boiler plate, slunk out of Charleston harbor. Commanded by Lieutenant George E. Dixon, she crept semi-submerged toward the Union fleet. The eight-man crew labored over the hand crank which, connected to the propeller, drove the Hunley forward at four knots. Dixon was standing up since the only way he could navigate was by peering out of the forward hatch.
Just before eight forty-five P.M. , the master of the Housatonic saw something resembling a piece of driftwood heading straight for his ship. Realizing that a current or tide could not be propelling it, he took evasive action but too late. Dixon brought the Hunley alongside and detonated the 143 pounds of gunpowder supported on her projecting spar. The Housatonic was flung into the air, settled back, and slowly sank. The Hunley ’s crew vanished, probably sucked into the gash in the frigate’s side.
An Irish emigrant to the United States, John P. Holland, undertook the next crucial developments. Beginning in the late 1870s, over successive prototypes he developed petrol-engine-driven designs with the streamlined porpoise shape of modern submarines. His designs did not ascend or descend by their own weight but tilted their hydroplanes in the appropriate direction and propelled themselves by their engine power.
Holland was not the only man developing submarines. Thorsten Nordenfelt in Sweden and British clergyman the Reverend George William Garrett were creating their own designs. Queen Victoria’s chaplain endorsed Garrett’s company’s prospectus, reassuring investors with familiar arguments: “As to the invention being for murdering people—this is all nonsense. Every contribution made by science to improve instruments of war makes war shorter and, in the end, less terrible to human life and to human progress.”
Although Garrett, and in particular Nordenfelt, had some success, Holland maintained his lead. His sixth prototype, the Holland VI , constructed in 1898 in New Jersey, was nearly fifty-four feet long. Powered by a forty-five horsepower petrol engine for surface cruising and for recharging the batteries of a fifty-horsepower electric motor that drove the craft when submerged, her main weapon was a torpedo launched from an eighteen-inch torpedo tube. She made her first successful dive off Staten Island on Saint Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1898. Her formal trials ten days later so impressed then assistant secretary of the navy Theodore Roosevelt that he recommended that the navy purchase the vessel which on April 11, 1900, became the USS Holland ( SS-1 ).
A powerful lobby within the British Admiralty continued to dismiss submersibles as “not our concern.” In 1900 Lord Goschen, First Lord of the Admiralty, asserted that “submarines were a weapon for Maritime Powers on the defensive.” His parliamentary secretary was categoric: “The Admiralty are not prepared to take any steps in regard to submarines because this vessel is only the weapon of the weaker nation.” Rear Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson, VC, Controller of the Royal Navy, fulminated: “Underwater weapons, they call ’em. I call them underhand, unfair and damned un-English. They’ll never be any use in war and I’ll tell you why: I’m going to get the First Lord to announce that we intend to treat all submarines as pirate vessels in wartime and that we’ll hang all the crews.”
Nevertheless with the support of Admiral Jacky Fisher and his belief in “the immense impending revolution which the submarines will effect as offensive weapons of war,” in 1901 the British Admiralty ordered five Holland boats to be built in England by Vickers under license. The first was launched at Barrow-in-Furness the same year. The British vessels first introduced the periscope to the submarine—the U.S. Holland boats had had to surface so that men could look through the glass ports in the conning tower.
In 1901 German secretary of state for the navy Admiral Tirpitz declared that Germany had no need of
Just before eight forty-five P.M. , the master of the Housatonic saw something resembling a piece of driftwood heading straight for his ship. Realizing that a current or tide could not be propelling it, he took evasive action but too late. Dixon brought the Hunley alongside and detonated the 143 pounds of gunpowder supported on her projecting spar. The Housatonic was flung into the air, settled back, and slowly sank. The Hunley ’s crew vanished, probably sucked into the gash in the frigate’s side.
An Irish emigrant to the United States, John P. Holland, undertook the next crucial developments. Beginning in the late 1870s, over successive prototypes he developed petrol-engine-driven designs with the streamlined porpoise shape of modern submarines. His designs did not ascend or descend by their own weight but tilted their hydroplanes in the appropriate direction and propelled themselves by their engine power.
Holland was not the only man developing submarines. Thorsten Nordenfelt in Sweden and British clergyman the Reverend George William Garrett were creating their own designs. Queen Victoria’s chaplain endorsed Garrett’s company’s prospectus, reassuring investors with familiar arguments: “As to the invention being for murdering people—this is all nonsense. Every contribution made by science to improve instruments of war makes war shorter and, in the end, less terrible to human life and to human progress.”
Although Garrett, and in particular Nordenfelt, had some success, Holland maintained his lead. His sixth prototype, the Holland VI , constructed in 1898 in New Jersey, was nearly fifty-four feet long. Powered by a forty-five horsepower petrol engine for surface cruising and for recharging the batteries of a fifty-horsepower electric motor that drove the craft when submerged, her main weapon was a torpedo launched from an eighteen-inch torpedo tube. She made her first successful dive off Staten Island on Saint Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1898. Her formal trials ten days later so impressed then assistant secretary of the navy Theodore Roosevelt that he recommended that the navy purchase the vessel which on April 11, 1900, became the USS Holland ( SS-1 ).
A powerful lobby within the British Admiralty continued to dismiss submersibles as “not our concern.” In 1900 Lord Goschen, First Lord of the Admiralty, asserted that “submarines were a weapon for Maritime Powers on the defensive.” His parliamentary secretary was categoric: “The Admiralty are not prepared to take any steps in regard to submarines because this vessel is only the weapon of the weaker nation.” Rear Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson, VC, Controller of the Royal Navy, fulminated: “Underwater weapons, they call ’em. I call them underhand, unfair and damned un-English. They’ll never be any use in war and I’ll tell you why: I’m going to get the First Lord to announce that we intend to treat all submarines as pirate vessels in wartime and that we’ll hang all the crews.”
Nevertheless with the support of Admiral Jacky Fisher and his belief in “the immense impending revolution which the submarines will effect as offensive weapons of war,” in 1901 the British Admiralty ordered five Holland boats to be built in England by Vickers under license. The first was launched at Barrow-in-Furness the same year. The British vessels first introduced the periscope to the submarine—the U.S. Holland boats had had to surface so that men could look through the glass ports in the conning tower.
In 1901 German secretary of state for the navy Admiral Tirpitz declared that Germany had no need of
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