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By Richard Compton-Hall
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John P. Holland
(left), fascinated with “mechanical things” and anxious to drive the British out of Ireland, suffered setbacks and even sabotage but did not give up until his submersible dived successfully and the U.S. Navy bought it.
Even those of us with Irish ancestry would not claim that the Emerald Isle is noted for advanced technology. Yet, 150 years ago, probably on 24 February *841, a single-storied cottage in Liscannor on the desolate. windswept Atlantic coast of County Clare became the birthplace of John Holland, arguably the founder of highly technological modern submarines.
Suffering continually from ill health in youth, Holland saw poverty and disease all around him. Although his parents were reasonably secure (his father had a pension from lhe Coastguard Service), the Hungry Forties were a period famine. One of John’s brothers and two uncles died in the cholera epidemic that raged across Ireland in its wake, •hroughout these hard times, the wicked landlords twirling their elegant moustaches on the Victorian stage were real enough. They were always ready to evict defaulting tenants from their cottages and strip off the thatch to prevent them coming back: it was a process known as “leveling,” and young John saw plenty of it. Leveling symbolized the effects of British rule, and Holland believed, like so many of his countrymen, that England was entirely to blame for Ireland’s pitiable condition.
True Irishmen sought some means of throwing off the intolerable English yoke, which, in Holland’s view, was greatly strengthened by the background presence of an allpowerful British Fleet. He was, of course, debating the same problem that had concerned David Bushnell during the American War of Independence and that had led to the building of the Turtle submersible.
Like many people involved in underwater warfare, Holland was involved with the Christian church; at the age of 17, in 1858, he took the initial vows of the Irish Christian Brothers to become a schoolteacher. Coincidentally, a notably less monastic fraternity, the Irish Revolutionary (later Republican) Brotherhood (IRB) was founded the same year; its American counterpart, the Fenian Brotherhood, with whom Holland would later be linked financially, took root almost simultaneously and in due course spread back to Ireland. Some of the Christian Brothers became active supporters of, or at least sympathizers with, the Fenians; and, presumably, they also looked favorably on the IRB and Clan-na-GacI, a third organization with similar breakaway ambitions.
Brother Dominic Burke at the North Monastery, Cork, where Holland spent some time, was a noted teacher of science and much concerned with electricity for underwater propulsion, particularly for torpedoes. There is no direct evidence of his being a member of the Church ultraMilitant, but he took pains to encourage the novice’s strange fascination with submarines, apparent as early as 1859, and built a wood model for him.
News of the Hunley-Housatonic affair and Halstead’s Intelligent Whale filtered through to Ireland in 1864: Holland, who had two years earlier read in the Cork Examiner of the Monitor-Merrimack engagement, took careful note. When transferred to Drogheda, he contrived a mechanical duck that could swim, dive, and surface again. His pupils remembered that he kept them “interested for hours at a time talking about and demonstrating mechanical things ; in 1868 he was admonished by his superior for “the inefficiency of his school’’ and for “occupying his mind with things quite foreign to his obligations such as inventions and improvements in mechanical arts, etc.
By the spring of 1872, all of his immediate family had relocated to the United States. A year later, having “declined perpetual vows,” Holland withdrew from the Order and sailed for Boston. In his pocket was an envelope containing a submarine drawing.
It seems clear that by now, Holland fully appreciated the potential for a covert underwater craft attacking ships of a more powerful adversary. Submarines could be Ireland’s future answer to England’s present might.
There was plenty of Irish-American fervor to encourage revolutionary designs in both senses: Clan-na-Gael and the secret Fenian societies welcomed Holland s submarine proposal. It was just what they were looking for—wild enough for the headiest imagination. Irish World newspaper launched an appeal fund and money quickly rolled in.
In 1876 Holland built a 33-inch model and demonstrated it to prospective Fenian supporters at Coney Island. It was enough to persuade them that a full-size wrecking boat” should be built.
Holland’s first proper submarine, Number I historically, was lozenge-shaped, 14 feet 6 inches long and 2 feet
6 inches high, with a squat turretlike attachment on top.
She was completed at Paterson, New Jersey, in 1878 at a cost of about $4,000, funded by “Jacobs Senior of Ja cobs & Company,” code name for the leading Fenian. Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, and his Skirmishing Fund.
On 20 May the dwarfish craft was winched onto a wagon and drawn, reportedly by eight pairs of stallions, to the water’s edge close by the Spruce Street bridge on the right bank of the Passaic River. Somebody standing on the bridge cheerfully remarked: “I see the professor has built a coffin for himself.” Fortunately, the coffin was empty: when launched, the two and a quarter tons of iron settled rapidly into the water and sank out of sight.
Almost certainly, the inventor had calculated the buoyancy for salt water although the upper reaches of the river ; were almost fresh. It was a trimming mistake of the kind to be repeated frequently by submariners in the future. Undismayed, Holland hauled up the recalcitrant boat and made adjustments. The two-cylinder gasoline engine no i longer worked, but Holland adapted the engine to alternative motive power. Steam was passed from a launch | alongside using a rubber hose. Flooding the two principal ballast tanks and pushing forward the lever controlling a single pair of diving rudders amidships, Holland tilted the little submersible downward so that it slid beneath the water to an estimated depth of 12 feet, reappearing safely a few yards farther on. In this prototype Holland demonstrated the guiding principals of buoyancy and stability but decided that the diving rudders were handicapped by being at the center of buoyancy; they would be much more effective if placed right aft. That realization alone put Holland in advance of competitors.
Trustees of the Fenian Skirmishing Fund were now convinced that another $20,000 was justified for a warlike submarine to pursue the “Salt Water Enterprise” against the British. What came to be called the Fenian Ram was laid down at the Delamater Ironworks on West 13th Street, New York City, on 3 May 1879. Construction was slow. The trouble with the Delamater engineers was, according | to Holland, the same as he later encountered among staff officers of the U.S. Navy: “They were, almost without exception, of English, Welsh or Scottish descent,” and “they appeared to know by intuition that the project was absurd,” a reaction not unknown to modern submariners, albeit without such particular prejudice.
The three-man Ram, launched in May 1881 and towed across the Hudson River to Jersey City, was 31 feet long and 6 feet broad. It was propelled by a Brayton twin-cylinder double-acting 15-horsepower gasoline engine. The internal-combustion engine was used both on the surface and submerged: compressed air from internal reservoirs supplied the engine when dived as well as blowing out water ballast in order to surface.
Trials of the Ram were surprisingly successful. However, a passing tug washed water over and down the abbreviated conning tower during an unauthorized solo trip by engineer George M. Richards (of Erie, Pennsylvania, as the records, for some reason, are careful to mention). The boat sank, but Richards, “a bit pale,” emerged unhurt. It cost the Skirmishing Fund some $3,000 to raise the
Ram and make repairs.
As for armament, Robert Whitehead’s torpedoes were quite well proven, but there was no way yet of discharging 'hem submerged. So Holland devised an underwater gun 'hat fired a six-foot projectile pneumatically by high- Pressure air at 600 pounds per square inch. With the muz- z'e three feet six inches below the surface, the missile 'raveled a dozen feet through the water and then “rose fifteen feet into the air . . . striking a pile ... and frightening a fisherman who was dozing thereon.”
Things were going slowly but well—until “barroom Palaver,” financial shenanigans, internecine quarreling, and Irish impetuosity took disastrous joint control. The Fund’s treasury was in dispute, and a few Fenians, led by J°hn J. Breslin, resolved to take matters into their own hands—primarily, it appears, to avoid legal sequestration °f the principle asset. Forging Holland’s name on a pass, 'hey maneuvered a tug alongside the Ram and, together with a new 16-foot model (hull Number III) intended for further experiments, they towed the craft up Long Island Sound toward New Haven. The model foundered en route and, at the new submarine base, they made such a hash of handling the Ram that the harbormaster declared her a ntenace to navigation. Frustrated, they beached their property and endeavored, but failed, to sell it to Russia.
Holland was furious: “I’ll let her rot on their hands,” he declared. But the Ram did not rot; she is now alongside Humber I at the Paterson Museum.
That was the end of the “Salt Water Enterprise.” Nev- er'heless, Holland could not initially have embarked on serious submarine designing without Fenian money; he m'ght well have remained just an unknown schoolmaster. Today, the Fenian Skirmishing Fund would be known as Horth American aid for the IRA—irony indeed, especially f°r the Royal Navy, when we come to consider the subma- r'ues that ultimately developed from the wholly anti-Brit-
ish Irish connection.
Holland now turned his attention from Irish problems to the United States, despite the earlier but lingering advice offered by Captain Edward Simpson of the Naval Torpedo Station at Newport: “To put anything through in Washington is uphill work.” Simpson proved to be correct.
There is no doubt that Holland’s ideas about hydrodynamics were accurate and far ahead of his time. In particular, he was alone in insisting that a submarine should “not descend and rise on an even keel.” It should be “steered by horizontal planes affixed to the stern . . . diving and rising like a porpoise.” Moreover, it must have a reserve of positive buoyancy (for safety in the event of engine failure) and a fixed center of gravity. Only one U.S. Navy officer, Lieutenant William W. Kimball, was in accord.
Holland befriended Kimball at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1883. The young lieutenant was not in a position to do much immediately; but through him Holland met Captain Edmund L. Zalinsky of the U.S. Army, who was anxious to promote a new “dynamite gun.” He thought a submarine boat was the best vehicle in which to mount it; and thus the elongated, wood Zalinsky Boat (Holland’s Number IV) was launched in September 1885. Holland embarked on this misguided project against his better judgment. It failed completely and set him back years. Nevertheless, the fiasco provided the inventor with material for a provocative article entitled “Can New York Be Bombarded?”
The article, circulated by Kimball, struck a chord somewhere deep inside the Navy Department. In 1888, two
to the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs; “Give me six Holland submarine boats, the officers and crew to be selected by me, and I will pledge my life to stand otf the entire British squadron ten miles off Sandy Hook without any aid from our fleet.” He was referring to the Piling?1' type; but Holland was already formulating an entirely new approach, free of Washingtonian impracticalities, to be funded—at considerable risk—by the Company.
The Holland VI was the outcome. She took to the water at Nixon’s Crescent Shipyard, Elizabeth Port, New Jersey, on 17 May 1897—“a cigar-shaped vessel” (the length-to-breadth ratio of 5.2 was excellent for submerged handling) that led the New York Herald to announce that “Fiction Has Been Outdone.” Holland’s sixth design was indeed the shape of things to come; it foreshadowed the Albacore hull. A few years later the English author and Member of Parliament Lieutenant Colonel Alan Burgoyne would declare: “She is . . . without doubt, the commencement of the ‘really successful’ submarine.”
The Holland VI, 53 feet 3 inches long with a maximum beam of 10 feet 3 inches, displaced 63.3 tons on the surface and 74 tons submerged. A 45 brake horsepower Otto gasoline engine gave her almost eight knots when surfaced and the battery supplied power for up to five knots dived. In addition to a single 18-inch bow torpedo tube, there was an inclined “Dynamite” or pneumatic gun above the tube forward and, initially, one aft as well.
Appropriately, on Saint Patrick’s Day 1898, the Holland VI made her first operational dive off Staten Island. Ten days later, the U.S. Navy Department sent observers to witness formal trials. Captain John Lowe, Chief Engineer of the Navy, was impressed, and his opinion carried weight.
On 10 April 1898 Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt wrote to Secretary of the Navy John D- Long: “I think that the Holland Submarine Boat should be purchased ... I don’t think that in this present emergency we can afford to let her slip. ...” Roosevelt was, of course, referring to Spain’s declaration of war against the
years after its publication, an open competition for a “Submarine Torpedo Boat” was announced by President Cleveland’s Secretary of the Navy. Competing against Nordenfelt, Baker, and Tuck, Holland won. But the Navy’s unrealistic requirements for 15 knots on the surface and 8 knots submerged—the latter speed for two hours on the battery—coufd not possibly be met. Indeed, these capabilities were not achieved until the German Type VII U-boat emerged shortly before World War II. A fresh competition was announced the following year, and again Holland’s design was selected. But then the U.S. administration changed and the appropriation was shifted to surface vessels.
Holland was left flat broke, and his proposal for a steam-driven flying machine, fueled by inexpensive petroleum at four cents a gallon ($34.12 for a 288-mile flight at 63 miles per hour), found no takers. Fortunately, his old friend Charles A. Morris found employment for him in his dredging company at the reasonable wage of four dollars per day.
With Grover Cleveland back in the White House, a third competition was announced in April 1893; but a month before that a far-sighted lawyer, Elihu B. Frost (with a rich and influential father), had offered to provide capital for a submarine company managed by Holland. The John P. Holland Torpedo Boat Company was incorporated in the spring.
Surface warships, advocated by Captain Alfred T. Mahan, would be needed for sea power; but Congress was persuaded (with Mahan testifying) that submarines would be useful for coastal protection. The U.S. Navy was weak to the point of danger, while relations with Great Britain were strained over Venezuela and the French were engaged in ominous underwater developments. An appropriation of $200,000 was passed to reopen the competition for an experimental submarine.
Holland won again with his “submersible torpedo boat”; and his fifth design, for which a contract was finally signed on 13 March 1895, was the steam-driven Plunger\ William T. Maltster—already building Simon Lake’s diminutive Argonaut as a commercial speculation undertook construction.
The Plunger, 80 feet long and displacing 168 tons submerged, had a huge unshielded Mosher boiler amidships that made the boat much larger than Holland wanted. The cumbersome steam submersible (no relation to SS-2 of the same name, which came later) was launched in 1897; but Holland had no faith in her. His fears were justified. Exaggerated naval demands and absurd modifications, such as propellors fore and aft for even-keel submersion, which were contrary to Holland’s principles for a “diving boat,” dictated that trials would never be completed.
Early in 1896 Kimball had made his famous declaration
At the Raritan Dry Dock in 1898, year of the successful Holland VI (left to right): Walter Thompson, the dock’s superintendent; Holland’s old friend Charles A. Morris, who supervised the building despite his dredging commitments; Holland; and a John P. Holland Torpedo Boat Company stockholder named Matthews.
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United States because of Cuba. Holland declared his willingness to take the Holland VI to Santiago and sink the Spanish fleet if it was still there. The offer was not taken up, but the submarine was duly purchased for $150,000, after the usual bureaucratic delays, on 11 April 1900.
Thereupon, the Navy Department severely criticized the design, even though the untrained naval personnel who now put the boat through her paces were slow, inept, and ill equipped to judge niceties. Nevertheless, some of the ehanges ordered were sensible: the after pneumatic gun Was removed as redundant; controls were improved; and very useful small trimming tanks were added.
On 12 October 1900, the USS Holland (SS-1) was formally commissioned. Lieutenant Harry H. Caldwell commanding. The crew consisted of nine men. Thus, after Prance, the United States became the second power to adopt the submarine as a fighting unit. Britain, with the greatest navy in the world at the time, launched HM Submarine Torpedo Boat No. !, built to a similar pattern, on 2
The “really successful” Holland VI made her first operational dive off Staten Island in 1898, Holland in command. Left, at Morris Heights shipyard on the Harlem River, New York, with boat gunner William F. C. Nin- demann in foreground; below, at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis (background: monitors on Severn River).
October 1901. The Admiralty was fearful that submarines, unfairly hitting below the armored belt, would threaten the magnificent battleships and cruisers that had won and held the Empire. But there was no way to stop the underwater tide, and many other navies followed suit.
Holland, who died in August 1914, eight days after the declaration of war in Europe, never reaped the financial
rewards of his genius. He was no match tor the acumen of American businessmen. Only two of his first “really successful” submarines survive—one in Sweden and one, Britain’s Number I, at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum, overlooking Portsmouth Harbour at Gosport, Hampshire. The latter lay on the seabed at a depth of 63 meters for 69 years before being salvaged, without difficulty or mishap, in 1982.
She was in very good condition: experts are unable to explain satisfactorily the lack of serious corrosion, why the wood internal deck is solid, why rubber gaskets have not perished, why a battery cell filled with fresh electrolyte delivered 35 ampere-hours, why valve springs have retained their compressibility. But the reason is plain enough to Irishmen: she was an Irish invention. Eireann gu brath: “Ireland forever.”____________________
Commander Compton-Hall has been director of the Royal Navy s Submarine Museum since 1975. During his service career he commanded three submarines and a frigate.