Then in a move even more bizarre, George Garrett, then forty years old, moved his family to New York, where he joined the United States Revenue Service, signing on as ordinary seaman aboard one of the service’s steamships, which sailed out of Galveston, Texas. He was promoted to seaman first class, than promptly busted back to ordinary seaman for “incompetency.”15 The following year he was discharged, after a stay in the ship’s hospital with an undisclosed ailment.
Garrett rejoined his family in New York, but soon afterward, apparently desperate, traveled to Europe to solicit aid from Thorsten Nordenfelt. None was forthcoming. He returned to New York and enlisted in the army, to join the war against Spain. He was assigned to an engineering company in Puerto Rico, promoted to corporal, busted to private for drunkenness and ultimately discharged, likely for the same reason. Back in New York, Garrett worked at a variety of jobs for the next three years. On February 26, 1902, afflicted with chronic respiratory problems likely exacerbated by alcohol, George Garrett died at Metropolitan Hospital in New York City. He was forty-nine years old.
CHAPTER 9
TREADING WATER
In December 1883, John Holland was facing financing problems of his own. The Fenians might have been bumbling and self-immolating, but they were also his only source of income. Holland hadn’t taught in years and was not anxious to abandon his dream and return to the classroom. To make ends meet while he sought a means to get back to submarine design, he found a job as a draftsman—working with George Brayton to improve the Ready Motor.
But Holland found out he had not been working without notice. Just after the Fenian Ram was towed to New Haven, he received an invitation to a shipboard dinner at the Brooklyn Navy Yard from a United States naval lieutenant, William W. Kimball. Kimball told Holland that he had become interested in submarines after seeing the first plan Holland submitted to the navy, the design for the one-man craft that Holland had assumed no one had ever looked at. “After dinner,” Kimball wrote, “we went over the main principles of his methods for the control and maneuvering of a submerged craft.”1
The conversation was long, detailed, and technical, covering for example, “how to get the requisite low but safe meta-centric fore-and-aft height, so as to make the craft handy on her vertical helm and be at the same time stable enough to be safe.” What most impressed Kimball were the principles around which Holland insisted any successful undersea vessel be built. Kimball wrote later, “These three requirements—normal buoyancy, immovable center of gravity, and control in the vertical plane . . . are today very simple, very apparent. They were not so in 1883.”2 Before Holland left the ship, Kimball made him an offer. “If I could arrange it, he would work on a draftsman’s pay in the Bureau of Ordnance on his designs. He was to make a cast-iron contract with the Department to receive, if his designs proved practical and were adopted, such compensation as a board of officers, appointed by the Department, should find fair and just.” Further, if the designs remained proprietary to the navy and not marketed to outside buyers, Holland’s compensation would increase. Holland was “delighted with such a prospect,” and Kimball told him a few days later that the head of the Bureau of Ordnance was also keen to finalize a contract.
Had such an arrangement been entered into by Holland and the navy, the course of submarine development would have been radically altered, to say nothing of the course of John Holland’s life. But it was not. “Congress had adjourned. There was absolutely no money available to pay Holland as a draftsman. Had there been, Uncle Sam would have saved many millions and would have had the Holland type of submarine as his private property for many years.”3 While Holland waited for his promised contract to slog its way through the government bureaucracy, Kimball was ordered to ship out on an extended tour of duty in the Atlantic. Before he left, however, Kimball introduced Holland to an army lieutenant, Edmund Zalinski, who was doing weapons research that might have application in submarines. Kimball told Zalinski hands off, that Holland was going to work for the navy. But after waiting in vain for three months, with Kimball still at sea, Holland, by then almost broke, agreed to sign on with Zalinski instead.
Zalinski seemed to be someone with whom Holland shared a great deal, an outsider working to achieve a vision. He had been born in Poland but immigrated to the United States when he was four. When the Civil War began, he joined up and was assigned to an artillery battalion, eventually promoted to lieutenant. After the war ended, most volunteers mustered out, but Zalinski stayed on. It was a risky choice. Senior officers were virtually all West Point graduates, and a lieutenant working his way up through the ranks would be looked on like a caddy applying for membership at a country club.
But Zalinski had a talent through which he thought he might gain membership—invention. By the 1880s, he had fashioned an advanced telescopic sight for large bore artillery, a ramrod bayonet, and a range and position finder for coastal guns. At the time he was introduced to Holland, Zalinski was engaged in perfecting the design for a surface ship-mounted pneumatic gun, much as Holland had created to launch a torpedo in the Fenian Ram.
The weapon, which Zalinski called a “dynamite gun,” has been described as “one of the most curious pieces of military hardware ever adopted by the United States armed forces.”4 Dynamite, which had only been patented in 1867, was nitroglycerin based and had much greater explosive power than traditional gunpowder. But dynamite could not be fired out of an ordinary cannon. Nitroglycerin is highly unstable and, even with the buffering in the dynamite formula, the heat and pressure within the gun barrel and the shock of kinetic energy as the shell was launched might explode the mixture before it cleared the breach. Zalinski was experimenting with a steam-powered compressor to force air into an elongated cannon barrel with sufficient force to drive out a dynamite shell and send it traveling for up to two miles. If successful, the compressed air would expel the shell at a lower muzzle velocity than standard artillery and produce “no heat, almost no shock, and pressures that were extremely low.”5
Zalinski had gotten the idea in 1883, shortly after he was assigned to Fort Hamilton, on the Brooklyn side of the Narrows, which helped guard the entrance to New York harbor. (At the time, John Holland was testing the Fenian Ram less than a mile away.) An Ohio schoolteacher named Mefford brought a pneumatic device he had invented to the fort for trials. Mefford’s invention appeared to be more science project than weapon—a long brass tube attached to a compressed air reservoir by a rubber hose. The army thanked him for his time and sent him home. But Zalinski grasped the potential of the concept and began experimenting with different configurations. His notion was to mount pneumatic guns on warships, whose heavy armor plating had made them impervious to gunpowder charges but remained vulnerable to dynamite. In addition to ensuring that the gun crews were not the only casualties of dynamite shells, the decreased pressure in the barrel meant that lighter gauge metal could be used—although the gun would be a good deal longer—and would thus be easier to manufacture. It did not take long for Zalinski to attract investors, and they established the Pneumatic Dynamite Gun Company to fund his efforts.6
Zalinski’s pneumatic gun
In early 1884, shortly after the company’s inception, Zalinski and Holland met in Brooklyn. Despite news reports of Holland’s activities, to which an inventor like Zalinski would ordinarily have been drawn, until Kimball made the introduction, the lieutenant did not seem to have known that a pneumatic gun had been cruising back and forth under the water near where he was standing.
Most subsequent accounts indicate Zalinski solicited Holland because he thought a submarine would be the perfect vehicle in which to mount one of his guns, but this is unlikely. Zalinski, an army officer, had never before been interested in submarines and after he and Holland parted ways, never would be again. In addition, a submarine, with its potentially radical changes in pressure and jarring ride, would have been a less than ideal storage facility for dynamite. More likely is that the partnership was symbiotic. Zal
inski offered to help Holland finance continuation of his experiments, and Holland offered to help Zalinski develop his dynamite gun for ship and land-based applications. With Zalinski soliciting investment capital from Pneumatic Dynamite Gun shareholders, they jointly founded the Nautilus Submarine Boat Company in 1884.
Holland began work on the parade grounds in the ruins of Fort Lafayette, which had last been in use as a Union army prison. The fort was on a small island, actually a reef, in the Narrows, just north of Fort Hamilton.* Zalinski had raised enough money for Holland to build a prototype, but not enough for a true oceangoing vessel. One of the first causalities of the shoestring financing was a metal hull—the “Zalinski Boat,” as it would come to be known, was constructed of wood on iron framing. It would, however, incorporate a number of improvements spawned from Holland’s previous efforts.
During the Fenian Ram trials, Holland had written, “It was proved that guiding the boat by direct vision while submerged was impracticable, that steering a straight course under water, although not regarded as a difficulty by anyone up to that date, was a problem that must be solved before submarine warfare could be made practical under modern conditions.”7 Zalinski’s plan was that the boat’s captain would spot a target through a camera lucida, a primitive periscope, and then partially surface so that the bow was exposed at an up-angle from which a projectile could be shot through the air.† After the gun was fired, the boat would quickly submerge, leaving no target for accompanying vessels. Zalinski claimed his gun could carry a high-explosive projectile of several hundred pounds almost half a mile. Only Holland, whose submarines would dive and surface at an angle and not on an even keel, could design a craft to pull off such a precise maneuver.
Holland was skeptical that this arrangement would work at all and, even if it did, that the missile could actually hit anything, shot as it would be from a boat halfway out of the water, needing to hold a precise position while being buffeted about by waves. But if he wanted to build a submarine, he had no choice but to go along, so he drew plans for a fifty-foot vessel with a dynamite gun mounted horizontally in the bow. Other features of the new boat were less whimsical. Holland installed a platform under the conning tower to allow the captain to position head and shoulders in the turret with access to the viewing tube, a precursor to more advanced designs. A simplified and recrafted main cabin put controls for diving planes, steering, ballast, and throttle all within easy reach of the engineer. Many of the improvements that first appeared in this wooden boat would become standard as submarines moved closer to becoming a wartime weapon.
By late August 1885, the boat was nearing completion and anticipation was running high. “A New Marine Monster,” a New York Times headline proclaimed on August 31. “Busy laborers have been hard at work for several months in the ruins of Fort Lafayette constructing a boat which, if a success, will prove a submarine wonder that will startle the world.” The article fawned on Zalinski, who by that time, was rarely present, and it did not mention Holland at all. Zalinski, according to the Times, “has made marine vessels an especial study and no more capable person could have been given charge of the construction of the important boat than he.” The newspaper went on to assert that the lieutenant, who had examined every piece of material in the “hoped-for wonder,” and directed its proper position, would give the boat “a thorough test in all respects,” when it was launched the following week.8 Four days later, the Times reported that the huge flow of visitors engendered by its previous article had prevented the boat from being launched. Once again, Zalinski was said to be “personally in charge,” although there was also mention of an unnamed “inventor.” The day after that, an article reported that the planned launching had to be postponed for twenty-four hours due to high winds and rough seas, a decision made jointly by Lieutenant Zalinski and the “leading spirit of the Torpedo Boat Company,” a “Dr. Cyrus Edson,” who was in fact only an investor.9 On September 4, 1885, the Zalinski Boat was launched for its first test run. The Times covered this event as well. In its article, for the first time, perhaps ominously, the very first name it listed as those present at the event was “the inventor, J. T. Holland [sic].” The piece had also been pushed back to page eight from the previous page-one coverage. Nonetheless, optimism was said to be the prevailing sentiment; “everybody was sanguine of complete success.”
Except Holland. To get the twenty-eight-ton boat into the water, ways had been laid from Fort Lafayette’s parade ground, over a high sea wall, then down to the bay, which was later described as “an almost impossible launching site.” To make the process even more precarious, Zalinski had assigned a young, inexperienced naval engineer to supervise, of whom Holland later said “had either insufficient knowledge of the subject or lacked the ability to put his knowledge to practical use.”10 The result was predictable. Holland tried to shore up what he saw as insufficient bracing, but at three thirty, Zalinski, by now impatient to conclude the proceedings, wanted to give the order to begin sliding the boat down the ways. Holland “begged for a few minutes more time,” but at 3:38 Zalinski yelled, “Let her go, boys.” From there, the Times report differs from other accounts. The newspaper had the stern first launch go smoothly, with Holland pleased, until four minutes later, when the vessel unaccountably began to sink.11
Holland remembered things differently. When the stays were knocked from under the submarine, it moved far too quickly down the steep incline and could not be slowed by the rope attached to the bow. “The result was that . . . the launching ways suddenly collapsed and [the boat] crashed into some piling near the water’s edge, tearing out the greater part of her side and bottom.”12
What happened next is also in question. According to some newspaper accounts, the craft did not totally sink. It was raised to make repairs, and Holland eventually made some test runs in the Narrows, determining that his design was sound. Holland’s account is more final. “On investigation it was found that the cost of repairs would exceed the amount of money still on hand in the company’s treasury. Accordingly the wrecked boat was broken up where she lay, the engine and fittings removed and sold, and the proceeds used to partly reimburse the stockholders for the money they had invested.”13
Whichever version is correct, it was clear to all concerned that this was a venture that had no future. Holland in particular had experienced too many frustrations to engage in self-delusion. “This accident discouraged my company from any further attempts at submarine construction,” he said. “Had this boat been successful, submarines would have become an accepted success years before they did.” When Kimball returned from sea duty, Holland told him that the partnership and the company were doomed, and by the end of 1886, both were just that.
There is no evidence that the New York Times accounts, which remained unstinting in praising Zalinski, had been influenced to Holland’s detriment by either the lieutenant or the army. Still, the tone of the articles and the failure to mention Holland’s name until the boat sank seem unlikely to be pure coincidence. Moreover, Holland lacked the inclination—and likely the skill—to properly court the press or ensure that his reputation would not suffer the slights of others. In the years to come, that failing would cost him dearly.
What Holland never said publicly, and what was not reported in the press, was that in the months before the boat went into the water, Zalinski’s oversight of the project, and even his participation, had been almost nonexistent. Weeks would go by during the construction phase without him setting foot in Fort Lafayette. When he finally showed up to be the public face of the launch, his decisions—both in the setup of the ways and the naval officer to be in command—were disastrous, but not a word of criticism ever came his way.
By that time, in fact, Zalinski had lost interest in submarines entirely. He began testing basic gun designs in spring 1884 and soon turned his focus totally to his shipboard cannon. In March 1885, he produced an operational prototype, with an 8-inch smoothbore cast-iron barrel, sixty feet long, whi
ch could fire a one-hundred-pound dynamite charge two miles. In tests, the long barrel proved to be more accurate than the standard gunpowder cannon and could hold a larger explosive charge. Even at two miles, however, the gun’s range was inferior.
But Zalinski had added a wrinkle that might make his invention irresistible to the navy. His shells detonated electrically, by means of a battery embedded in the tail. Depending on the sensitivity of the battery, the charge could detonate on contact or at any depth underwater that was desired. This latter feature could obviously be used to blow out the hull of an enemy ship.
Interest in Zalinski’s gun increased with each firing and eventually, in October 1885, the Navy Department sent a three-man delegation to observe the army officer’s invention firsthand. A twelve-foot by five-foot target was placed in the bay, one mile from the gun, surrounded by a circle of barrels thirty feet across. Ten empty shells were fired and each fell within the circle. Zalinski then loaded a live shell, which was shot more than two miles across the bay before it exploded on contact with the water.
There was exultation at such spectacular results, of course, but also relief. No one knew whether to trust Zalinski’s arrangement—there was no shortage of experts who insisted that the gun would blow up with the dynamite inside. When the live shell was loaded into the gun, the naval officers took flight and observed the proceedings from behind a tree, taking “surreptitious peeps from time to time at the arrangements.”14
Foreign governments also showed up to observe, including representatives from China, Turkey, Prussia, Brazil, Spain, and Britain. But at home, despite a string of successes, Zalinski encountered resistance. His guns’ lack of comparable range, critics insisted, would make them ineffective for coastal defense, as an enemy fleet could simply station itself too far out to sea for the dynamite shells to travel and pummel targets on the shore. Zalinski countered that because his gun was lighter, it could be mounted on a fleet of torpedo boats that would be faster and more maneuverable than enemy ships weighed down by traditional cannon. Finally, in 1886, the navy agreed to build a “dynamite cruiser,” and sent a proposal to Congress. Lieutenant Zalinski was called as a witness when hearings were held to debate whether to approve the appropriation. He was billed as “the inventor of the dynamite gun and submarine torpedo boat.”15 The congressmen were suitably impressed and construction was begun the following month.
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