In each camp, detractors were demonized and supporters deified. Melville was described by Lake as “a fine old seaman. He had long white hair and a kindly face and the most honest eyes I ever looked into, and he swore like the very devil. It was shocking to hear him, not because of his profanity but because he looked so much like a saint.” Lake’s recollection of their first meeting was consistent with that description. “‘A lot of Goddamned treasury-robbers are trying to shove boats down the Navy’s neck,’ [Melville] bellowed. ‘Our hands are tied. I cross the street when I see one of the Goddamned thieves coming my way.’” Melville then supposedly said, “We’ll take a look at your damned boat anyhow. By God, they can’t keep us from doing that.”3
According to Lake, “[Maine Senator Eugene] Hale felt the same way and so did many other honest men in both Congress and the Navy Department, but there was not much that could be done about it. Congress did the buying and the insiders knew how to slick their little jobs through the congressional committees and how to set up interference against the outsiders.”4 By insiders, of course, he meant Frost and Rice, although by then Lake himself had become very much of an insider as well.
Regardless of their open partisanship and that both O’Neil’s and Melville’s critiques seemed extreme, even gratuitous, each man was of sufficient rank that payment by the navy for completed Holland boats might not be assured. Holland had proposed to build an enhanced version of the Holland the previous year, but had been rebuffed—Frost and Rice had refused to undertake yet another expensive project for which there was no guaranteed return. But with Lake in active competition, there seemed little choice. If for any reason the seven contracted-for submarines were rejected after construction, Electric Boat could be bankrupted. Frost and Rice, with Frank Cable in total agreement, decided they had better construct Holland’s improved prototype. In late spring 1901, solely at company expense, they undertook to build the Fulton, which would serve as the model for the government boats, which were to be called Adder, Moccasin, Porpoise, Shark, Grampus, Pike, and, ironically, Plunger.
The new vessel was “larger, roomier, faster, and simplified and improved as to details.” It was ten feet longer than the Holland, with a submerged displacement of 122 tons to the Holland’s 75. The Otto engine had been increased to 160 horsepower from 50, and the electric motor to 70 from 50. The upgrading of the engine was described as “a large step in advance over the original Holland, as it enables fair speed on the surface to be made while charging batteries.” The Fulton could run at eight knots on the surface and seven either awash or submerged. In addition, the gasoline engine and electric motor were geared in such a way that either could be used to operate the air compressor and the pump. For simplicity, the steering and diving rudders were manually operated, rather than employing the automatic apparatus that had guided the Holland. The Fulton, as had its predecessor, featured a single bow-mounted torpedo tube, although it carried five torpedoes rather than three. To make room for the additional torpedoes, the pneumatic gun had been removed.5
Fulton
Lake was no more impressed with the Fulton than he had been with its predecessor, and continued to insist that Holland’s premise of a diving boat was fatally flawed. John Holland, he insisted, was simply too stubborn to abandon his pet idea, not realizing that the same criticism could apply to him. But just as Lake was no longer competing against the Holland, nor was he competing against its designer. Appointed instead to draw up the Fulton’s final blueprints and then supervise its construction was E. B. Frost’s handpicked choice to replace John Holland as chief engineer, naval lieutenant Lawrence York Spear.
Spear, only thirty years old, had been born in Warren, Ohio, son of a judge of the Ohio State Court, and attended the Naval Academy, from which he graduated second in his class in 1890. After brief tours on the Pensacola—one of the last United States naval vessels still made of wood—and two other ships, he was assigned to the Naval Construction Corps and sent to the prestigious University of Glasgow to study naval architecture and marine engineering. Two years later, Spear was back in the United States with a bachelor of science degree and was soon named “assistant superintendent of construction” of the “protected” cruiser Olympia—meaning its deck was armor-plated—which would become Admiral Dewey’s flagship. Spear also assisted in the building of the battleship Oregon, and supervised the construction of a surface torpedo boat in Seattle. In each of these and other assignments, he received glowing reports from his superiors.6 He was so well thought of that at twenty-seven he was put in charge of instruction of graduate-level naval architecture at Annapolis.
In addition to his teaching duties, Spear was assigned to conduct inspections of various shipyards where naval vessels were under construction. In 1899, he visited Lewis Nixon’s Crescent Shipyard in Elizabethport, New Jersey, where he got his first look at the Holland.
While Spear was convinced the submarine’s performance could be upgraded, he knew instantly that he had come upon a unique and invaluable craft that would be a significant feature of future of wars at sea. He contrived to make frequent visits to New Jersey and soon insinuated himself into the planning for both the new prototype and the seven contracted-for boats. Soon afterward, Frost offered him the post of chief engineer, which was, at least on paper, still John Holland’s title. As was the case with Holland’s two-month trip across the Atlantic, there are two disparate versions of how and why Spear was able to insinuate himself so successfully into Electric Boat.
In one account, Spear struck up a friendship with Frank Cable, who shared both his vision and his enthusiasm. He did not grow particularly close to John Holland, who by then viewed every new face with suspicion. In this case, Holland’s mistrust was justified. Cable informed E. B. Frost that he had come across a talented and willing architect and soon Spear was contributing ideas on improving Holland’s design. After Frost and Rice decided that the Fulton should supplant the Holland, and it became clear that Spear’s ideas would take precedence over his own, Holland grew to despise him. Frost then resolved the conflict by appointing Spear as chief engineer and shunting Holland permanently off to the side.
Typical of the acrimonious encounters between Spear and Holland, this story goes, was one in which Spear, abetted by Cable, overruled Holland on the mechanism by which the Fulton would be controlled by its captain. “To operate his submarines,” one historian recounted, “[Holland] introduced many and varied automatic devices, his belief being that these were essential for the proper performance of all subsea craft. For instance, he contended that the operator should sit on a camp stool and manipulate the submarine by means of push buttons and switches. This is beautiful in theory, provided it always works; but it is a well-known fact that machinery is without conscience. Thus it became the conclusion of Spear and Cable that hand-operated gear was far safer and more dependable.
“After Spear and Cable had taken upon themselves the removal of Holland’s contraptions from these first American boats, Holland chanced to look down from his office one day to discover his pet equipment lying dismantled on the dock. Demanding an explanation, Spear and Cable reasoned with him, but with little effect. In tears, Holland said, ‘You might expect this from a young whippersnapper from the navy. He has ruined my life’s work.’”7
But the account is without corroboration. Evidence that it is fanciful, simply an after-the-fact justification for removing Holland from a position of authority, was supplied by Cable himself. Cable viewed the new chief engineer not as a savior of a company sent floundering by a dreamy, dissociated John Holland, but rather, while “a brilliant technician,” one who had “no practical experience in submarine construction.” As a result, “theories prevailed,” and “much of the mechanism designed to go into the boat was left out, and most of the mechanism left in was changed. This not only delayed completion, but entailed great expense.”8 In one case, “Our chief engineer [Spear] insisted that cast iron was suitable for the gears and clutches and my protes
ts failed to change his view.” At one point, after the chief machinist went into the boat to start the engines, “he reappeared with blood streaming down his face. A large chunk of cast iron he brought with him told the story. One of the gears had broken and a detached piece struck him in the face. Thereupon we determined to have no more cast iron gears or clutches. The change cost thousands of dollars and considerable delay.”9
To Cable, then, “As in the case of the Plunger, she was not our own child in certain essential features.” The Fulton, however, was constructed under far different circumstances than was the Plunger. The new boat was built for experiment and testing solely with company funds. Frost was under no obligation to allow Spear any input at all, let alone to assign him to supervise the boat’s construction. John Holland had little question why Frost had done so but, at that juncture, no one rose in his defense.
Even before the Fulton’s initial sea tests, construction had begun, under Spear’s authority, for four of the other seven boats using the Fulton design. These would come to be called “A-class” boats, for Adder, whose keel was first to be laid. Beginning the Adder and her sister ships was a risk—if the Fulton developed significant problems later, the expense of rebuilding all the boats whose construction had begun would be enormous. But, despite the delays and added expense, the Fulton performed extremely well, so the project moved ahead. By fall it had become clear that, whether or not John Holland received due credit, he had designed a remarkable submarine.
On November 23, 1901, Frank Cable proved it. The headline the following day was, “All Night Under the Sea: Crew of the Fulton After Test Say They Could Live Comfortably as Long as Food Would Last: Submarine Boat Surpasses Fondest Dreams.” The Fulton had remained submerged for fifteen hours while a storm raged over eastern Long Island, far surpassing anything previously achieved, including by Lake’s Argonaut.
The description of adventure left no doubt of its magnitude.
With the wind blowing sixty miles an hour and an abnormally high tide washing over her, the submarine torpedo boat Fulton rested on the bottom of Peconic Bay on Saturday night. The six men who were in her emerged at 10 o’clock yesterday morning, and declared that they never spent a more comfortable night anywhere. They were, Rear Admiral John Lowe, U. S. N. (retired), Captain Frank T. Cable, Mate John Wilson. Engineer John Saunders, Electrician Harry H. Morrill, and Boatswain Charles Bergh. At 7 o’clock on Saturday night, Captain Cable closed the hatch of the Fulton’s conning tower, and the boat sank out of sight in about fifteen feet of water. All night long she lay there, having absolutely no communication with the outside world, and utterly ignorant of the fact that the fiercest gale of forty years was sweeping over Peconic Bay. The test was made to demonstrate the truth of the contention that the air in the Holland submarine boats is sufficient in quantity and quality to enable their crews to remain under water for practically an indefinite period. Food to last all night and bedding enough to make all comfortable were placed in the boat, and the men took turns standing watch.*10
Cable told reporters fifteen hours submerged “far exceeded his expectations,” and that “it showed the possibilities of the boat to be practically unlimited.” He had stored four flasks of compressed air in the boat, assuming the crew would need to use a good deal of it, but he reported that the air supply was more than sufficient and the flasks were not opened at all. During the night, heat and light were supplied by the battery array, which held a charge for the entire fifteen hours.
A naval officer, Lieutenant Arthur MacArthur Jr., had been assigned to Cable’s crew. MacArthur, son of a Union army general and Medal of Honor recipient, had chosen the navy—and had been named to captain the Adder when the boat was commissioned—unlike his younger brother Douglas, who elected to follow in his father’s army footsteps.
Admiral Lowe, who had lost none of his ardor for submarines, described the conditions during the test as “wonderful.” He “regarded the demonstration as perfect, and thought that the length of time that the Fulton could remain under water was limited only by her capacity to carry food for her crew. He said yesterday that the air in the Fulton was perfectly normal all night. He slept several hours, and it was a perfectly natural sleep.” While he slept, those on watch “played cards and read.” Lowe noted that such a supply of clean breathable air, “upsets all the theories of physicians and scientists who tell us that what we did last night was impossible.” He added that his unstinting praise had been well earned. “I was very critical all night and nothing escaped me,” although this assertion must be viewed with some skepticism as Lowe had been awakened periodically, at his request, and, according to Cable, made liberal use of the bottle of scotch that the crew had included in the provisions.11
Fulton crew. Frank Cable is standing, second from left, and Arthur MacArthur is standing at the right.
Conditions on the surface were far different. In a storm that would deposit a foot of water on the streets of New Suffolk, the commander of the tender Winslow, anchored directly above the Fulton to provide emergency assistance, spent the entire night attempting to prevent the rolling and pitching vessel from swamping in the high winds. On the Electric Boat Company yacht, which spent the night at anchor, E. B. Frost and Lieutenant Spear “were in the party that saw the Fulton go down, and they were watching for her reappearance when she came to the surface. Both were highly elated over the demonstration.” Absent from the test for the first time for a major demonstration of a Holland submarine was John Holland.
Even in triumph, Cable offered a suggestion to improve the safety of the crew. One of the primary dangers of running submerged, as he and his crew were all too aware, was a carbon monoxide leak. Cable advocated a simple yet effective solution. Like a parakeet in a mine, on any voyage where the hatch would be closed, the submarine would carry a mouse in a cage. If the mouse passed out, the boat would surface immediately and throw open the hatch. Although this could prove awkward in a combat situation, it would work quite nicely at all other times.
With the Fulton’s headline-grabbing feat and the construction of the other boats, Holland Torpedo Boat seemed to finally have made the transition from entrepreneurial startup to going concern. They had settled on a design, vanquished their chief competitor—or so it appeared—and had a lucrative contract with the United States government that did not preclude foreign sales, an opportunity they intended to exploit without delay. All that was needed was to solidify their management structure, which mostly involved replacing John Holland with someone more willing to adhere to the corporate philosophy.
On April 25, 1902, the following item appeared in Washington, DC, newspapers: “Naval Constructor Lawrence Spear has resigned, to take effect in a few weeks in order to engage in more profitable private business. . . . He became a naval constructor with the rank of lieutenant in November 1898, and has been superintending naval construction at the New York navy yard since October 1890. He is a valuable officer, and his resignation will be accepted with regret.”12
A new post with Electric Boat was not the only big move up in Lawrence Spear’s fortunes in 1902. On June 2, he wed Lillian Wing, to whom he would remain married for rest of his life, forty-eight years. Daughter of a successful businessman and Harvard graduate, marriage to Lillian got Spear into the Social Register. One month later, the following item appeared in society pages, “Mrs. E. B. Frost, a prominent society woman of Washington, has taken a Manhanset cottage for the season. Mrs. Frost is entertaining this week Mrs. Lawrence York Spear, of New York, who was Miss Lillian Wing, her marriage on June 2 having been a brilliant affair.”13
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*Lowe had retired a few months earlier and been promoted to rear admiral retroactively.
CHAPTER 21
COUNTERSTRIKE
Although once again outflanked, in mid-March 1902, Simon Lake journeyed to Washington, DC, to press his case personally. He claimed that his trip to Washington was not at his initiation but rather was prompted by supporters
in an attempt to right the injustice of the Holland submarine contract. “Melville called me to Washington to appear before the Naval Affairs Committee of the House. The Navy wanted Congress to give it power to buy the boats it wanted and Congress was stubbornly holding onto its authority. I had to hang around Washington for several weeks before I got a hearing, but they were not wasted weeks. [Speaker of the House] Uncle Joe Cannon and [Congressman] Oscar Underwood sat at my table at the hotel, and I almost forgot to eat in my interest in what they had to say.”1
But a letter from the Lake Torpedo Boat Company dated February 27, 1902, belies Lake’s assertion. The letter was aggressively circulated in Congress by Ebenezer Hill, who then presented it to the committee in a special hearing on March 28, describing his role in the affair with more than a little disingenuousness. “My knowledge of the situation is confined wholly to an acquaintance with the stockholders of this company, and I am here simply to say to you, gentlemen, that they are perfectly reliable financially and in every other way. What their respective interests are I do not know. . . . I will be glad to call attention to some of the stockholders whom Captain Lake informed me about I do not know who they are, except indirectly.”2
The letter, however, was quite direct. In it, Lake stated, “The Lake Submarine Company has successfully mastered submarine navigation for commercial and wrecking uses and the Lake Torpedo Boat Company is now engaged in the construction of a submarine boat for naval warfare, and the same will be ready for inspection in a few months. The boat is being built by private interests unassisted by financial aid of the Government, with the hope that it will be purchased if deemed satisfactory and useful to the United States Navy.”
Of course, appropriations for submarines had already been exhausted on the Holland boats. Congressman Hill had laid the groundwork to undercut the solidity of that appropriation the year before and Lake now attempted to take it one step further. He proposed incorporating into the naval appropriations bill a clause that authorized the secretary of the navy to purchase an additional three submarines for no more than $175,000 each.
Going Deep Page 24
