Going Deep

by Lawrence Goldstone

  To prevent the crew from being overcome, he designed an ingenious device he called an “induction tank.” The tank was connected to the air intake, the engine base, and the exhaust. A slight vacuum in the tank would draw in air to be fed to the engine, but also spent gases to be vented through the exhaust. A valve was designed to remain open while the engine ran normally, but to snap shut in case of a backfire. From there, “the gases from the backfire were caught in the induction tank, from which they were drawn out on the next stroke of the engine. This solved the difficulty, and thereafter the air was always fresh and pure when running submerged even after a submergence of several hours’ duration.”4

  Although the Argonaut was being built for commercial rather than military use—it had no weapons capability at all—Lake’s bitterness at being denied the navy contract in favor of John Holland continued to build. He would insist for years afterward that, as war was nearing with Spain, the then assistant secretary of navy, Theodore Roosevelt, had been sufficiently interested in his design that he promised to empanel an advisory board to study the feasibility of using Lake submarines to clear minefields. The board failed to materialize, Lake asserted, because Secretary Roosevelt resigned his post to lead the Rough Riders.5 But there is no mention of any such intention in naval records, nor in Roosevelt’s. Lake further claimed that to prove its worth, he took the submerged Argonaut to the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, charted the mines and cables, and then presented a detailed map to the local commanding officer. Rather than congratulate him and recommend a feasibility study, the commander told Lake that if he entered the bay again, he would be arrested. The reason the navy was steadfast in rejecting his overtures, Lake contended, was because it had already contracted for the Plunger and was unwilling to admit any possible error in the award of the contract.6 Once again, there are no other accounts to corroborate these assertions.

  But there is extensive corroboration that, in the Argonaut, Simon Lake was building an exceptional and unique machine. From its first trials, the vessel demonstrated that not only was it capable of successfully discharging the tasks for which it had been designed, but that it could do so with extraordinary efficiency. In October 1897, for example, “A successful trial of the submarine wrecking-boat ‘Argonaut’ was made at the Columbian Iron Works, Baltimore, Md. The inventor, Simon Lake, accompanied by six men, remained for two hours in the vessel without discomfort while submerged in twenty-one feet of water. There was an abundance of light and air, and cigars were smoked in the cabin.”7

  Lake saved his most impressive demonstration for the press and the public on December 16. “In the presence of 1000 persons the Argonaut, built by Simon Lake of [Baltimore], was submerged in twenty feet of water, and remained at the bottom of the Patapsco for four hours. After cruising on the surface, the little craft took up a position a short distance from shore, and in two minutes after coming to a standstill went to the bottom and cruised around at the will of those inside. Those who accompanied the inventor say they experienced no unpleasant sensation.” But the onboard guests, which included some reporters, were in for an additional treat. “When at full stop, a diver entered an airtight compartment and made his way out of the vessel. Those within were able to watch him as he moved about at the bottom of the river. A dinner was served underwater and the guests experienced no difficulty while eating.”8 The dinner, oyster stew and coffee, was cooked on the submerged boat.

  Although in some other early newspaper accounts the boat was described as one of “the queerest craft ever constructed,” by January 1898, the Argonaut had attracted sufficient renown to be featured in a full-page Sunday magazine feature article in the New York Times. Titled “A Submarine Search Boat,” the piece opened, “Jules Verne in his wildest imaginings, which were the foundation of the stories so dear to the schoolboy’s heart, ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’ and ‘Around the World in Eighty Days,’ entertained but visionary ideas of what Simon Lake, a Baltimore inventor, has put into practical shape by the completion and successful trial of his submarine wrecking steamer Argonaut.” From there, the reporter recounted, with some accuracy, the ventures of Bushnell, Fulton, and Hunley, but made no mention of John Holland, the Fenian Ram, or the contract with the navy. That he was taking Lake’s version without further investigation was made clear when Lake was described as having worked fifteen years to perfect his design. At the time, Simon Lake was only thirty-one years old.

  He spared no accolades, exclaiming, “The Argonaut has undoubtedly accomplished results never before achieved by submarine vessels.” Although noting that because the river bottom was covered with mud “several feet deep” that rendered the wheels on the craft “of no practical use,” the reporter proclaimed that, “The Argonaut has undoubtedly accomplished results never before achieved by submarine vessels.” The descent was described as causing “no vibration whatever.” The reporter noted that Argonaut’s prime purpose would be for salvage, where the estimate value of cargos at the bottom of the sea was $100,000,000.*

  Finally, the boat’s interior was described as nothing short of commodious. “The living room,” one of the Argonaut’s four compartments, was described as having “comfortable seats on one side,” and “the entire boat is lighted by electricity, and a telephone system connects each of the smaller apartments with the main room.”9

  The telephone connection would prove an especially attractive publicity feature. Lake announced his intention “to establish connections with the Baltimore Exchange and also the Long Distance Telephone, and proposes talking to New York, Chicago, and other distant cities from the bottom of the Patapsco.”10 The communication could not be wireless, of course, but Lake found a way to communicate effectively while in the vicinity of any port. “The arrangements are unique. The wire, which is on a reel, is enclosed in water-tight tubes and can be extended for several miles if necessary.”11 Lake placed his first telephone calls to his company offices, the owner of the telephone company in Washington, DC, and to the mayor of Baltimore. “A new telephone number, 3,041, was inscribed in the local directory today,” newspapers reported on January 7, 1898. Shortly afterward, Lake could not resist placing a call to the Holland Submarine Boat Company in New York City. Neither John Holland nor E. B. Frost was in at the time.

  To Lake’s annoyance, neither the Times feature not the spate of other glowing reports piqued the interest of the navy. It did, however, attract the attention of two visiting naval officers from Japan. In late January, they toured the Argonaut and, while they expressed some interest in that boat, they were far more keen when Lake reportedly showed them the plans for a “torpedo boat he was perfecting.” Lake had made no public mention of designing a boat to directly compete with Holland’s nor was there any record that he had informed American naval officials of such an intention.

  The following month, however, Lake tried once more to interest the admirals in the boat he had already built. After the battleship Maine exploded and sank in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, killing three-quarters of its crew, Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers began to beat the drums for war. The cause of the explosion aboard the antiquated relic was unknown, and remains so today, but that did not prevent widespread speculation that the sinking was an act of terrorism precipitated by Spain.

  Seeing a unique opportunity to prove the Argonaut’s mettle, less than seventy-two hours after the Maine went down, Lake sent a special delivery telegram to the secretary of the navy promising to lend invaluable assistance to both the inquiry and the recovery efforts.

  Dear Sir: We hereby offer our services and the use of our submarine boat Argonaut for recovering the bodies of the crew, the armament, supplies and hull (if same is not too badly injured) of the United States battle ship Maine, sunk in Havana harbor. The Argonaut will be of great service in investigating the cause of the explosion and the condition of the ship. If it had been caused by the explosion of a submarine mine, with shore connections, there are, undoubtedly, other mines or some underwater evi
dence in the vicinity, and the Argonaut could be used in locating them, and also to see where their connections terminate. We can take your board of inquiry down alongside the Maine, and allow them to view or inspect the hull and photograph same, if the water is reasonably clear. Telephone connections could be kept up with the submarine boat while at work on the bottom. The boat is provided with powerful electric lights for lighting up the locality over which she is traveling or while at work. The divers are not discommoded by surface conditions or currents; they have their tools right at hand and machinery for their assistance. The Argonaut is capable of carrying a crew of seven or eight persons and remaining on the bottom for several days at a time. We have special tools and apparatus, which will greatly facilitate the raising of vessels.12

  All these claims seemed within the boat’s capabilities, although Lake had never before asked the Argonaut to perform under such conditions. He did admit that the Argonaut lacked the speed to sail to Havana under her own power, but he proposed either having the boat towed or hoisted to the deck of a steamer ship and transported piggyback to Havana Harbor.

  Although accounts began to appear in newspapers that the Argonaut had indeed been towed to Florida, in preparation for the final leg, this seems never to have happened. Lake was furious at being turned down on what he saw as a free offer to demonstrate in a practical setting what his invention could do. Almost certainly, he blamed E. B. Frost for closing him out with the military. Almost four decades later, in his autobiography, his antipathy had not cooled.

  I was bitterly angry at the Army and the Navy at this time. Of course I was. I had developed a submarine which . . . was able to deliver the goods I promised and no other submarines could or did. I was thirty-two years old, full of strength as a barracuda, red-headed and, as I believed, a deeply injured man. I saw other men with other submarines get sympathetic hearings from congressional committees and naval authorities, and money and contracts. I was the only man who could do anything under water and I was not even permitted to show what I could do. Because what I was doing every day was so far ahead of what any one else had done, I was looked on as a nut. The joint attitude of the Army and Navy was: “Lake is a crank and a liar. He cannot do what he says he does. If we catch him doing it we’ll knock down his ears.”13

  His plan to make worldwide headlines with the salvage of a celebrated battleship thus thwarted, Lake returned to his initial plan of recovering sunken material less glamorous but a good deal more lucrative. In July 1898, he took the Argonaut for an exploratory salvage voyage off Cape Henry, Virginia. He sighted a number of wrecks but realized that he lacked the necessary equipment to actually extract material in any volume, load it onto his boat, and then convey it to the surface. (Lake only admitted this later. To do so at the time would have blunted his claims about what he could achieve with the wreck of the Maine.)

  A larger problem, he decided, particularly with the navy, was that the Argonaut was almost universally seen as a vessel whose main use would be in shallow water, close to shore, whereas Holland’s craft, using his porpoise diving and surfacing techniques, was assumed to be effective in deeper water. To debunk those characterizations, Lake decided to take the Argonaut into the open ocean and travel from Norfolk, Virginia, to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, an unthinkable one thousand miles. Most of the voyage would be spent on the surface, but Lake would make certain to submerge often. While doing so, he could also check for salvage opportunities which he could map and return to when he had refitted his boat. During a storm, he simply remained on the bottom until it passed. He later claimed two hundred vessels were lost in stormy conditions during his voyage, such a blatant exaggeration that even his most sympathetic biographer admitted that to reach that number, Lake would have had to include rowboats.14

  During the voyage Lake did encounter several wrecks, especially in the Chesapeake Bay, “principally coal-laden,” one of which contained two hundred tons of material. Coal, which would not be affected be lying on the bottom, was potentially of enormous value if Lake could build a vessel to extract it. He would undertake that task the moment he completed this voyage, planning a boat three times the length of the Argonaut.

  When Lake docked in New Jersey at the end of September, he had become a sensation. Reporters wanted to hear about the longest undersea journey ever attempted, or at least the longest journey by an undersea boat. One article observed, “The little ship made seven knots running on the surface and eight knots when submerged. She is painted white, so that she may be readily distinguished by the diver who walks out of her on to the sea bottom and happens to get far away. The crew of the Argonaut always have plenty of fresh sea food when they are working under the surface. Whenever they run over an oyster bed the diver simply goes out and rakes in a few bushels. If crabs are wanted he takes a net and gathers them in much as a picker in a berry patch gathers berries.”15

  But still, Lake’s protests to the navy notwithstanding, there was no question of the boat being considered suitable for battle, but rather only for “wrecking work”—salvage. “Her purpose is not one of war,” the New York Times wrote, “but from the victories of peace and in their trophies she expects to find her renown.”16

  Lake’s journey was written up around the world, and among the telegrams of congratulations he received was one of particular import. The cable read:

  While my book “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” is entirely a work of imagination, my conviction is that all I said in it will come to pass. A thousand mile voyage in the Baltimore submarine boat (The Argonaut) is evidence of this. This conspicuous success of submarine navigation in the United States will push on under-water navigation all over the world . . . The next great war may be largely a contest between submarine boats. I think that electricity rather than compressed air will be the motive power in such vessels for the sea is full of this element. It is waiting to be harnessed as steam has been. It will then not be necessary to go to the land for fuel any more than for provisions. The sea will supply food for man and power without limit.

  Submarine navigation is now ahead of aerial navigation and will advance much faster from now on. Before the United States gains her full development, she is likely to have mighty navies not only on the bosom of the Atlantic and Pacific, but in the upper air and beneath the water’s surface.

  Jules Verne

  Lake later wrote that the cable from Jules Verne “whose Nautilus had been responsible for my descent into the sea in a submersible . . . was one of the finest moments of my life.”17

  _____________

  *$2.5 billion in current value.

  CHAPTER 14

  THE PLUNGE

  While Simon Lake was designing, building, and then launching the most sophisticated undersea craft the world had ever known, John Holland, as far as Lake knew, was forced to plod along, trying to salvage something from the government contract that it had taken him a decade to secure. Even the enthusiastic support of Alfred Thayer Mahan and William Kimball, by then the navy’s foremost submarine expert, had not been sufficient to allow his adversary to escape the mediocrity of the Plunger. Lake’s conclusion was quite reasonable—any observer at the Columbia Iron Works shipyard in Baltimore would have thought the same. Work on the Plunger proceeded laboriously, its inventor seeming to have little or no interest in its construction or testing.

  Observers at the newly established Crescent Shipyard in Elizabethport, New Jersey, however, would have judged events quite differently. They would have seen a fully engaged John Holland building the world’s first true attack submarine, a design that would change the face of undersea warfare and be the model of everything that has come since.

  By mid-1896, John Holland had realized he was out of alternatives. With Simon Lake clearly capable of producing a boat superior to his, one that would undoubtedly at some point pose a challenge to his contract with the navy, Holland decided that, no matter what it took, he would follow Kimball’s advice. He would scrap the Plunger and build a
new submarine from the keel up, following his own designs and, like Lake, finance it privately.

  For once, Holland’s timing seemed to be excellent. Lewis Nixon, who Holland respected for both ability and honesty, had left Cramps’ shipyard in Philadelphia to strike out on his own. Nixon was an obvious talent. He had graduated in 1882 from the Naval Academy first in his class and had then been sent by the navy to England to the Royal Naval College in Greenwich. He graduated first in his class there as well. On his return, Nixon had been chosen as one of the chief architects of the ABC cruisers, the first to be built after the navy began to modernize. In 1895, he had partnered with another talented Cramps engineer, Arthur Busch, and leased a vacant shipyard. In Nixon and Busch, Holland had two men perfect to bring his vision to fruition and at the same time keep costs to a minimum.

  The problem was that any costs were beyond the means of Holland’s company at that time. Every penny had been thrown into the Plunger. But then, either a benefactor or investor identified only as a “wealthy New York woman,” put $25,000 into the company and the new boat was begun.1 For most of 1897, while Simon Lake was building his Argonaut next to the boat he thought was his principal competition, his actual competition was being constructed at an entirely different location.

  Lewis Nixon was everything Holland had hoped for. By May 1897, the new vessel had not only been designed, but was ready to be put into the water. Although Holland and Nixon had tried to keep the boat’s construction a secret, word had leaked to the press and several reporters showed up for the christening. Descriptions of the event appeared in New York newspapers the following day. “Without any fuss or celebration, the submarine boat Holland was launched from Lewis Nixon’s shipyard this morning. Mrs. Nixon broke a bottle of wine on the craft’s bows just as the last timber was sawed away, and the boat began to slide down the ways. As the saw went through the last block, the Holland began to move and Mrs. Nixon broke the bottle on the boat’s bows, exclaiming: ‘I christen thee Holland.’”2 The launch was preliminary to sea tests as Holland insisted that “no submarine work will be attempted until he has satisfied himself that everything runs smoothly, and that the curious craft answers every motion of the powers that control her.” No matter how preliminary, however, once the Holland had become public knowledge, Simon Lake realized that his competition was not the mess being cobbled together next door, but rather a boat far more formidable.