THE CONQUEST OF TIME AND SPACE 



present fleet of submarine boats built already, or in 

 the process of construction, as well as for those of sev- 

 eral foreign countries. Indeed, in the matter of sub- 

 marine inventions, only one country can be considered 

 as rivaling America, that nation being France, whose 

 enthusiasm for submarine navigation has been much 

 greater than that of any other nation, although in the 

 matter of results she has not outstripped the United 

 States. 



Mr. Holland's first submarine boat was built in 

 1875. It was called a "diving canoe," being only six- 

 teen feet in length and wide enough to hold one man 

 clothed in a diving-suit. Four years later, however, 

 Holland built a larger boat called the Holland No. 3 

 constructed along similar lines to the most recent sub- 

 marines. This was the first buoyant submarine to be 

 steered up and down by horizontal rudders alone, and 

 may be said to mark an epoch in submarine naviga- 

 tion. But the No. 3 had many defects, and Mr. Hol- 

 land continued to build and improve new boats, until 

 finally his ninth boat, which is the one familiarly known 

 as the Holland^ represented a practical form of sub- 

 marine vessel. This boat was 53 feet 10 inches long, 

 10 feet 3 inches in diameter, had a displacement of 75 

 tons, and carried 10 tons of water ballast. The gaso- 

 line engine which it used when running at the surface 

 propelled the boat at the rate of seven knots an hour, 

 and it could travel a distance of fifteen hundred miles 

 at this rate of speed with the amount of fuel carried. 

 When submerged it could run a distance of about fifty 

 knots without coming to the surface. 



[106] 



