126 ON THE SUITABILITY OF CURRENT DESIGN OF SUBMARINES 
sel’s radius of action extended indefinitely in that regard, in case these distillers do not 
prove defective at sea, in which event fresh-water carrying tanks can be constructed. As 
to the comforts of the crew, the seasickness due to pitching and rolling would probably 
be about equal in the sizes of boats under consideration, the free air spaces for living pur- 
poses would not make very much difference between the complements that would vary in 
slight proportion with the sizes of vessels, and it has been found by experience that vessels 
such as the L class of 453 tons displacement possess excellent seagoing and sea-keeping 
qualities (a fact probably not available to the flotilla at the time, as these vessels were just 
then going into commission), especially in the matter of rolling and pitching, and of suffi- 
cient freeboard to air the crew in all weather. 
On the other hand, the comparisons made between the two classes as to extreme radius of 
action for station keeping have been obviously based upon conditions of maximum effi- 
ciency of the crew. I think herein lies a fallacy, as the resultant cruising radius is so 
small as to indicate that the coast-defense type is unsuited to make long voyages under 
any conditions. As a matter of fact, such a conclusion is negatived by the number of in- 
stances where the same crew has remained aboard a submarine during long voyages in 
our service, as well as the recent example of the British boats going from Canada to Eng- 
land under their own power. Seasickness is undesirable but is no life-and-death matter, and 
it is obvious that the hardships of warfare on a coast submarine will not be as great as 
have been experienced in the trenches during the present war, in the field during the hard- 
ships of the Civil War or during the Revolutionary War, or in fact as compared with the 
hardships undertaken by soldiers in any war of consequence. It would seem that a better 
estimate of the performance of submarines should be made upon the maximum hardships 
which may be endured under conditions of war, at least for any purposes of reaching maxi- 
mum radii of operation. The estimates that have been made on these considerations are 
theoretical in the absence of any actual exp-rience for a tryout at sea, which has never 
been made. 
Now we arrive at the question of speed, which is the crucial point, I think, upon 
which the advocates of the larger boat have predicated their conclusions in the main. 
This will be shown by one of their assertions as follows :—‘There is but one good reason 
for building submarines at such displacement (800 tons), namely, high surface speed.” 
This is followed by an assertion that such a vessel would be expected to make 18 to 20 
knots. Mr. L. Y. Spear, vice-president of the Electric Boat Company, in his paper read 
before the Society last year on “Submarines of To-day and To-morrow,” stated that such 
a vessel should make 17 to 18 knots. The Chief of the Bureau of Steam Engineering testi- 
fied that he expected it to make 16 knots—all on surface displacements. It is my estimate 
that 17 knots would be the approximate figure that could probably be attained. Similar 
arguments on the basis of high speed have been advanced by other officers, and high speed is 
really what the officers of the fleet are aiming at in advocating the larger boats, the other as- 
sertions being merely subsidiary considerations for argumentative purposes ; and of that there 
is no room for doubt in view of the oft-expressed aim to use such boats in the operations of the 
fleet where the war-board game has shown them to be so effective an instrument in a 
theoretical sense. I understand war games have been played on the board with models 
of submarines accompanying the fleet with the result of playing havoc with the enemy’s 
forces, assuming fleet submarines to be the equivalent of a torpedo-boat destroyer for night 
attack, covered with a mantle of invisibility by submersion for daytime defense. An ex- 
