128 ON THE SUITABILITY OF CURRENT DESIGN OF SUBMARINES 
of water; we have also discovered that a shipshape form of hull was much more seaworthy 
than the cigar-shaped form. That came about by an experience which I had in bringing 
the old Argonaut from Norfolk, Va., to New York. As originally built the Argonaut was 
of the usual cigar-shaped form, with a small, non-watertight superstructure. One time I got 
caught out in the November storm of 1898, which some of you may remember, and in which 
I believe about two hundred vessels were lost. I found that the cigar-shaped form did not rise 
to the seas and that the seas would wash over her so that I was forced to tie myself to the 
conning-tower, and we were not able to open the hatch for some hours. Otherwise the ves- 
sel would have foundered, as solid green seas came over the conning-tower at times. She 
was run by internal-combustion engines, both on the surface and submerged; she had an 
intake and an exhaust mast made of pipe in an A-shaped form 50 feet high—I speak now 
of 50 feet from her keel—so we could run on the bottom or under water up to a depth of 
50 feet while using our gasolene engines. We could draw the air in the forward mast and 
exhaust it out of the after mast, so we had no trouble as far as running the boat submerged 
under engines was concerned, but I remember it was distinctly unpleasant cruising in freez- 
ing weather with the greens seas washing over one. We did not reach a harbor in the 
horseshoe back of Sandy Hook until about three o’clock on the night of the storm, and be- 
fore I could get down below, after we got into quiet water, my clothes froze stiff on me. 
That led to a modification of the Argonaut by adding a shipshape form to her in the 
form of a buoyant, watertight superstructure. Those of you who saw the Argonaut in 
the early days would hardly distinguish her from a surface vessel. We thus increased her 
surface buoyancy when cruising in the surface condition from about 12.5 per cent to over 
40 per cent, and then she rode to the seas the same as any surface boat and was as com- 
fortable in surface cruising as any surface vessel. We spent considerable time afterwards 
in cruising in this boat, with a crew of several men, who lived aboard for months at a time, 
even during the winter, and we always found her very comfortable. 
Another feature afterwards developed by us, which has been adopted by Germany as 
well as some other nations, was a method oi increasing the metacentric height of the boat. 
As previously stated, the early submarines were practically all of the cigar-shaped form. In 
1901, I think it was, I applied for and took out a patent changing the cigar-shaped form 
by raising the axis both forward and aft (see Plate 73). Through experiments and calcula- 
tions we found that, comparing this new form with a cigar-shaped form of vessel of the 
same dimensions, in a boat of about 100 feet in length by about 14 feet in diameter, at the 
midship section, we succeeded in increasing the metacentric height of the vessel in the sub- 
merged condition from 10 inches to 16 inches. The mere changing of the form of hull from 
a spindle or cigar-shaped form to the form shown here (see Plate 73) increased the metacentric 
height 6 inches; in other words, with the same boat we got 16 inches metacentric height and 
much greater stability than was possible to get with the cigar-shaped form. In my judgment, 
maximum stability is the most important thing in connection with the design of a submarine 
boat for safe submerged work, and I do not believe you can get too much. 
Now, to make this comparison plainer, if you take a cigar-shaped hull built of plat- 
ing of sufficient weight to just about submerge the hull,—the center of buoyancy and center 
of gravity lie in the axis about here (indicating). It would now be possible to submerge 
that vessel and rotate it like a squirrel rotates its cage; or, if a member of the crew moved 
forward or aft, the vessel would stand on end. In other words, the vessel would have zero 
