Cover created by Transcriber and placed in the Public Domain.
THE STORY OF THE
SUBMARINE
THE STORY OF
THE SUBMARINE
BY
FARNHAM BISHOP
Author of “Panama, Past and Present,” etc.
ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS
AND DRAWINGS
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1916
Copyright, 1916, by
The Century Co.
Published, February, 1916
To
MY MOTHER
This book has been written for the nontechnical reader—forthe man or boy who is interested in submarinesand torpedoes, and would like to know something aboutthe men who invented these things and how they cameto do it. Much has been omitted that I should haveliked to have put in, for this is a small book and thestory of the submarine is much longer than most peoplerealize. It is perhaps astonishing to think of the launchingof an underseaboat in the year the Pilgrims landedat Plymouth Rock, or George Washington watching hissubmarine attack the British fleet in 1776. But arethese things as astonishing as the thought of Europeansoldiers wearing steel helmets and fighting with crossbowsand catapults in 1916?
The chapter on “A Trip in a Modern Submarine” ispurely imaginative. There is no such boat in our submarineflotilla as the X-4. We ought to have plenty ofbig, fast, sea-going submarines, with plenty of big, fastsea-planes and battle-cruisers, so that if an invading armyever starts for this country we can meet it and smash itwhile it is cooped up on transports somewhere in mid-ocean.There, and not in shallow, off-shore waters,cumbered with nets and mines, is the true battlefield ofthe submarine.
The last part of this book has a broken-off and fragmentaryviiiappearance. This is almost unavoidable at atime when writing history is like trying to make a statueof a moving-picture. I have tried to do justice to bothsides in the present war.
I wish to express my thanks to those whose kindnessand courtesy have made it possible for me to write thisbook. To Mr. Kelby, Librarian of the New York HistoricalSociety, I am indebted for much information aboutBushnell’s Turtle, and to Mrs. Daniel Whitney, of Germantown,Pa., a descendant of Ezra Lee, for the portraitof her intrepid ancestor. Both the Electric BoatCompany and Mr. Simon Lake have supplied me mostgenerously with information and pictures. The Bureauof Construction, United States Navy, E. P. Dutton &Company, publishers of Mr. Alan H. Burgoyne’s “SubmarineNavigation Past and Present”; the AmericanMagazine, Flying, International Marine Engineering, theScientific American, and the New York Sun have cheerfullygiven permission for the reproduction of many pict