Going Deep

by Lawrence Goldstone

  As early as 1797, Fulton had written to the Directory, which was running France at the time, “having in view the great importance of lessening the power of the English fleet, that he had a project for the construction of a mechanical Nautilus.” This letter came only months after Bushnell had proposed an underwater boat to the Directory and been rebuffed. In January 1798, Fulton submitted a formal proposal to the marine minister. Among his requests was a commission in the French navy lest he be deemed a pirate if captured by the British. But Fulton had no better luck than Bushnell. The following year, Fulton’s proposal was declined.

  But unlike Bushnell, Fulton did not give up. He waited four months, until a new marine minister had been appointed, and tried again. This time, he included detailed plans and a drawing of his Nautilus. It was by far the most advanced and sophisticated vision of an undersea boat ever devised.

  Twenty feet long and cylindrical, the Nautilus bore a much greater resemblance to a modern submarine than Bushnell’s ovoid. It was also powered by a crank, but the propeller it turned, four blades mounted on the same axis, was far more efficient than the screw. The conning tower was a small, raised, windowed bubble in the front that replaced the Turtle’s cylinder. Like the Turtle, however, there was neither an internal mechanism to supplement the ambient air inside nor a source of artificial light except oxygen-eating candles, so the Nautilus was also built to spend the majority of its time on the surface. To add speed, Fulton included a sail on a collapsible mast. Once again, the weapon was a powder charge that would be fastened to the hull of an enemy ship, this time by means of a detachable spike, designed to be more effective than Bushnell’s augur against copper sheathing, but still not guaranteed to pierce metal.

  Fulton’s Nautilus

  But it was in navigation that the Nautilus was most advanced. The quantity of lead ballast she held in her keel was such that the difference between the vessel’s flotation weight and that of the water displaced was only four to five kilograms. That meant in order to submerge, only that much weight in water needed to be taken on and to surface only that much expelled. For depth control, Fulton turned to the inclined planes that had served him so well in canal design. Mounted at the rear, attached to the sides of the steering rudder, were “horizontal rudders,” which could be manipulated up or down from inside the boat to either bring it closer to the surface or deeper. In some form, those diving planes, either at the bow or the stern, have been a feature of submarine design ever since.

  Along with his specifications, Fulton included a cover letter in which he promised to send English ships to the bottom. He proposed to be paid a rather hefty commission, “by the cannon”—the more a destroyed English vessel carried, the greater the bounty.

  Initial French objections to Fulton’s proposal were, oddly, not in the money he was asking but rather in the use of a weapon of stealth. The French naval minister and many in government considered such a device “dishonorable.” But pragmatism won out and a commission was impaneled to study Fulton’s design. The commissioners, all scientists or engineers, did a creditable job of evaluating both the strengths and shortcomings of Fulton’s submarine. In the end, though they thought the sail arrangement flawed, they recommended, “Citizen Fulton be given the authorization and necessary means to construct the machine of which he has submitted a model.” The commission was in part persuaded because the French navy could not hope to defeat the British fleet by conventional means.

  Despite the committee’s recommendation, however, the French ministry refused to move forward. In October 1798, Fulton tried again. He based payment strictly on performance. If he sank an English ship of the line, he would immediately receive five hundred thousand francs, with which he would build a squadron of ten more Nautilus boats. He would then be paid one hundred francs for each pound of caliber of the guns of English ships subsequently destroyed or put out of action, in other words, five hundred francs for a five-pounder, one thousand francs for a ten-pounder, and so on. By this time, England had established a blockade off the French coast, and Fulton insisted that not only could his submarines destroy the British fleet, but they could also allow the French to set up their own blockade at the mouth of the Thames. Still, his proposal was again rejected.

  Fulton had yet to attempt to construct an actual Nautilus, although he had built a small wooden model, which had been insufficient to persuade the French ministers. After he licensed the panorama, he traveled to Holland but could not interest the Dutch in the idea either. While there, however, he learned that Napoleon had been named first consul. He immediately returned to Paris and submitted his proposal once more, this time accompanied by a detailed strategic plan of how to use the Nautilus against the English, and why undersea craft would change the face of naval combat. As to the immediate conflict, once the Nautilus wreaked its havoc, “The result would be that deprived of Pitt’s guineas, the coalition would vanish and France thus delivered from its numerous enemies, would be able to work without obstacle for the strengthening of its liberty and for peace.”1

  Fulton even insisted that with the destruction of its fleet, “England would become a republic. Soon Ireland would throw off the yoke and the English monarchy would be wiped out. A rich and industrious nation would then increase the number of republics of Europe.”

  It was a brilliantly conceived document, combining science, tactics, and hyperbole and, at least from a strategic standpoint, would form the basis of submarine warfare a century later. The proposal came to Napoleon’s attention and, soon afterward, Fulton was building his plunging boat at Rouen.

  In July 1800, the Nautilus had its first test. Fulton piloted the boat, and two crewmen operated the crank. It submerged for seventeen minutes in twenty-five feet of water, but when the test was completed, Fulton announced that he wanted to make improvements. In November, he conducted a more extensive test at Le Havre, in which the Nautilus remained submerged for six hours. This time, he kept a candle lit and replenished the air supply by means of a tube that extended to the surface. The float that supported the tube could be seen only at a quarter mile away or less. But some observers pointed out that speed and maneuverability of the vessel were not such that it would be capable of engaging a British warship and escaping unscathed.

  Nonetheless, the launch of a craft that had the potential to attack the British fleet undetected stoked Napoleon’s interest. He sent a curt note to the marine minister: Je prie le Ministre de la Marine de me faire connaitre cequ’il sait sur les projets du capitaine Fulton. Bonaparte. (I ask that the minister inform me of what he knows of Captain Fulton’s projects.)2

  But even the first consul’s interest did not convince French naval officials to make a commitment to undersea warfare. Fulton continued to refine the design, and on July 1801, he launched the Nautilus at Brest. He sent a glowing report of the results to the ministry, in which he also included the testimony of witnesses. The minister sent a reply to Fulton that, although it has not survived, must have infuriated the American inventor.

  Fulton’s response to the minister was both evasive and antagonistic. It included regrets that he had not known of the first consul’s interest—Napoleon had apparently asked to see the boat—with the explanation that “she leaked very much and being but an imperfect engine I did not think her further useful hence I took her to Pieces, Sold her iron work, lead, and Cylenders and was necessitated to break the greater part of her movements in taking them to Pieces, So that nothing now remains which can give an idea of her Combination.”3

  He also respectfully declined to submit his drawings—Napoleon had apparently asked to see those as well—on the grounds that, since the French government had not contributed to the effort, the plans remained the private property of the inventor. Lest he be misunderstood, Fulton added, “I have now labored 3 years and at considerable expense to Prove my experiments. And I find that a man who wishes to Cultivate the useful Arts cannot make rapid Progress without Sufficient funds to put his Succession of Ideas
to immediate Proof.” When a favorable reply was not forthcoming, Fulton attempted to bypass the bureaucracy and sent a personal letter to Napoleon, whom he had always judged to be the man most receptive to new ideas. Napoleon did not respond. Disgusted at the failure of his submarine to sell, Fulton terminated negotiations with the government and began dabbling with another idea that had piqued his curiosity—the use of steam power for surface vessels.

  Fulton’s Nautilus had not faded from everyone’s interest, however. In 1803, a member of the British Secret Service reported to his superiors that he “was informed that a plan has been concerted by Mr. Fulton, an American resident at Paris, under the influence of the First Consul of the French Republic for destroying the Maritime force of this country.”4

  British officials decided that, despite any immediate lack of interest from the French, leaving Fulton with their enemy was not a good idea. Through Fulton’s friends, they let it be known that he would be welcome in England. In May 1804, Fulton accepted the invitation. He packed up and left Paris for London, where he promptly offered his submarine to the British navy.

  It appeared for a while that Fulton’s invention would finally get the attention he was convinced it deserved. Fulton undertook a series of communications—using the alias “Robert Francis”—with Lord Hawkesbury—who adopted the alias “Mr. Hammond”—describing what was needed to make the British navy the first to add undersea boats to its fleet. Hawkesbury recommended to Prime Minister William Pitt that the £100,000 Fulton had requested be set aside to see him through his researches. To help things along, Fulton submitted a series of scrupulously detailed plans for his new Nautilus, which contained many improvements, and the same sort of strategic précis that he had given to the French. Lest his motives be deemed pecuniary, Fulton explained his reasons for leaving France in a letter to Lord Melville:

  I feel no enmity to the people of France, or any other people; on the contrary, I wish their happiness; for my principle is that every nation profits by the prosperity of its neighbours, provided the governments of its neighbours be humane and just. What is here said is directed against the tyrannic principles of Bonaparte, a man who has set himself above all law; he is, therefore in that state which Lord Somers compares to that of a wild beast unrestrained by any rule, and he should be hunted down as the enemy of mankind. This, however, is the business of Frenchmen. With regard to the nations of Europe, they can only hold him in governable limits, by fencing him round with bayonets.5

  But the Lords of the Admiralty were unmoved. Employing dubious logic, they declined to approve production of a revolutionary and potentially superior new technology on the grounds that only a weak navy should pursue such a course. As Britain had a strong navy, there was no need to do anything but continue to produce traditional sailing ships. This thinking would predominate among naval strategists on both sides of the Atlantic for another century. (The English did have the foresight, however, to pay Fulton not to build any submarines for their enemies.)

  With Lord Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar in 1805, any chance of British expenditure on submarines ended. The following year, with no market for his Nautilus, Fulton, like Bushnell before him, returned to America. But Fulton did not slink off into the wilderness and oblivion. He set his energies to surface vessels and in 1809 launched his steamship, the Clermont, for its historic voyage on the Hudson. Robert Fulton would not usher in the age of the submarine, but he would fashion the means by which surface vessels were powered for the better part of a century.

  _____________

  *Funding was not approved until more than a century later, in 1919, but the canal was not built then either.

  †Passage des Panoramas, in the 2nd arrondissement, still exists, now the oldest surviving covered passage in Paris.

  CHAPTER 4

  STARS AND BARS

  While Fulton’s Nautilus could hardly be considered the first modern submarine, the advances in his design—cylindrical shape, the addition of horizontal planes—moved the technology far closer to the issues that would need to be resolved before a true undersea vessel could be designed and built.

  The first lesson drawn from the Nautilus was that simply finding a way to keep a boat submerged and powered would not be sufficient. As with the airplane, stability, not buoyancy (as opposed to lift), or power, would prove to be the key to successful submarine navigation.

  There were five fundamental engineering problems inherent to creating a functional submarine, with an added sixth, weapons delivery, to turn the craft into a warship. The boat had to be able to successfully get under water from surface running (and rise to the surface afterward), called controlled buoyancy; be able to run on an even keel while submerged, longitudinal stability; not roll from side to side, latitudinal stability; have a means of motive power to both generate forward momentum and to help keep the vessel submerged; and, of course, if the submarine was going to spend any significant time underwater, there needed to be a means to supplement the air the crew breathed when the hatch was closed.

  The degree to which a vessel could control its environment placed it in one of three classes. A submersible could spend time completely under the water but lacked the means to move about to any significant degree; a semisubmersible could move about but not run completely submerged—some portion of its frame had to remain on the surface, usually to provide air and vent the engine; and a true submarine, which could run effectively while completely submerged.

  Drebbel’s notion that negative buoyancy—the tendency to sink—could be created by forward motion might have been his only insight that survived. Even here, however, in the absence of planes to steer his craft downward, it is unclear how his rowers could have sent him deeper under the Thames, no matter how hard they pulled on the oars. The only way to achieve negative buoyancy without planes is by weight. Until Fulton, then, the only way to keep a vessel submerged was to carry sufficient ballast. As ballast was a necessity even on surface vessels—to allow them to ride low enough in the water to keep them stable—every early designer from Bourne on knew to supplement lead or iron with water-filled tanks that could be emptied or filled by operator intervention to adjust buoyancy. Pumps and later compressed air were the means generally employed.

  But ballasting presented its own difficulties. An undersea vessel would not retain stability as a surface ship would—by riding with its hull partially submerged in the water. Water, denser than air, would tend to right a ballasted surface ship if it began to roll side to side, or even if it pitched forward. A submarine, however, was surrounded by a medium of equal density, so that there would be no tendency to “pop up” if stability was disrupted. If water flowed into the bow, for example, and the submarine began to head to the bottom, it would simply continue downward unless the water could be removed. Even under normal running conditions, if a ballast tank were only partially filled, which would be most of the time, the water would tend to slosh about and disrupt undersea stability along both axes. The tanks therefore would need to be of a particular size and construction, and placed either along the hull or within the body of the vessel so that longitudinal and latitudinal stability could be maintained.

  These lessons took some learning, and so for the next fifty years submarine technology proceeded in fits and starts. Most of the efforts were total failures, some silly, some fatal, but occasionally a feature would find its way into a design that would come into play later in more serious craft.*

  The most noteworthy of this group was a Bavarian, Wilhelm Bauer, who journeyed from country to country in Europe, trying to find a home for his design. His first effort, Le Plongeur-Marin (the Sea Diver), built in 1850 for the army of the German state Schleswig-Holstein, was treadle-powered, and contain a lead weight mounted on a threaded rod along the keel, which could be moved forward or backward to aid in diving, surfacing, and sailing on an even keel underwater. The vessel performed well on the surface, but when Bauer attempted to submerge, both his lead weight and the water ballast
he had taken on, placed in the bow, caused the boat to dive directly to the bottom. It settled in sixty feet of water, with Bauer and his crew helpless to lighten its weight. Five hours later, with air running out, Bauer convinced the crew to take in enough water to equalize the pressure so that a hatch could be opened and they could swim to the surface.

  Bauer tried Austria next, but could only interest a wealthy dowager in providing funding. He may or may not have produced a boat, but in any event it was never put in the water. The English were next, but that effort also fizzled when his boat sank during trials. This time his crew was not so lucky and half of them drowned. Neither the United States nor Germany would allow even a test, but Bauer, ever perseverant, finally found support in czarist Russia. He traveled to St. Petersburg and built his most advanced boat, Le Diable-Marin (the Devil Diver).

  Bauer’s Russian boat was constructed of sheet iron, fifty-two feet long, thirteen across, and eleven high. Its propeller was powered by four man-driven treadmills. It held forty-seven tons of iron ballast, with three ten-foot cylindrical ballast tanks to control buoyancy. A small supplementary tank was used to trim the boat—control its longitudinal stability. Bauer had installed two air locks to allow crew members to leave the boat, presumably with explosive charges that they would attach to an enemy hull with a suction device.

  In May 1856, Le Diable-Marin was ready for testing. Bauer had submitted a list of experiments he wished to carry out, including how a compass would work at various depths, how sound would carry, how temperature would vary, how long a man could remain in a sealed chamber without ill effects, and whether compressed air was a practical means of maintaining the atmosphere.