New Orleans officials were enthralled and installed Lamm’s motors on the St. Charles Avenue streetcar. Two years later, Lamm came up with a way to use steam power instead of the more-difficult-to-handle ammonia, a design he patented in 1872. He was on the verge of selling the new engine for widespread use when, on July 15, 1873, he drowned after he fell out of his boat while fishing on Lake Pontchartrain.
After Dr. Lamm’s death, interest in fireless steam engines waned until a Frenchman, Léon Francq, happened on the technology in 1878 and proposed using it on Paris trams. Garrett read of Francq’s tramcars and realized that here was a steam motor that, in a submarine, could run in the conventional manner on the surface, with boiler smoke vented through an exhaust pipe, then shut down and run on stored steam when submerged. As with ammonia, as water boiled in the reservoir and the resulting steam was channeled to drive a piston, the decreased pressure would cause more water to boil, creating more steam.3
In 1879, Garrett mounted his engine in his design, which he named Resurgam.
This new model, forty feet long, was a huge improvement over the Egg, and for more than its innovative power source. The gloves were gone and four ports in the conning tower allowed for much better vision. It took a crew of three, two of whom would man the boiler and the motor.
But as sophisticated as the design appeared, it was riddled with flaws. The center section was cylindrical, but the front and rear sections were cones, creating inefficient hydrodynamics where they were all joined. Buoyancy and longitudinal stability would be problematic at best. Resurgam carried no ballast tanks, no means of adjusting buoyancy while at sea. Even worse, buoyancy was set to be near neutral when the Resurgam set sail, but would become more positive as the coal store was burned. Controlling the boat would thus be progressively more difficult and the engine would need to work harder and harder to dive. Horizontal planes, placed amidships, were Garrett’s only means of keeping his boat submerged. Holland also relied on his motor for downward momentum but had learned the diving planes needed to be placed fore and aft. Placing them in the center of craft would only exacerbate the instability.
Even without the control issues, sailing Resurgam would be a nightmare for the crew. The boiler and engine took up most of the space, so the engineer and fireman would be impossibly cramped. And the heat within the hull would be stifling, even running with the hatch open. When it was closed and the boat ran submerged, it would be near to unbearable.
Resurgam
Garrett claims to have conducted any number of positive tests at Liverpool, and then, on December 10, 1879, sailed from Birkenhead, across the River Mersey, to Rhyl, down the coast, a distance of approximately twenty miles. Although there were no published reports of this voyage, Garrett kept a detailed log, which was published in Liverpool newspapers the following week. In it, he claimed that Resurgam sailed for thirty-six hours without incident, both on the surface and submerged and that the crew of three “landed at Rhyl in perfect health but rather tired and dirty.” A “good wash and hot dinner” was all that was needed to “restore their comfort,” and “we could congratulate ourselves on having passed successfully through as novel and interesting a trip as any sailor could wish to experience.”4 Garrett did not, however, provide details on how long the boat ran submerged and at what depth. Nor did he indicate how Resurgam responded to shifts in either longitudinal or latitudinal stability. Still, this voyage—if it had been reported accurately—would be the first time a submarine sailed successfully fully under mechanical power.
Garrett decided the time had come to unveil Resurgam to potential purchasers, and so he purchased a yacht, Elphin, to tow his submarine to naval headquarters at Portsmouth. He left Liverpool on the night of February 24, 1880, just before high tide, under fair weather and an almost full moon. Garrett and his crew remained on Resurgam, while the yacht’s captain maneuvered west along the Welsh coast. But only about forty miles into the voyage, Elphin developed engine trouble. A skiff was dispatched to the submarine to fetch Garrett and the crew so that they might help with repairs. When Garrett left Resurgam, he closed the hatch but could not fasten it shut as it only sealed from the inside. While the combined crews attempted to repair the yacht’s engine, the wind picked up and the seas with it. Water began to pour into the submarine, which quickly settled deeper into the water. The lower it sank, the more water entered the hatch and Resurgam soon snapped the towline and sank to the bottom. Compounding the disaster, the steam tugboat dispatched to rescue Elphin pitched in the heavy seas and rammed the yacht instead. It too sank to the bottom.
Neither vessel was insured. In one night, John Garrett went from the verge of a seemingly great triumph to having neither a submarine nor the funds to build another. The Admiralty, which had overcome a century of resistance and finally showed some interest in undersea navigation, promptly lost it. Garrett, his resources exhausted, took a job as an engineer, helping design the docks at a minor British seaport.
In 1881, as part of this assignment, he traveled to London to investigate arc lighting, where he met a Swedish arms manufacturer, Thorsten Nordenfelt. After a brief stint in banking, Nordenfelt had turned to steelmaking and then weaponry. He had bankrolled a Swedish engineer who had designed a multibarreled gun, one of the stipulations that the weapon be called the Nordenfelt gun. He made the same proposal to Garrett. He would supply the financing, lease the shipyard facilities, and handle logistics, for which Garrett would receive a percentage of the profits for the Nordenfelt submarine. Garrett accepted.
They would build four boats together, Nordenfelt I to IV.
The first boat, begun in 1882, was sixty feet long, nine wide, and cigar-shaped, an improvement over Resurgam. Garrett had built in an extremely clever set of features. The hull was fitted with a retractable glass dome conning tower in the center to allow the operator a full field of vision when the vessel ran awash. When submerged, an iron cover kept water out. There were three engines, all of which ran on steam and the Lamm reserve principle: one for the main screw, and one for each of two vertical side propellers that Garrett had installed to help the boat remain submerged. These motors were vented through a stack that was also retractable, fitted with a similar iron cover. The side propeller motors were designed to be controlled automatically, with a mechanism that would sense depth through pressure and engage or disengage as appropriate.
According to Garrett, the boat ran well both on the surface and submerged, and so, in the summer of 1885, Nordenfelt considered it time to stoke demand for his product. In September 1885, he scheduled a three-day test off the coast of Sweden, where the Nordenfelt I had been built—Nordenfelt was a partner in a shipyard there—and to make the event as much a social event as a technical one.
Nordenfelt’s talent as a marketer proved every bit the match for his skill as an engineer. To make certain the boat’s triumph received the international coverage it deserved, he persuaded an impressive group of luminaries to attend, including the king and queen of Denmark, the empress of Russia, and the prince and princess of Wales. The assembled nobility, accompanied by an entourage of military officers and retainers, were to observe the new miracle boat from the deck of a luxury yacht, which Nordenfelt had stocked with an imposing array of accoutrements to help persuade his guests to speak well of the experience. The press would be well represented as well; the London Times, among other newspapers, sent a reporter specifically to cover the festivities. All that was needed was for the Nordenfelt I to perform as George Garrett had assured his benefactor it would.
It did not.
The first day was plagued by mechanical problems, and on the second, Nordenfelt was very cautious in running underwater, and even on the surface. Only on the third day, “in a very calm sea,” did the submarine “exhibit her power of moving under water, disappearing for periods never exceeding 4½ minutes, and moving for distances apparently of about 300 yards.” In running with stealth, the boat was largely a success. “There was no smoke or escaping stea
m to proclaim her presence at a distance of many miles, and up to 1,500 yards range at least she could probably advance with absolute impunity.”
But in approaching awash, as the Nordenfelt would have to do, risk of discovery was manifest, especially if sailors on a surface ship knew what to look for. “Riding light on a grey, and almost motionless sea, the hull of the torpedo boat was scarcely visible at 1,000 yards. In spite of her light grey color, however, the vertical combings supporting the cupola showed out dark on account of the abrupt change in the angle of reflection. Thus, viewed broadside on, the appearance was that of a short dark log lying on the surface of the water. In this position, and in a calm sea, the wash of the screw was visible, and in broad daylight could hardly fail to attract attention. It was generally felt, however, that such a boat advancing end on at speed would offer a particularly unsatisfactory mark to fire at, even with machine guns; while in a bad light it would be almost impossible to shoot with any chance of effect.”5
Still, early accounts in scientific journals were largely positive. “Mr. Nordenfelt’s invention appears to fulfill the numerous requirements necessary for overcoming the difficulties and dangers of maintaining, driving and directing a boat beneath the water,” wrote Science magazine. (An almost verbatim account also appeared in Scientific American.) “When it is wished to sink the boat, enough seawater is taken in to reduce the buoyancy till the tower is just above the surface. The side propellers being then set in motion, the vessel can be sunk to any required depth, there being an automatic arrangement by which the engines are stopped directly that depth is exceeded. An automatic horizontal steering gear also prevents the boat from going down or up headforemost, an even keel being preserved throughout all the maneuvers. Should a breakdown of the engine occur, the boat from its own buoyancy at once rises to the surface.”6
But for all the improvements and creative touches, the Nordenfelt I contained fatal design flaws. One was the inability to vent the intense heat in the cabin, especially when submerged. Simon Lake later reported, “A former chief engineer of Mr. Nordenfelt informed me that the heat from the large amount of hot water stored up in the reservoirs—for submerged power—made the interior of the vessels almost unbearable for the crew when the hatches were shut down, and that he did not believe the submarines ever made any submerged runs after being delivered.” Lake added, “I also judge from his description of his experiences with the vessels, that they lacked longitudinal stability and were difficult to hold in the horizontal position, which Mr. Nordenfelt claimed was a sine qua non for a submarine boat.”7
According to another expert, the vertical propellers, necessary to keep the boat submerged, were a major contributor to the stability problem. “However accurately a mechanical contrivance might be made for the regulation of this machinery,” he wrote, “there is little doubt but that a boat fitted in this way would steer a very erratic course, the depth of the deviations in the vertical sense being regulated by the amount of reserve buoyancy. The course of these submarines was found on experiment to be ‘jagged,’ since the action of the propellers prevented the deviations being made in the long smooth swoops that characterizes the ‘errors of route’ of the submarines fitted with horizontal planes or rudders.”8 In other words, the submarine would not run at a constant depth but rather in a sawtooth manner, and need constant ballast or speed adjustments to keep it on course.
American Engineer, a respected trade journal, had many good things to say about the concept of submarines for both attack and defense, but said of the Nordenfelt I, “Certain defects are obvious. The speed is insufficient; the period of twelve hours required to get up pressure is too long; there is no means of getting in or out of the boat when it is submerged; the perfecting of the vertical steering arrangements is perhaps doubtful.”9
But flaws or no, Nordenfelt’s demonstration turned out to be a success—he found a buyer for his submarine. Greece, then under threat from its traditional enemy, the Ottoman Empire, purchased the Nordenfelt I for £9,000. Just why the Greek admirals thought to purchase what even George Garrett’s biographer called a “white elephant,” is not known. “The Nordenfelt I was never used operationally by the Hellenic Navy, and probably never fired its main armament.”10 The only explanation seems to be psychological. “Greece had acquired a hidden asset, a secret weapon which they knew did not pose a real threat (except to the boat’s crew), but which was of real concern to their traditional enemy.”11
If that was the ploy, the Greeks were unsuccessful. As soon as the Turks got wind of the purchase, they contacted Nordenfelt and ordered two submarines for their own navy. Nordenfelt rushed the Turkish boats into production. Garrett made a number of changes to attempt to improve performance but lacked the time to properly reengineer his design. Both boats were delivered by May 1887, only five months after the order had been placed. The sultan renamed the boats the Abdul Hamid and Abdul Mecid, the first for himself and the second for his brother. The Abdul Hamid was demonstrated with great fanfare in 1887, and, like the Greek boat, it cut a sleek figure on the surface but performed poorly under it. It did succeed in firing a Whitehead torpedo while submerged, the first submarine to do so successfully, although it was for demonstration purposes only, not at a target, and seems to have veered sharply off course. Nonetheless, the sultan was sufficiently impressed to take delivery and pay Nordenfelt an undisclosed sum, which might have been substantially less than the Greeks had paid for an inferior boat.12 But also like the Greek boat, neither Turkish vessel was ever put into service, either in combat or for coastal defense. All three were ultimately left to languish and eventually cut up for scrap.
Nordenfelt’s continued lack of success did not deter him. Even before the Turkish boats were delivered, he laid the keel for the Nordenfelt IV, his most ambitious effort. One hundred twenty feet long, and twelve across, it carried a crew of nine and was fitted with two torpedo tubes and a more powerful engine, which could make fifteen knots on the surface and five submerged. The shape was odd—cylindrical in the center, but tapering into flat vertical edges fore and aft. One-inch steel armor plate protected the deck and dual conning towers from gunfire from surface vessels. The diving propellers remained but operated in recesses cut into the top of the hull instead of in the open.
But bigger and more powerful did not necessarily mean better performing. The new vessel “suffered from the same want of horizontal stability as her elder sisters, and her trials were not at all encouraging. Despite the unsatisfactory nature of her performance she was dispatched to St. Petersburg. But she never got there, as she was wrecked on the coast of Jutland on September 18, 1888.”13After the wreck, which had been caused solely by inherent instability, the Russian government canceled the contract, leaving the boat as a total loss. With that, Thorsten Nordenfelt was finished with both submarines and with George Garrett.
The saga of the Nordenfelt submarine was not quite done, however. It turned out that the positive reports of the four submarines’ performances—many of which emanated from George Garrett—had also been influenced by Nordenfelt and his high-placed friends. It was not until more than a decade later that the full truth came out. In February 1901, the British journal Engineer published a full account. These reports are useful not only as a testament to Nordenfelt’s willingness to end-run performance requirements but also as an indication of just how difficult designing a practical submarine was.
Of the Nordenfelt IV, Engineer wrote, “To all intents and purposes the Nordenfelt was a total failure as a submarine boat.” The magazine found more than one fatal flaw. “As soon as she was launched from the stocks at Barrow, it was seen that a mistake had been made in calculating weight, as she was down by the stern, drawing 9 feet aft and about 4 feet 6 inches forward. This would have been partially rectified by her torpedoes, but she never had one on board. Extra ballast had to be put in forward, and it was always held, rightly or wrongly, that this made it all the more difficult to keep her on an even keel when submerged.
The extra weight carried mitigated greatly against her speed as a surface boat.”
The boat’s ballasting was no better. “Another mistake was that the water-ballast tanks were too large, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that they were not sufficiently subdivided. When she was in just the proper condition to be manoeuvred by her horizontal propellers, the ballast tanks were only about three quarters full, and the water being left free surges backwards and forwards in them.” Any surge of ballast water, of course, would have upset the boat’s stability. “If, for example . . . water surged forward in the tank, she would proceed to plunge, unless checked, and in shallow water would touch the bottom, or if in deep water she would run down until the pressure of water collapsed her hull. No one who has not been down in a submarine can realise their extraordinary crankiness. The Nordenfelt was always rising or falling, and required the greatest care in handling.14
With all this, however, the Garrett/Nordenfelt boats occupy a singular place in the history of technology. While they may have not been successful in navigating as submarines, they did succeed in sparking the first undersea arms race. And in doing so, Nordenfelt and Garrett piqued what had been moribund interest in a number of admiralties for whom submarines had previously evoked only sneers or snickers, and thereby set the stage for the next wave of innovation.
As do many who brush against fame and glory only to watch it evaporate, after Nordenfelt terminated their partnership, George Garrett’s plunge into degeneracy was precipitous and tragic. In 1890, he packed up his family, sailed across the Atlantic, and bought a 150-acre farm on the shores of Lake Tohopekaliga, in central Florida. There is no record of why Garrett chose such an unlikely location in which to settle, or even why he immigrated to the United States. But the decision in any event seemed ill considered. The farm failed in two years and Garrett was left with neither an income nor an occupation.
Going Deep Page 9
