch boiler, using coal as fuel; when diving, su- 

 perheated steam was drawn from 2 tanks, in the 

 ends of the vessel. There were 3 other compart- 

 ments: the central one occupied by the crew, and 

 the other 2 for the engines and the boiler. At 

 the surface air was forced into the boat by a small 

 ventilator fan in order to reduce the temperature, 

 when submerged the currents of -cold water out- 

 side the shell were depended upon for the same 

 purpose. The trials of this boat were more than 

 ordinarily successful, and several of the European 

 countries immediately took an interest in it. Nor- 

 denfelt was soon commissioned to build boats for 

 Greece, Turkey, and Russia, and later Great Brit- 

 ain undertook and carried out elaborate experi- 

 ments with this type. The 2 Greek boats had 

 their official trials in the Bay of Salamis in April, 



1886, and while they were accepted, the newspa- 

 per accounts of the time would lead one to believe 

 that they fell far short of requirements. The 

 Abd-ul-Hamid and Abd-ul-Medschid w r ere deliv- 

 ered to Turkey in January, 1887. They were 100 

 feet long and had a displacement of 160 tons, and 

 were impelled by 250-horse-power compound en- 

 gines. They were fitted with vertical propellers 

 fore and aft, and the horizontal rudders, in addi- 

 tion to being balanced by heavy pendulums, were 

 capable of being controlled from the conning- 

 tower. They each carried 2 torpedoes, forward on 

 the top of the boat. At the trials at Constantinople 

 they succeeded in making 8 knots at the surface 

 and from 4 to 5 knots below. It is a significant 

 and not altogether encouraging fact that in the 

 \var of 1897 neither Turkey nor Greece evinced 

 sufficient faith in these apparently powerful ves- 

 sels to put them into active service. Nordenfelt's 

 last boat was built for Russia, at Barrow, in 



1887. It was 125 feet long, 12 feet beam, and had 

 a displacement of 160 tons at the surface, and of 

 250 tons when submerged. It was fitted with 2 

 conning-towers, and the upper part was protected 

 by 1-inch plate from machine-gun fire. Its coal 

 capacity was 8 tons, which could be increased to 

 28 by removal of the water ballast, sufficient for 

 a 1, 000-mile run at a speed of from 8 to 9 

 knots. She was lost in a storm on the Baltic Sea 

 in January, 1888, while on her way to Russia after 

 her trial off the English coast. 



The essential feature of the Baker boat, invent- 

 ed by George C. Baker, of Detroit, and for a time 

 under consideration by the United States navy, 

 was its 2 propellers, 1 on each side, amidships, on 

 a transverse shaft running through the center of 

 gravity of the boat. The gear-casings were so 

 fitted, by means of a worm-gear and a sprocket- 

 chain, that the casings could be swung through 

 an angle of 90, and the thrust developed by their 

 rotation directed at will in a plane at right angles 

 to the shaft. Submergence was effected and 

 maintained by giving the screws a sufficient angle 

 to overcome the buoyancy by the vertical thrust, 

 and at the same time propel her by the horizontal 

 thrust. The boat, which was tried Nov. 26, 1892, 



