Going Deep

by Lawrence Goldstone

  Frost, however, attempted to maintain at least the veneer of cooperation so rather than threaten, he decided on subterfuge. Holland described the May meeting in a letter to a friend. “I have not transferred my European patents to my present Co. Until last Friday I was under the impression that I had done so. On that day, Mr. Frost handed me a bundle of papers requesting me to sign them. Instead of doing so there and then, as requested, I took them home to find what they were. You may guess how surprised I was to find that they were assignments of my rights in Europe. I shall take the whole bundle . . . to my lawyer for his advice and I strongly suspect that within a day or two, Mr. Frost will find that I am not such a damned fool as he thought.”6

  But whether he was a fool or merely credulous in trusting men he thought were his friends, Holland soon learned that the patents were for all intents and purposes already lost. He had closed the letter, “Europe is a free field for me so far as patents are concerned for the plain reason that the most important and vital devices are still in my head and nowhere else.” Even his ideas, he would find, were not necessarily his own property.

  With Holland ousted from the company’s management, Isaac Rice set himself to the task of making the company commercially viable. First order of business was to amend the 1896 authorization act so the Holland and not the Plunger was officially the boat that the navy would evaluate. Work had continued on the Plunger, at least in appearance, although at that point it must have been obvious even to navy bureaucrats that the design they had foisted on the Holland Company was not being taken seriously.

  Only weeks after he had concluded the purchase, Rice succeeded and even had the deal sweetened. Through the good offices of Nevada Senator William M. Stewart, an amendment was secured to the naval appropriation act of June 10, 1896, providing that the monies allocation for submarines should be for “two boats similar to the submarine boat Holland.” With that change, the navy could purchase the newer boat if it so chose, potentially taking the Plunger off the table. Just why a senator from Nevada had become such a passionate advocate for undersea navigation engendered some raised eyebrows, but patronage directed at members of Congress whose interest in a particular measure might previously have been nil was hardly uncommon.

  Within ninety days of incorporating Electric Boat, Rice had thus succeeded in obtaining a highly favorable revision of the terms of his contract with the navy, restructuring the company’s management, and moving operations to a venue much more suitable to developing the product. Frost, Cable, the company’s investors, and of course, Rice himself, were all beneficiaries of this whirlwind activity. John Holland was not.

  But the machinations within Holland’s company had no impact on Holland’s celebrity. When he journeyed to Greenport at the end of June, where he had booked his family into a modest hotel, reporters were gathered to greet him. Each wanted an exclusive with the man credited with turning science fiction into reality. “John P. Holland, the inventor of the sub-marine torpedo boat Holland, accompanied by his family, has arrived here to prepare for the official trial of his wonderful creation,” the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported. When the reporter was allowed an interview in Holland’s hotel room, Holland asserted, “I am satisfied with the working of the boat, but I prefer to thoroughly test her powers before proceeding with the official trial. She is a great improvement over all the others I have yet perfected, and the sixth submarine boat I have invented.”7

  Although Holland remained an effective and invaluable public face of Electric Boat, and even seem to relish the role, he soon discovered it was in fact the only role he was still allowed to play. “Chief engineer” turned out to be a euphemism since others involved in preparing the Holland for its official trials—engineers, draftsmen, and Cable and his crew—had been instructed to pay him no mind. E. B. Frost had begun a whispering campaign indicating that Holland might be showing signs of senility. “No one seemed to consult Holland any more, not even on technical matters. Soon he was to learn of Frost’s order to Morris, the inventor’s oldest associate in the submarine enterprise, that henceforth Morris was not to report to Holland, because ‘Holland forgets.’”8 While Morris knew better than to take such an obvious canard seriously, others working on the project, each of whom was now staking out his own turf, were all too happy to ignore the man whose vision had presented them with such opportunity.

  World’s first submarine base in New Suffolk, New York

  In July, to oversee the preparations for the navy trials, Rice, along with Julia and their children—five at that time—journeyed from New York to take up residence on Shelter Island, a few miles east of New Suffolk. They arrived with a full complement of servants on the Electric Boat Company yacht, Gleam, which was itself not an electric boat, but rather powered by steam. When they arrived, the Rices took a cottage at the exclusive Manhanset House. Among its unique amenities was a golf course, completed just three years earlier, only the third in the United States.

  Shelter Island, which lies between the north and south forks of eastern Long Island, had, in the previous two decades begun to attract New York’s elite, who would generally arrive by yacht and, like the Rices, bring with them all the necessities, both material and human, to allow them to summer in comfort. The New York Yacht Club had opened a wharf in 1896 a short distance from the hotel. For its guests, the Manhanset House featured an immense dining room, bathing and beach facilities, a variety of amusements, tennis courts, and miles of bicycle paths.

  While Rice did not make the journey from Manhattan simply to enjoy the scenic pleasures or to play a leisurely eighteen holes, nor did he insert himself into the daily activities in New Suffolk. There are, in fact, no reports of him personally inspecting the facilities, and his name does not appear in any of a plethora of newspaper articles reporting on the boat’s every movement. (Frost, who was regularly mentioned, was also reported to be the owner of the yacht.) But that he was keeping close watch through surrogates is certain, and Gleam was used regularly to escort naval officers, both American and foreign, and other visiting dignitaries.

  And visitors of all sorts came in a steady stream. In addition to its operational advantages, relocating to eastern Long Island turned out to be a quite clever marketing tactic. The ninety-mile distance was sufficient to deter idle gossipers, but not so much to dull newspaper editors’ thirst for a story. Reporters were regularly dispatched to interview the principals, usually Holland, and to cover the submarine’s tests of its navigation systems and its torpedoes.

  Rice and Frost cultivated the press every bit as much as they wooed congressmen. Reporters were fed, housed, entertained, and given private tours of the Holland. The acclamation they had hoped for duly followed. Within months, virtually every person in the United States who picked up a newspaper knew of the undersea miracle being fashioned in eastern Long Island.

  CHAPTER 18

  JOINING THE NAVY

  Fortunately for Rice and Frost, the Holland’s performance gave the reporters the fodder they needed. There were many tests and trial runs to cover and the news was overwhelmingly positive. On July 28, for example, a headline in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle read, “The Holland’s Speed Test: A Naval Examining Board Has a Two Days’ Trial of the Submarine Wonder.”1 The “examining board” was actually two junior officers and a construction engineer, sent simply to watch how the Holland reacted to waves and currents while cruising on the surface. But that did little to suppress the hyperbole. “The test was a great surprise to the board,” the article went on, “inasmuch as the Holland astonished them by its wonderful performance.” The boat did handle well, especially with the dynamo engaged. It accelerated quickly and stopped quickly, and was able to move backward when the dynamo was reversed. It made nine knots on the surface, which was more than adequate and ran without vibration or noise.

  The piece closed with some irony from the naval engineer. Referring to the Plunger, still under construction in Baltimore, he noted, “We had intended fitting the submarine to
rpedo boat with steam power to be used in propelling her while sailing on the surface, which takes from fifteen to twenty minutes to generate. Whereas we find with the gasoline engines the Holland can be started almost instantly when she reaches the surface. Holland, the inventor recommended the change.”

  It would take another five months, but the head of the navy’s Bureau of Steam Engineering would finally admit the error of installing a steam engine on the Plunger, although he did not admit the error was his. “The generating system of this vessel has not been successful,” he wrote in his 1900 annual report, “and on January 31, 1900, the Department granted the contractors permission to remove the steam machinery and substitute reversible internal combustion engines of sufficient power to give the vessel the speed required by the contract.”2

  The Whitehead torpedoes were also testing well. The first firing came on August 20, where the Holland was also reported to have made “remarkable speed” under the water. “The torpedo was fired when the boat was moving and about four feet below the surface. It was blown from the tube by air pressure and was taken in a straight line about seventy-five feet. There was scarcely any disturbance in the water from the discharge, only a few bubbles showing on the surface near the bow of the boat.”3 Although seventy-five feet was not a particularly long distance, the missile was not fired at a target, and held no explosives in the nose, this may well have been the first launch of a self-propelled torpedo from a submerged vessel in which the projectile ran straight, true, and maintained constant depth. Nordenfelt’s exhibition in Turkey had simply launched the weapon and not tracked it.

  Torpedoes were a necessity if submarines were to be a weapon, but integrating a torpedo weapons system into undersea warfare presented complex engineering problems. Robert Whitehead had created the device to be fired from a surface ship, and the many variations that had been created in the ensuing decades were built to be launched similarly. The three main components in torpedo design were power, accuracy, and strength of explosive charge. For the first, which would determine how far the torpedo could travel and how quickly it could reach the target, compressed air turning a propeller, which Whitehead had used, was effective but considered dangerous. More than one Whitehead creation had exploded, taking the ship it was housed in along with it. In the enclosed shell of a submarine, even on the surface, such a mishap would kill everyone on board. Superheated carbonic acid was tried as a substitute, but required tubes and a reservoir; some attempted “rocket” power, essentially a single explosion to send the torpedo on its way, but it lost momentum quickly beyond a couple of hundred yards; others proposed a “float-supported torpedo, electrically driven from a shore generator through a cable;” and still others transferring energy to a flywheel through a steam turbine, essentially winding a spring.4 None of these alternatives proved suitable for submarine warfare, so compressed air was reluctantly retained.

  For accuracy, the torpedo had to maintain both constant depth and a straight course. The means to ensure the first had been created by Whitehead and employed in his first prototypes. Called a “pendulum and hydrostat control,” Whitehead fashioned an ingenious system in which a small chamber in the body of the torpedo was built with openings to allow it “free communication” with the water outside. Inside the chamber was a piston set so as only to remain stable at a certain water pressure, corresponding to the desired depth of the torpedo. If the torpedo was too deep, the increased pressure moved the piston backward, and the shaft attached to it lifted the horizontal diving planes causing the torpedo to rise on an even keel; too shallow and the piston moved forward, causing the diving planes to force the torpedo lower. If the torpedo moved out of a horizontal attitude, a pendulum set inside another small chamber would swing, causing the shaft to again move the diving planes up or down. In this way, the diving planes would only remain in a neutral position if the torpedo ran at the proper depth parallel to the surface of the water.5

  Making the torpedo run straight was a greater challenge, and the problem was not solved until an Austrian engineer named Ludwig Obry employed a gyroscope to build what was later called the “Obry Gear.” The gyroscope, now an invaluable navigation aid in everything from ships to spacecraft, had been developed by Léon Foucault in 1851, but was considered more of a curiosity than a tool and was not used industrially for almost a half century. Obry realized the Foucault’s device had a unique ability to maintain stability, and so he employed a jet of compressed air to spin a wheel on a gyroscope that, like the pendulum and hydrostat, was linked to a shaft, this time attached to the vertical rudders. When the torpedo altered course, the orientation of the gyroscope would change, causing the rudders to shift and get the torpedo back on its proper path. Whitehead purchased the patent from Obry and thus ensured that his design would be able to outperform that of any of his competitors.

  The explosive used in the torpedo’s nose was standard gun cotton, nitro-cellulose, the same material used to coat early filmstrips. The substance was always flammable—film strips regularly caught fire, destroying the film and sometimes a movie theater as well—but when dry and compressed became highly explosive. Detonation was always by percussion on contact with, it was hoped, the hull of a ship. Whitehead’s initial design was spindle-shaped, but this limited the amount of explosive in the nose. Eventually he discovered that a rounded, blunter nose not only increased the weapon’s potency, but also its performance in the water. By the time Holland was ready to utilize them, torpedoes had attained much the shape that they remained for more than a century.

  Testing for explosive power, however, presented a unique set of problems. Precision instruments are expensive and torpedoes cost between $2,000 and $5,000 each, prohibitive if the device was used only once, either because it had exploded or had been lost on the bottom. As a result, live charges were never used and torpedoes were always retrieved, generally by Holland employees, but sometimes, after one had gone off course and sunk, by a local fisherman. On those occasions, the fishermen were paid a reward to return the missile, which, by law of salvage, they had every right to keep. Most of the fishermen were happy for any remuneration—which was generally only fifty dollars—but after word got around as to how expensive the items were, there was no shortage of grumbling at what was seen as a pittance. The company never admitted to paying more, but it is likely that a clever fisherman could exact a much higher payment if he agreed to keep his mouth shut as to the amount.

  In September, the Holland did launch live torpedoes, but they were not primed. Once again, they ran straight and true. With a boat capable of maintaining an even keel when submerged, a compass navigation system that held a steady course, and torpedoes that went where they were supposed to, the Holland seemed to have become the weapon the navy had contracted for. Its only shortcoming was the need to briefly run awash in order to sight its target, but if it could do so quickly and duck back under the water, even that objection might prove to be moot. The trade journals agreed. Electrical World and Engineer reported, “It would seem, indeed, that little remains but some actual test as would represent the conditions of naval warfare.”6

  Curiosity about this new undersea marvel was not limited to news reporters or military officers. The Holland even made the society pages, with items such as: “The following Sag Harbor and Brooklyn people were present at the recent test of the submarine Holland, at new Suffolk, by special invitation,” followed by a list of notables.7As a result, as autumn set in, anticipation for the Holland’s official test was every bit as rife as Frost and Rice could have hoped. When the Holland was pulled from the water to be scrubbed and repainted (dark green) in early September, as many as five thousand people showed up in Greenport to examine it on the ways.

  Occasionally, however, the reporters got a story that the boat’s owners would have chosen to have ignored. On October 11, the Holland took another test run, which initially seemed to go remarkably well. Captain Cable reported, “The program provided for a surface run of several miles, a su
bmerged run of two miles, a torpedo attack on an imaginary enemy, and a flight under the sea. The exhibition was intended to prove that if an unsuspecting vessel was anchored, she would have gone to the bottom as did the Maine in Havana Harbor. . . . The torpedo we used, the regulation Whitehead, was dispatched 600 yards away from the imaginary ship. Immediately after firing, we turned, still submerged, and disappeared. The torpedo made an accurate run and struck the imaginary ship squarely in the center.”8

  But that part of the story was not featured in the newspapers. Instead, “the boat was lying at the dock after having come in from a morning practice trip in the bay, when it was noticed by those of the dock that the crew remained down below with all the ports closed.” As this was unusual, a boarding party was sent onto the Holland and “discovered the entire crew, six in number, apparently lifeless at their various posts in the interior of the vessel.” The boarding party realized immediately that there must be a gas leak and “with no little difficulty” carried the men out.9

  As Simon Lake had learned, if the exhaust system for the Otto motor was not perfectly sealed, carbon monoxide fumes, lethally colorless and odorless, would seep into the boat and overcome the crew. Anyone not removed promptly would die.

  The gasoline engine on the Holland had no reverse but the electric motor did, so, as the boat neared port, the gasoline engine was shut off and the dynamo engaged, the same sequence as would be undertaken when the boat ran submerged. Cable was standing on the deck with two of the crewmen as the boat neared the dock and gave the order to reverse the electric motor, but the boat did not respond. The crewmen went through the hatch to investigate, but didn’t reappear. Then Cable went down. The motor stopped but Cable didn’t reappear either.