A note on the history of submarine war

A NOTE

ON THP: HISTORY OF
SUBMARINE WAR

BY
SIR HENRY NEWBOLT

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

FOURTH AVENUE AND 3OTH STREET, NEW YORK
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS

PRICE TWOPENCE

A NOTE ON THE HISTORY
OF SUBMARINE WAR

A NOTE

ON THE HISTORY OF
SUBMARINE WAR

BY

SIR HENRY NEWBOLT

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

FOURTH AVENUE AND 3OTH STREET, NEW YORK

BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS

I9T8

V

3UO

659343

Ib. -S- S7

A NOTE

ON THE HISTORY OF
SUBMARINE WAR

THE history of submarine war may be said
to begin with the second half of the sixteenth
century, when its two main principles or
aims were first formulated, both by English
seamen. Sir William Monson, one of Queen
Elizabeth's admirals, in his famous Naval Tracts,
suggests that a powerful ship may be sunk much
more easily by an under- water shot than by
ordinary gunfire. His plan is "to place a cannon
in the hold of a bark with her mouth to the side
of the ship : the bark shall board, and then to
give fire to the cannon that is stowed under
water, and they shall both instantly sink : the
man that shall execute this stratagem may
escape in a small boat hauled to the other side
of the bark."

This is the germinal idea from which sprang
the submarine mine and torpedo ; and the first
design for a submarine boat was also produced
by the English Navy in the same generation.
The author of this was William Bourne, who had
served as a gunner under Sir William Monson.
His invention is described in his book of Inven-
tions or Devises, published in 1578, and is remark-
able for its proposed method of solving the;

A Note on the History of Submarine War

problem of submersion. This is to be achieved by
means of two side tanks into which water can be
admitted through perforations, and from which
it can be blown out again by forcing the inner
side of each tank outwards. These false sides are
made tight with leather suckers and moved by
winding hand-screws — a crude and inefficient
mechanism, but a proof that the problem had
been correctly grasped. For a really practical
solution of this and the many other difficulties
involved in submarine navigation, the resources
of applied science were then hopelessly inade-
quate ; it was not until after more than 300 years
of experiment that inventors were in a position
to command a mechanism that could carry out
their ideas effectively.

The record of these three centuries of experi-
ment is full of interest, for it shows us a long
succession of courageous men taking up one after
another the same group of scientific problems and
bringing them, in spite of all dangers and disasters,
gradually nearer to a final solution. Many nations
contributed to this work, but especially the
British, the American, the Dutch, the French,
the Spanish, the Swedish, the Russian, and the
Italian. The part played by each of them has
been, on the whole, characteristic. The British
were the first, as practical seamen, to put forward
the original idea, gained from the experience of
their rivalry with Spain ; they have also suc-
ceeded, at the end of the experimental period, in
making the best combined use of the results of
the long collaboration. A Dutchman built the

A Note on the History of Submarine War

first practical submarine and achieved the first
successful dive. The Americans have made the
greatest number of inventions, and of daring
experiments in earlier wars. The French have
shown, as a nation, the strongest interest in the
idea, and their Navy was effectively armed with
submarines ten years before that of any other
Power. To them, to the Dutch, and to the
Italians belongs the credit of that indispensable
invention, the optic tube or periscope. The Swedes
and Russians have the great names of Nordenfelt
and Drzewiecki to their credit ; the Germans
alone, among the eight or nine nations interested
in the science of naval war, have from first to
last contributed almost nothing to the evolution
of the submarine. The roll of submarine inventors
includes about 175 names, of which no less than
60 belong to the English-speaking peoples, but
only 6 to Germany. Among these six the name
of Bauer is remembered as that of a courageous
experimenter, persevering through a career of
repeated failures ; but neither he nor any of his
fellow-countrymen advanced the common cause
by the suggestion of a single idea of value.
Finally, when the German Admiralty, after the
failure of their own Howaldt boat, decided to
borrow the Holland type from America, it was
no German, but the Spanish engineer d'Eque-
villey, who designed for them the first five U-boats,
of which all the later ones are modifications. The
English Admiralty were in no such straits ; they
were only one year before the Germans in adopting
the Holland type, but the native genius at their

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A Note on the History of Submarine War

disposal has enabled them to keep ahead of their
rivals from that day to this, in the design, efficiency,
size, and number of their submarine vessels ; and
this result is exactly what might have been
expected from the history of submarine invention.

That history is the record of the discovery and
solution of a number of problems, the first five
of which may be said to be the problems of sub-
mersion, of stability, of habitability, of propulsion
and speed, and of offensive action. If we take
these. in order, and trace the steps by which the
final solution was approached, we shall be able to
confirm what has been said about the work
contributed by successive inventors.

i. We have seen that for submersion and return
to the surface Bourne had at the very beginning
devised the side tank to which water could be
admitted and from which it could be "blown out"
at will. Bushnell, a remarkable inventor of
British-American birth, substituted a hand-pump
in his boat of 1773 for the mechanism proposed
by Bourne. In 1795 Armand-Maiziere, a French-
man, designed a steam submarine vessel to be
worked by "a number of oars vibrating on the
principle of a bird's wing." Of these "wings,"
one lot were intended to make the boat submerge.
Nothing came of this proposal, and for more than
a century tanks and pumps remained the sole
means of submersion. In 1893 Hay don, an
American, invented a submarine for the peaceful
purpose of exploring the ocean bed ; its most
important feature was the method of submersion.
This was accomplished by means of an interior

4

A Note on the History of Submarine War

cylindrical tank with direct access to the sea, and
fitted with two powerfully geared pistons. By
simply drawing the pistons in or pushing them
out the amount of water ballast could be nicely
regulated, and the necessity for compressed air
or other expellants was avoided. This device
would have given great satisfaction to William
Bourne, the Elizabethan gunner, whose original
idea, after more than two centuries, it carried out
successfully. Finally, in 1900 the American inven-
tor Simon Lake, in his Argonaut II, introduced a
new method of diving. For the reduction of the
vessel's flotability he employed the usual tanks,
but for " travelling" between the surface and the
bottom he made use of "four big hydroplanes,
two on each side, that steer the boat either down
or up." Similar hydroplanes, or horizontal
rudders, appeared in the later Holland boats, and
are now in common use in all submarine types.

Lake was of British descent, his family having
emigrated from Wales to New Jersey ; but he
owed his first interest in submarine construction
and many of his inventive ideas to the brilliant
PVench writer, Jules Verne, whose book Twenty
Thousand Leagues under the Sea came by chance
into his hands when he was a boy ten years old,
and 'made a lasting impression upon him.

2. Next to the power of submersion, the most
necessary quality in a submarine is that of
stability under water. The most obvious method
of securing this is by water ballast, which was
probably the first means actually employed.
Bushnell in 1773 substituted a heavy weight of

5

A Note on the History of Submarine War

lead, as being more economical of space and
better suited to the shape of his boat, which
resembled a turtle in an upright position. The
leaden ballast, being detachable at will, also acted
as a safety weight, to be dropped at a moment of
extreme urgency. In the Nautilus, built in 1800
by the famous engineer Robert Fulton, an Ameri-
can of English birth and education, the leaden
weight reappeared as a keel, and was entirely
effective. The inventor, in a trial at Brest in 1801,
dived to a depth of 25 feet and performed success-
ful evolutions in different directions for over an
hour. Bauer, fifty years later, returned to the
ballast principle, and used both a water tank and
a safety weight in the same boat. The results
were disastrous. His first submarine sank at her
first trial in Kiel Harbour, and was never re-
floated ; his second was built in England, but
this, too, sank, with great loss of life ; his third,
Le Diable Marin, after several favourable trials
at Cronstadt, fouled her propellers in a bed of
seaweed, and the releasing of the safety weights
only resulted in bringing her bows to the surface.
The crew escaped with difficulty, and the vessel
then sank.

Three years later, in 1861, Olivier Riou designed
two boats, in both of which stability was to be
preserved automatically by the device of a double
hull. The two cylinders which composed it, one
within the other, were not fixed immovably to one
another, but were on rollers, so that if the outer
hull rolled to the right the inner rolled to the left.
By this counterbalancing effect it was estimated

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A Note on the History of Submarine War

that the stability of the vessel would be absolutely
secured ; but nothing is recorded of the trials of
these boats. The celebrated French inventors
Bourgois and Brun reintroduced the principle of
water tanks, combined with a heavy iron ballast
keel; but in 1881 the Rev. W. Garrett, the
English designer of the Nordenfelt boats, invented
a new automatic mechanism for ensuring stability.
This consisted of two vertical rudders with a
heavy pendulum weight so attached to them that
if the boat dipped out of the horizontal the
pendulum swung down and gave the rudders an
opposite slant which raised the vessel again to a
horizontal position. This arrangement, though
perfect in theory, in practice developed fatal
defects, and subsequent designers have all
returned to the use of water tanks, made to
compensate by elaborate but trustworthy mech-
anism for every loss or addition of weight.

3. For the habitability of a submarine the prime
necessity is a supply of air capable of supporting
life during the period of submersion. The first
actual constructor of a submarine — Cornelius van
Drebbel, of Alkmaar, in Holland — was fully aware
of this problem, and claimed to have solved it
not by mechanical but by chemical means. His
improved boat, built in England about 1622,
carried twelve rowers besides passengers (among
whom King James I is said to have been included
on one occasion), and was successfully navigated
for several hours at a depth of 10 to 15 feet.
"Drebbel conceived," says Robert Boyle, in 1662,
"that 'tis not the whole body of the air but a

7

A Note on the History of Submarine War

certain Quintessence (as chemists speake) or
spirituous part of it that makes it fit for respira-
tion, which being spent, the grosser body or
carcase (if I may. so call it) of the Air, is unable
to cherish the vital flame residing in the heart :
so that (for aught I could fathom) besides the
Mechanicall contrivance of his vessel he had a
Chymicall liquor, which he accounted the chief
secret of his Submarine Navigation. For when
from time to time he perceived that the finer and
purer part of the Air was consumed or over-
clogged by the respiration and steames of those
that went in his ship, he would, by unstopping a
vessel full of the liquor, speedily restore to the
troubled air such a proportion of vital parts as
would make it again for a good while fit for
Respiration."

Drebbel, who was a very scientific man, may
possibly have discovered this chemical secret ; if
so, he anticipated by more than 200 years a very
important device now in use in all submarines,
and, in any case, he was the originator of the idea.
But his son-in-law, a German named KufHer, who
attempted after Drebbel's death to exploit his
submarine inventions, was a man of inferior
ability, and either ignorant of the secret or
incapable of utilising it. For another century and
a half submarine designers contented themselves
with the small supply of air which was carried
down at the time of submersion. Even the Turtle
— Bushnell's boat of 1773 — which has been des-
cribed as "the first submarine craft which really
navigated under serious conditions," was only

8

A Note on the History of Submarine War

built to hold one man with a sufficient supply of
air for half an hour's submersion. This was a bare
minimum of habitability, and Fulton, twenty-five
years later, found it necessary to equip his
Nautilus with a compressed air apparatus. Even
with this the crew of two could only be supplied
for one hour. In 1827 the very able French
designer, Caste*ra, took out a patent for a sub-
marine lifeboat, to which air was to be supplied
by a tube from the surface, protected by a float
from which the whole vessel was suspended. The
danger here was from the possible entry of water
through the funnel, and the boat, though planned
with great ingenuity, was never actually tried.
Bauer in 1855 fitted his Diable Marin with large
water tubes running for 30 feet along the top of
the boat, and pierced with small holes, from
which, when desired, a continual rain could be
made to fall. This shower bath had a purifying
effect on the vitiated air ; but it had obvious
disadvantages, and there is no record of its having
been put into actual use before the unfortunate
vessel sank, as before related. In the same year
a better principle was introduced by Babbage, an
English inventor, who designed a naval diving-
bell fitted with three cylinders of compressed air.
His method was followed by Bourgois and Brun,
whose boats of 1763-5 carried steel reservoirs
with compressed air at a pressure of at least
15 atmospheres. The principle was now estab-
lished, and was adopted in the Holland and Lake
boats, and in all subsequent types, with the
addition of chemical treatment of the vitiated air.

A Note on the History of Submarine Wai

4. Propulsion comes next in the logical order
The various solutions of this problem have naturally
followed the successive steps in the developmen
of machinery. Drebbel made use of oars
Bushnell, though he speaks of "an oar," goes 01
to describe it as "formed upon the principle of th<
screw ... its axis entered the vessel, and beinj
turned one way rowed the vessel forward, bu
being turned the other way rowed it backward
it was made to be turned by the hand or foot.'
Moreover, he had a similar "oar" placed at th<
top of the vessel which helped it to ascend o
descend in the water. The conclusion seem
unavoidable that to this designer belongs th
honour of having invented the screw propeller, am
also of having put it into successful operation
Fulton adopted the same method of propeller an<
hand- winch in his Nautilus ; but his large vessel
the Mute, built in 1814 to carry 100 men, wa
driven by a silent steam-engine. He died durinj
the trials of this boat, and further experimen
with it seems to have been abandoned, possibl;
owing to the greater interest excited by his firs
war steamer, which was building at the same time
A regrettable set-back was thus caused ; for fort;
years no one experimented with any kind of sub
marine propulsory engine. Bauer in 1855 coul<
devise no better method of working his propeller
than a system of y-foot wheels turned by a pair o
men running on a treadmill. At this same moment
however, a more fruitful genius was at work ; ;
French professor, Marie- Davy, designed a sub
marine in which the propeller was driven by ai

10

A Note on the History of Submarine War

electromagnetic engine, placed in the stern of the
ship, with batteries forward. The idea was a
valuable one, with a great future before it, though
for the moment it achieved no visible success.
A year later, in 1855, the famous British engineer,
James Nasmyth, designed a "submerged mortar/'
which was in reality a ram of great weight and
thickness, capable of being submerged level with
the surface and driven at a speed of over 10 knots
by a steam-engine with a single high-pressure
boiler. But, in spite of the simplicity and power
of this boat, it was finally rejected as being
neither invisible nor invulnerable to an armed
enemy ; and in their desire to obtain complete
submersion, the French inventors of the next few
years — Hubault, Conseil, and Masson — all returned
to the hand-winch method of propulsion. Riou,
however, in 1861, adopted steam for one of his
boats and electric power for the other ; and in
1863 the American engineer, Alstitt, built the
first submarine fitted with both steam and elec-
tricity. Steam was also used in the Plongeur of
Bourgois and Brun, which was completed in the
same year.

The American Civil War then gave a great
opportunity for practical experiments in torpedo
attack ; but the difficulty of wholly submerged
navigation not having been yet solved, the boats
used were not true submarines, but submersibles.
Their propulsion was by steam, and their dimen-
sions small. A more ambitious invention was put
forward in 1869 by a German, Otto Vogel, whose
design was accepted by the Prussian Government.

ii

A Note on the History of Submarine War

His submersible steamship was to be heavily
armed, and was "considered the equal of a first-
class ironclad in defensive and offensive powers."
These powers, however, never came into operation.
Inventors now returned to the designing of true
submarines, and after the Frenchman Constantin,
the American Halstead, and the Russian Drze-
wiecki had all made the best use they could of
the hand-winch or the pedal for propulsion, three
very interesting attempts were made in 1877-8
to secure a more satisfactory engine. Olivier's
boat, patented in May, 1877, was to be propelled
by the gases generated from the ignition of high
explosives, the massed vapours escaping through
a tube at the stern. This ingenious method was,
however, too dangerous for practical use.
Purman's design of 1878 included a propeller
rotated by compressed air. But the English boat
of the same date — Garrett's Resurgam — was much
the most noteworthy of the three, and introduced
a method which may in the future be brought to
perfection with good results. In this boat the
motive force - was steam, and propulsion under
water, as well as on the surface, was aimed at
and actually attained. In her trials the vessel
showed herself capable of navigating under water
for a distance of 12 miles, by getting up a full
head of steam in a very powerful boiler with the
aid of a blower, before diving ; then by shutting
the fire-door and chimney, and utilising the latent
heat as long as it would last. When the heat was
exhausted it was of course necessary to return to
tho surface, blow up the fire again, and re-charge

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A Note on the History of Submarine War

the boiler with water. The vessel was remarkably
successful, and had the great merit of showing no
track whatever when moving under water. She
was lost by accident, but not until she had
impressed Nordenfelt, the Swedish inventor, so
strongly that he secured the services of her
designer (Garrett), for the building of his own sub-
marine boats. The first of these appeared in 1881.
In the same year were patented Woodhouse's
submarine, driven by compressed air, and
Genoud's, with a gas-engine worked by hydrogen,
which is said to have attained a speed of between
4 and 5 knots. Blakesley in 1884 proposed to use
steam raised in a fireless boiler heated by a
chemical composition. In 1884, too, Drzewiecki
produced the fourth of his ingenious little boats,
driven this time not by pedals but by an electric
motor. His example was followed by Tuck, of
San Francisco, shortly afterwards, and by
Campbell and Ash in their Nautilus, which in 1886
underwent very successful trials in the West India
Docks at Tilbury, near London. In 1886, D'Allest,
the celebrated French engineer, designed a sub-
marine fitted with a petrol combustion engine ;
but the question of propulsion may be said to
have been finally settled within a few months
after this in favour of the electro-motor, for
Gustav Zede's famous Gymnote, which was
actually put on the stocks in April, 1887, attained
in practice a surface speed of • 10 knots and a
maximum of 7 to 8 knots under water. This
success saved designers the trouble of further
experiments with ingenious futilities,

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A Note on the History of Submarine War

5. We have so far been considering the develop-
ment of the submarine as a vessel navigable under
water, without reference to the purpose of offence
in war. But this purpose was from the first in
view, and formed with almost all the inventors
recorded the main incentive of their efforts. The
evolution of the submarine weapon has been
much simpler and more regular than that of the
vessel which was to use it ; but it has been
equally wonderful, and the history of it is equally
instructive. Briefly, the French, in this depart-
ment, as in the other, have shown the most
imaginative enthusiasm, the Americans the great-
est determination to achieve results even with
crude or dangerous means, while the English have
to their credit both the earliest attempts in
actual war and the final achievement of the
automobile torpedo. Of the Germans, as before,
we must record that they have contributed
nothing of any scientific value.

Sir William Monson's device of a bark with an
under-water cannon and an accompanying boat
was soon developed by the English Navy into the
more practicable mine, self contained and floating,
to be towed by a boat or submarine. In January,
1626, the King gave a warrant to the Master of
the Ordnance "for the making of divers water-
mines, water-petards, and boates to goe under
water." In June of the same year the Duke of
Buckingham, then commanding the naval expedi-
tion for the relief of La Rochelle, issued a warrant
for the delivery of "50 water-mynes, 290 water-
petards, and two boates to conduct them under

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A Note on the History of Submarine War

water." Pepys, in his diary for March 14, 1662,
mentions a proposal by Kuffler of an "engine to
blow up ships." He adds : "We doubted not the
matter of fact, it being tried in Crom well's time,
but the safety of carrying them in ships," and
probably this distrust of Drebbel's German sub-
ordinate proved to be justified, for nothing more
is heard of the design. The attempts referred to
as made "in Cromwell's time" may have been
Prince Rupert's attack on Blake's flagship, the
Leopard, in 1650. The engine then used was not
a submarine one, but an infernal machine con-
cealed in an oil-barrel, brought alongside in a
shore-boat by men disguised as Portuguese, and
intended to be hoisted on board the ship, and
then fired by a trigger and string. A more
ingenious "ship-destroying engine" was devised
by the Marquess of Worcester in 1655. This was
evidently a clock-machine, for it might be affixed
to a ship either inside, by stealth, or outside, by a
diver, "and at an appointed minute, though a
week after, either day or night, it shall infallibly
sink that ship."

The clock-machine was actually first tried in
action in 1776 by Bushnell — or, rather, by
Sergeant Lee, whom he employed to work his
Turtle for him. The attack by this submarine
upon the Eagle, a British 64~gun ship lying in the
Hudson River, was very nearly successful. The
Turtle reached her enemy's stern unobserved,
carrying a mine or magazine of 150 Ib. of powder,
and provided with a detachable woodscrew which
was to be turned until it bit firmly on the ship's

A Note on the History of Submarine War

side. The mine was then to be attached to it and
the clockwork set going. The woodscrew, however,
bit upon some iron fittings instead of wood, and
failed to hold ; the tide also was too strong for
Lee, who had to work the woodscrew and the
propeller at the same time. He came to the
surface, was chased by a guard-boat, and dived
again, abandoning his torpedo, which drifted and
blew up harmlessly when the clockwork ran
down. Lee escaped, but the Turtle was soon
afterwards caught and sunk by the British.
Bushnell himself in the following year attacked
the Cerberus with a "machine" consisting of a
trigger-mine towed by a whale-boat. He was
detected and his mine captured by a British
schooner, the crew of which, after hauling the
machine on deck, accidentally exploded it them-
selves, three out of the four of them being killed.
In 1802, Fulton's Nautilus, in her trials at
Brest, succeeded in blowing up a large boat in the
harbour. In 1814 his submersible, the Mute, was
armed with "columbiads," or immensely strong
under-water guns, which had previously been
tried with success on an old hulk. Similar guns
were tried nearly fifty years later by the Spanish
submarine designer, Monturiol. But the offensive
weapon of the period was the mine, and the
ingenuity of inventors was chiefly directed to
methods of affixing it to the side or bottom of the
ship to be destroyed. One of these was the use of
long gloves of leather or rubber, protruding from
the interior of the submarine, invented by
Castera in 1827, and adopted by Bauer,

16

A Note on the History of Submarine War

Drzewiecki, and Garrett in succession. But the
device was both unhandy and dangerous ; there
would often be great difficulty in manoeuvring
the boat into a position in which the gloves would
be available, and they could not be made thick
enough to withstand the pressure of any depth of
water. Practical military instinct demanded a
method of launching the mine or torpedo against
the target, and the first attempts were made by
placing a trigger-mine at the end of a spar carried
by the nose of the attacking boat. In October,
1863, during the American Civil War, the forts of
Charleston were in danger from the accurate fire
of the Federal battleship Ironsides, and Lieutenant
Glassell was ordered to attack her in the sub-
marine David. He had no difficulty in getting
near his enemy and exploding his torpedo, but he
had misjudged his distance, and only succeeded
in deluging the Ironsides with a column of water.
The submarine was herself severely injured by
the explosion, and had to be abandoned. A
second David, commanded by Lieutenant Dixon,
in February, 1864, attacked the Housatonic off
the same harbour, and, in spite of the greater
vigilance on the part of Admiral Dahlgren's
officers, succeeded in reaching the side of the
battleship, where she lay for the space of a minute,
making sure of her contact. The mine was then
fired ; the Housatonic rose on a great wave,
listed heavily, and sank at once. The David, too,
disappeared, and it was found three years after-
wards that she had been irresistibly sucked into
the hole made in her enemy's side. After this,

17

A Note on the History of Submarine War

experiments were made with drifting and towing
mines, and with buoyant mines to be released at
a depth below the enemy's keel ; but by 1868 the
invention of the automobile torpedo by the
English engineer Whitehead, of Fiume, solved
the problem of the submarine offensive in the
most sudden and conclusive manner.

Whitehead's success arose out of the failure of
an enterprising Austrian officer, Captain Lupuis,
who had been trying to steer a small fireship
along the surface of the water by means of ropes
from a fixed base either on shore or in a parent
ship. The plan was a crude one, and was rejected
by the Austrian naval authorities ; it was then
entrusted to Whitehead, who found it incapable
of any practical realisation. He was, however,
impressed with Lupuis' belief in the value of a
weapon which could be operated from a distance,
and though he failed in designing a controllable
vessel, he conceived instead the idea of an auto-
mobile torpedo, and after two years' work con-
structed it in a practicable form. It has been
spoken of as "the only invention that was perfect
when devised," and it certainly came very near
perfection at the first attempt ; but it was
erratic, and could not be made to keep its depth.
In 1868, however, Whitehead invented the
"balance-chamber," which remedied these de-
fects, and brought two finished torpedoes to
England for trial. They were fired by compressed
air from a submerged tube, and at once proved
capable of averaging 7^ to 8£ knots up to
600 yards, and of striking a ship under way up

18

A Note on the History of Submarine War

to 200 yards. The target — an old corvette in the
Medway — was sunk on to the mud by the first
shot, at 136 yards, and immediately after the
trials the British Government bought the secret
and other rights. Imitations were, of course, soon
attempted in other countries, and a type called
the Schwartzkopf was for some years manufac-
tured in Berlin, and used in the German and
Spanish navies. It was also tried by the Italians
and Japanese ; but it failed in the end to hold
its own against the Whitehead.

The automobile torpedo was at first used only
for the armament of ordinary warships ; it was
not until 1879 that an American engineer named
Mortensen designed a submarine with a torpedo-
tube in her bows. His example was followed by
Berkeley and Hotchkiss in 1880, by Garrett in his
first Nordenfelt boat of 1881, and by Woodhouse
and by Lagane in the same year. Even after this,
Drzewiecke, Tuck; and D'Allest designed their
submarines without torpedo-tubes ; but these
were, in fact, indispensable, and the use of the
Whitehead torpedo has been for the last twenty
years assumed as the main function of all
submarines designed for war.

The difficulties of construction, propulsion, and
armament having now been solved, the sub-
marine at last took its place among the types of
warships in the annual lists. From the first,
England and France held a marked lead, and in
Brassey's Naval Annual for 1914 the submarine
forces of the chief naval Powers were given as

A Note on the History of Submarine War

follows : — Great Britain, 76 vessels built and
20 ordered ; France, 70 and 23 ; the United
States of America, 29 and 31 ; Germany, 27
and 12. The technical progress of the four services
was probably more equal than their merely
numerical strength ; but it was not altogether
equal, as may be seen by a brief comparison of
the development of the British and German
submarine types between 1904 and 1914. The
eight British A-boats of 1904 had a displacement
of 180 tons on surface (207 tons submerged). The
German U i of 1904-6 was slightly larger — 197
(236) — but in every other respect inferior : its
horse-power was only 250 on surface (100 sub-
merged) as against 550 (150), its surface speed
was only 10 knots against 11-5, and it was fitted
with only a single torpedo-tube instead of the
A-boat's two. This last deficiency was remedied
in 1906-8 ; but the German displacement did not
rise above 210 (250) nor the horse-power above
400 (150), while the British advanced to 550 (600)
and 1,200 (550). By 1913 the Germans were
building boats of 650 (750) displacement and
1,400 (500) horse-power ; but the British were
still ahead with 725 (810) and 1,750 (600), and
had also a superiority in speed of 16 (10) knots to
14 (8). The last German boats of which any
details have been published are those of 1913-4,
with a displacement of about 800 tons on the
surface and a maximum speed of 18 (7) knots.
The British F-boats of the same date are in every
way superior to these, with a displacement of
940 (1,200), a speed of 20 (12) knots, and an

20

A Note on the History of Submarine War

armament of 6 torpedo-tubes against the Ger-
man 4. The comparison cannot be carried, in
figures, beyond the date of the outbreak of war ;
but it is well known among the Allies of Great
Britain that her superiority has been amply
maintained, and in certain important respects
materially increased. The Germans cannot deny
this fact with any plausibility, for their naval
Administration have not had the frequent oppor-
tunities which the British Admiralty have enjoyed
during the war — of inspecting the details of their
enemies' submarine construction.

The three years of conflict have, however,
afforded an opportunity for a further and even
more important comparison. The problems of
submarine war are not all material problems ;
moral qualities are needed to secure the efficient
working of machinery, the handling of the ships
under conditions of danger and difficulty hitherto
unknown in war, and the conduct of a campaign
with new legal and moral aspects of its own. In
two of these departments — those of efficiency and
seamanship— the Germans have achieved a con-
siderable show of success, though it could be,
and in time will be, easily shown that the
British naval service has been more successful
still. But in the domain of policy and inter-
national morality, the comparison becomes no
longer a comparison but a contrast — the new
problems have been dealt with by the British in
accordance with the old principles of law and
humanity ; by the Germans they have not been
solved at all — the knot has simply been cut by

21

A Note on the History of Submarine War

the cruel steel of the pirate and murderer. The
methods of the U-boat campaign have not only
brought successive defeats upon Germany, they
will in the end cripple her commerce for many
years ; and, in addition to her material losses,
she will suffer the bitter consequences of moral
outlawry.

Of the general efficiency of the German sub-
marines it is too soon to speak, but it may be
readily admitted that they have done well. We
know, of course, many cases of failure — cases in
which boats have been lost by defects in their
engines, by running aground through mishandling
in shoal waters, or by inability to free themselves
from British nets. On the other hand, the German
patrol has been kept up with a degree of con-
tinuity which, when we remember the dislocation
caused by their severe losses, is a proof of good
workmanship and determination. But the British
submarine service has to its credit a record of
work which, so far as can be judged from the
evidence available, is not only better, but has
been performed under more difficult and danger-
ous circumstances. In the North Sea, patrolling
has been carried out regularly, in spite of mine-
fields and of possible danger from the British
squadrons, which must, of course, be avoided as
carefully as if they were enemies. The German
High Seas Fleet has been for the most part in
hiding ; but on the rare and brief occasions when
their ships have ventured on one of their furtive
raids, British submarines have done their part,
and the only two German dreadnoughts which

22

A Note on the History of Submarine War

have risked themselves outside Kiel since their
Jutland flight were both torpedoed on the same
day. Better opportunities were found in the
Baltic, where British submarines, .in spite of
German and Swedish nets, icefields, and the great
distance of bases, succeeded in establishing a
complete panic by torpedoing a number of
German war vessels and the cargo ships which
they were intended to safeguard.

But it was in the Gallipoli campaign that the
conditions were most trying and most novel. The
British submarines detailed for the attack in
Turkish waters had to begin by navigating the
Dardanelles against a very rapid current, setting
strongly into a succession of bays ; they had to
pass searchlights, mines, torpedo-tubes, nets, and
gunboats ; and in the Sea of Marmora they were
awaited by a swarm of cruisers, destroyers, and
patrol boats of all kinds. Yet, from the very first,
they were successful in defeating all these. Boat
after boat went up without a failure and main-
tained herself for weeks at a time without a base,
returning with an astonishing record of losses
inflicted on the enemy. The boat E 14, Lieutenant-
Commander Courtney Boyle, may be quoted as
an example, not because it is an exceptional
instance, but because it was the earliest, and
supplied valuable information which facilitated
the work of those which followed. The passage of
the Narrows was made through the Turkish mine-
field, and its difficulty may be judged by the fact
that E 14, during the first 64 hours of the voyage,
was diving for 44 hours and 50 minutes. She

23

A Note on the History of Submarine War

escaped from a small steamboat, the crew of which
endeavoured to catch her periscope, and also from
the searchlight and guns of a fort, and from three
pairs of trawlers who made their sweep right over
her. After she began her patrol work, there was
more than one day on which she was under fire
the whole day, except when she dived from time
to time. Often she found herself dangerously near
to Turkish torpedo-boats, and could not under-
stand why they did not attempt to ram her. The
difficulty of using her torpedoes was extreme ;
but she succeeded in hitting and sinking two
transports, one of which was 1,500 yards distant
and escorted by three destroyers. Finally, when,
after twenty-two days patrolling, she began her
return voyage, she was shepherded by a Turkish
gunboat, a torpedo-boat, and a tug, one each side
of her and one astern, and all hoping to catch her
in the net ; but by deep and skilful diving she
escaped them, and cleared the net and the mine-
field at a speed of 7 knots.

Her second patrol extended over twenty-three
days. This time the tide was stronger and the
weather less favourable. One day it was too
rough to bring the boat alongside a brigantine
which had surrendered ; whereupon Lieutenant
R. W. Lawrence swam off to the prize, boarded
her alone, and burnt her with her own matches
and paraffin. Next day a steamer was torpedoed
at 750 yards as she lay off a pier, and nearly two
hours later her destruction was completed by a
second hit. The total number of steamers,' grain
dhows, and provision ships sunk on this patrol

24

A Note on the History of Submarine War

amounted to no less than ten, and the return
voyage was successfully accomplished, the boat
tearing clean through an obstruction off Bokali
Kalessi.

The third patrol was again twenty-two days.
An hour after starting, E 14 had her foremost
hydroplane fouled by an obstruction which
jammed it for the moment and threw the ship
8 points off her course. After a quick scrape,
she got clear, but found afterwards that her
guard- wire was nearly cut through. On this trip
the wireless apparatus was for a time out of order,
but was successfully repaired ; eight food ships
were burnt or sunk, one of them being a supply-
ship of 5,000 tons. The return voyage was the
most eventful of alF: £14 came full against the
net at Nagara, which had apparently been ex-
tended since she went up. The boat was brought
up from 80 feet to 45 feet in three seconds ; but
was, luckily, only thrown 15 degrees out of her
course. For twenty seconds there was a tre-
mendous noise — scraping, banging, tearing, and
rumbling — as she passed through what appeared
to be two separate obstructions ; then she broke
away uninjured, but with her bow and periscope
standards scraped and scored, and some twin
electric wire round her propeller.

The efficiency of the boat and her crew were
beyond praise. Since leaving England, E 14 had
run over 12,000 miles, and had spent nearly
seventy days at close quarters with the enemy in
'the Sea of Marmora ; she had never been in a
(Jocky ard or out of running order ; she had had

25

A Note on the History of Submarine War

no engine defects except such as were immediately
put right by her own engine-room staff. Yet she
made no claim to be better than her consorts.

Nor did she make any boast of her humane
treatment of captured enemies : she merely
followed the tradition of the British Navy in this
matter, and the principles of law as accepted by
all civilised nations. The commander of a sub-
marine, whether British or German, has to
contend with certain difficulties which did not
trouble the cruiser captains of former wars. He
cannot spare, from his small ship's company, a
prize crew to take a captured vessel into port ;
he cannot, except in very rare cases, hope to take
her in himself ; and, again, if he is to sink her,
he cannot find room in his narrow boat for more
than one or two prisoners. What he can do is to
see that non-combatants and neutrals, at least,
shall be exposed as little as possible to danger or
suffering ; he can give them boats and supplies
and every opportunity of reaching land in safety.
No one needs to be told how the Germans, either
of their own native cruelty or by the orders of a
brutal and immoral Higher Command, have in such
circumstances chosen to deal with their helpless
fellow-men, and even with women and children,
and with the wounded and those attending them.

But it may be well to put in evidence some
of the brief notes in which a typical British
submarine commander has recorded, as a matter
of course, his own method on similar occasions.

"May 8. — Allowed two steamers full of refugees
to proceed." "June 19.— Boarded and sank

26

A Note on the History of Submarine War

3 grain dhows ; towed crew inshore and gave
them some biscuit, beef, and rum and water, as
they were rather wet." 'June 22. — Let go passen-
ger ship. 23. — Burnt two-master, and started to
tow crew in their boat, but had to dive. Stopped
2 dhows ; crews looked so miserable that I only
sank one and let the other go. 24. — Blew up 2
large dhows ; saw 2 heads in the water near another
ship ; turned, and took them up exhausted, gave
them food and drink, and put them on board their
own ship." "July 30. — Burnt sailing vessel with
no boat, and spent remainder of afternoon trying
to find a craft to get rid of the crew into. Found
small sailing boat, and got rid of them."
''August 3. — Burnt large dhow. Unfortunately,
9 on board, including 2 very old men ; and their
boat was small, so I had to take them on board
and proceed with them close to the shore — got
rid of them at 9.30 p.m."

As for the hospital ships, there were numbers of
them coming and going ; but, empty or full, it is
inconceivable that the British Navy should make
war upon hospital ships. Victory it will desire, but
not by villainy ; defeat it will avoid strenuously,
but not by the destruction of the first law of human
life . The result is none the less certain ; in the history
of submarine war, as in that of all naval war, it
will inevitably be seen that piracy and murder
are not the methods of the strong.

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