Going Deep

by Lawrence Goldstone

  Once again, Doblin had support for his assertion. When he returned to Lessler’s hotel room to pick up his things before going to Union Station, a telegram was waiting for him. It read, “Statement all right. Have no fear.” But Lessler’s reassurance was premature. “I consequently go on about my business and think no more about it. I had done another fellow a turn, in my way of thinking. I got home pretty late that night, and I found this telegram: ‘I am instructed by Naval Affairs Committee to request your appearance for bearing before it to-morrow [Friday] morning at ten thirty. Geo. Edmund Foss, Chairman.’”

  Doblin was then stuck, but after Lessler’s further assurances, decided to repeat the bribery story in the public hearing, which did not take place until Saturday. He showed the committee two telegrams Lessler had sent to his wife, the first on Saturday morning before his testimony and the second that afternoon, when he was done.

  Washington, D. C, January 24, 1903.

  To Mrs. Philip Doblin, 433 East Eighty second Street:

  Phil arrived all right and will stay with me in Washington.

  You need have no fear about him at all. I shall try and see you if possible. He sends love to you and children.

  Washington, D. C, January 24, 1903.

  To Mrs. Philip DOBLIN, 433 East Eighty-second Street.

  Phil examined. Substantiates story in every way. He is all right. Will stay here for a time.

  Both were signed: Montague Lessler.

  When Doblin completed his statement, Congressman Tayler, Chairman Foss, and the other opponents of the Roberts bill were livid. Those on the other side were furious as well. The hearing quickly descended into a free-for-all with members on both sounds assailing Doblin—and one another—with questions, accusations, requests for clarifications, and threats. But Doblin, as had the witnesses in the previous session, stuck to his tale. Lemuel Quigg had never at any time mentioned money. He had merely inquired as to whether Lessler might be persuaded to temper his opposition to the Holland boat. Doblin knew nothing of the McCullagh conversation at all. He thought he was helping a friend whose assurances he had believed. He had been persuaded to see a lawyer by his family after he returned to New York Saturday evening. And yes, he did believe in God. The only admission Tayler was able to wring from Doblin was that his assertion that Tayler “had put words in his mouth” was an overstatement—Tayler had merely asked him to repeat his story with specific reference to the $5,000 number.

  The next day, at his request, Montague Lessler returned to the witness table. As expected, his rendition of the events was quite different.

  Mr. Chairman, I desire to deny absolutely and unequivocally as false the statement made by the witness Doblin here yesterday as to any collusive scheme or any of the substantial details sworn to by him here, and I desire to reiterate that the facts as originally told by me are true. I desire to call attention to the following facts: That as to the telegram . . . ‘Take midnight train and come to me. Want to see you. Keep this confidential,’ the members of the subcommittee will remember that the statement I made to them was on Tuesday afternoon; that at that time everything before us was in camera, and that I said I would produce the witness Doblin in the morning, but I did not desire his name to appear in any way. The result was that that telegram was sent by me here from this committee room. Mr. Doblin came into my room a few minutes after 8 o’clock. I had left the door unlocked and he knocked at the door, waking me up. I asked, ‘Who is there?’ He said, ‘Phil,’ or ‘Doblin,’ I have forgotten which. I said, ‘Come in.’ He came into the room with his overcoat on, and I said, ‘Phil, I have gotten you into trouble.’ He said, ‘How is that?’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I have told in committee the whole story of the submarine proposition.’ He said, ‘Oh, that is terrible; that is terrible.’ ‘Well, now,’ I said, ‘keep up your nerves, all you have to do is to tell the truth here, and nothing but the truth.’”

  Lessler was also forced to repudiate the denials of McCullagh and Quigg. As did Doblin, he accounted for every seemingly damning piece of evidence with an explanation that, while logical, in some cases stretched credibility. He even called his uncle as a witness, to testify that Doblin, in the uncle’s presence, openly discussed the bribery offer in the middle of a popular restaurant just after Christmas—which, if true, did not jibe with Lessler’s original account and also once more raised the question of why Lessler waited three weeks to report a felony. In the end, there was no way to definitively determine which story was more accurate—it seemed certain that neither man was giving an unvarnished version of the events.

  The questioning of Lessler was, if anything, more contentious than it had been of Doblin. While the Lake boat supporters, principally Dayton, Tayler, and Chairman Foss were solicitous and leading, Holland advocates, Roberts—who Lessler had as much as suggested was in Isaac Rice’s pocket—and some others, were aggressive and sarcastic. Tempers flared and voices were raised throughout the session, as Lessler was walked again and again through every detail of the alleged bribery offer.

  One area left strangely unexplored was the source and intensity of Lessler’s opposition to the Holland boat. He was not questioned, nor did he provide voluntarily, how he learned of the perfidy allegedly being perpetrated by Electric Boat, nor who told him about the supposed bacchanalia aboard the Josephine. But the only other person known to have cited the same evidence was Simon Lake. Lessler had also on many occasions claimed to have undertaken a thorough study of the Holland design, and was stunned to discover its profound flaws. But Lessler had no engineering training, nor had he ever been involved with either mechanical devices or boats.

  With his own integrity impugned, Congressman Roberts demanded to make a statement, although, at least at first, he was not under oath. He claimed that on January 21, “I was coming through Statuary Hall, on my way to my committee room, and I met Mr. Lessler coming from the opposite direction. Mr. Lessler spoke to me, and said, ‘Can we not stop this thing? My God, I cannot stand it. It is killing me.’ The thing he referred to was the proposed investigation, which we had authorized to be made by the sub-committee. I said to him that the investigation was nothing of my seeking; that I had no benefit to gain from pressing it. But there were other parties besides myself in this matter. The statement had gone out to the country in the press that the Holland Submarine Boat Company had attempted to influence his action by an offer of money, and I did not know whether the Holland people would be willing to have the thing smothered; that that phase of the question would have to be considered. Mr. Lessler thereupon volunteered—the suggestion came from him—that he would make any statement regarding the matter that was thought to be fair and reasonable.”

  When Roberts told Lessler that, as the full committee had heard his charges and would be unwilling to terminate the investigation, Lessler replied, “I think that I can fix them, and I think I can arrange that all right.” Roberts then prepared a statement for Lessler’s signature.

  When they next met, on the floor of the House, Lessler assured Roberts that the matter had indeed been fixed. Roberts then handed Lessler the statement he had written up:

  January 21, 1903.

  Holland Torpedo Boat Company,

  Corcoran Building, Washington, D. C.

  Dear Sirs: In reference to the statement made by me before the Naval Committee of the House on January 20, in which, by inference, your company was connected with a promise of money for my vote on the proposition of the submarine boat, I desire to say it was never my intention in any manner to create the inference that your company, or any of its officers or stockholders, were connected in the remotest degree, either directly or indirectly, with that offer. That offer, I am now satisfied, was made without your knowledge by an irresponsible party. I sincerely trust that you will not be injured by the publicity given to my statement. Very truly yours.

  “I handed the paper to him. He glanced at it, and did not read it, and said, ‘That is directed to the Holland Torpedo Boat Company, and I
will not sign it, or any other statement.’”

  In questioning, however, Roberts admitted that the statement had been drawn up by E. B. Frost, and that Roberts had been a regular visitor to the Holland offices and spoke with Frost regularly. But Roberts denied any nefarious motives in suggesting that Frost draft a statement to his liking. “I had no interest in having a retraction from [Lessler]. It was a statement that should be made to the Holland Torpedo Boat Company. They were the party affected by his statement. I telephoned to Mr. Frost that I had met Lessler, and he had expressed a willingness to make a statement.”

  The questioning was conducted by Charles Wheeler, a Democrat from Kentucky, another ardent opponent of the Holland submarine. Roberts and Wheeler were soon shouting at each other, Wheeler demanding that Roberts be sworn in, and Roberts at first refusing and then agreeing. Their confrontation devolved into mutual accusations of impropriety, which soon threatened to involve the entire committee.

  As the acrimony reached its apex, it all suddenly ended. With Roberts and Wheeler doing everything but throwing punches, everyone tacitly seemed to agree that things had gone far enough. Adjournment soon followed. Many questions remained unasked, and many areas of potential wrongdoing were left unexplored.

  On February 3, the committee issued its report, and it showed both a good bit of horse-trading, and more than a little absurdity. As many expected, Philip Doblin was made the scapegoat for the entire affair, the committee deciding that he approached Lessler “on his own initiative and responsibility, with the idea of making money for himself.” But the committee also declared that there was no evidence implicating Lemuel Quigg in the scheme, nor was there any evidence that Electric Boat was involved. Left unanswered, then, was how, if Doblin had perpetrated this entire fraud on his own volition, he expected to make any money. Who had he intended to collect it from if not Quigg or Electric Boat?

  The minority report, signed by Roberts and two others, made a good deal more sense. While agreeing on the final two points, that there was no evidence that Quigg or Electric Boat had committed any wrongdoing, they also concluded, “The charge that an attempt was made to corruptly influence a member of the Committee on Naval Affaire respecting proposed legislation pending before the committee and the House is not sustained.”

  Although the majority report had asked that it be forwarded to the attorney general, who should “take such action as the law and the facts warrant,” Philip Doblin seems never to have been imprisoned, or even arrested and tried for perjury. In fact, he was listed as a receiver on several bankruptcies in the months following the hearings, so he doesn’t seem even to have lost his job. In March 1903, Doblin was found “wandering in Central Park,” subsequently examined by physicians, declared insane, and ordered confined in a sanatorium in Astoria, New York.5 His confinement could not have been for too long, however, as one month later he journeyed to Albany to “urge an appropriation provided for him in the Supply bill for work he did for the State while in the Controller’s office.” Doblin walked onto the floor of the state senate and spotted a senator who had referred to him as “a contemptible scoundrel” a few days earlier. Doblin walked up to the man, who did not know who he was, shook his hand, thanked him, and said, “People would have forgotten I was alive if it had not been for you.”6

  Lemuel Quigg spent the remainder of his life in the shadow world of politics. He never held office but became known as an adept fixer, or “accelerator,” in the parlance of the times. He grew close to the Whitney-Ryan cabal that attempted to gain a monopoly on surface transport in New York City, and then purchased the Selden automobile patent, which they used to bring infringement suits against scores of independent automobile manufacturers, including Henry Ford.7 Quigg was linked to any number of shady goings-on, but was never convicted. He died in 1919, at age fifty-six.

  John McCullagh fought to keep his post, but was not reappointed. Although he helped organize election bureaus in Cuba and the Panama Canal Zone, he soon drifted into retirement. He died in 1917, leaving no survivors.

  Montague Lessler set up a practice with Leonard Obermier, and remained in practice until his death in 1938. He would never again hold public office.

  The biggest casualty of the Lessler hearings, however, was the American submarine. Although there is no proof that Lessler was bought, or Roberts, or just how much undue influence Rice or Lake attempted to exert, the Roberts bill was withdrawn and, in its place, Congress, on March 3, 1903, “authorized the Secretary of the Navy, in his discretion, to contract for or purchase subsurface or submarine torpedo boats, not exceeding $500,000,” and provided for certain tests. While the money would technically remain available until the close of the fiscal year in 1904, the scandal had made the purchase of additional submarines impossible. And so the American market, at least in the near term, appeared to be closed.

  CHAPTER 23

  SKEWED COMPETITION

  The refusal to add submarines to the fleet was a particularly Pyrrhic victory for Simon Lake. Not only had he failed to persuade the navy to cancel the original Electric Boat contract—all seven were ultimately purchased—but he had closed off his most potentially lucrative market at a time when his company was again coming under extreme financial pressure.1 Even worse, there were indications in the ensuing months that if the United States were to purchase new submarines, Lake might well have been the person they bought them from.

  During the May 1902 hearings, Isaac Rice had predicted it would be several years before Simon Lake was ready with a boat that he could enter in a competition with a Holland model. Instead, it was only months. On November 1, 1902, Lake had launched his first true military submarine, the Protector, at Bridgeport, and rather than the error-prone prototype in need of major debugging that Rice had described, it was an exceptional, finely-rendered vessel.

  Lake’s Protector

  The Protector was sixty-five feet long, eleven wide, and displaced 170 tons submerged. For surface running, it was powered by twin screws, each connected by direct drive to a 250-horsepower gasoline engine. A one-hundred-horsepower dynamo had been installed for running submerged. While Lake had clearly borrowed his powering array from Holland, the Protector compared favorably with the Fulton, whose single 160-horsepower gasoline engine would dissipate power because of indirect gearing. Lake’s boat could make eleven knots on the surface, superior to the Fulton, and the same seven knots submerged. The Protector carried its 1,400 gallons of fuel in external tanks mounted on a flat deck-like superstructure, while the Fulton carried 850 gallons internally.

  Although the Protector was built with wheels for bottom crawling—this time retractable—and a diver’s compartment and air lock in the bow, Lake had made a significant design upgrade by installing hydroplanes amidships, two on each side, a means of depth control also borrowed from Holland. His boat would still submerge negatively buoyant on an even keel, but with the hydroplanes, the Protector could actually “dive,” rather than merely drop straight down. Because Lake had once again installed anchors to aid in submerging, however, the Protector could not do so as quickly or nimbly as with the Holland design, but the boat held an additional enhancement, which would make even-keel diving more appropriate to initiating an attack on a surface vessel.

  Lake called it an “omniscope,” and it was undersea warfare’s first working full-spectrum periscope. Mounted on a tube that could be raised or lowered, the omniscope had eight prisms, two trained ahead, two looking astern, and one for each quarter on the sides. An additional lens provided a simple straight ahead view forward. Unlike the camera lucida that Holland had tinkered with, the omniscope could afford an estimate of range, all while viewing the entire horizon. Because of the manner in which the images were transmitted to the eyepiece, the forward-looking prisms provided an upright view, the four side images were on edge, and the rear image inverted. While the omniscope tube could be partially rotated, the view degraded and the image would become quite dim.

  With the omniscope
and even-keel surfacing, the Protector could come to what would later be referred to as “periscope depth” without exposing any other portion of the ship to lookouts aboard surface vessels. Holland’s boats could also change their angle of ascent so that only the conning tower protruded above the surface, but that operation required a delicate touch by captain and crew. Lake’s boat, in addition, was less likely to cause a disturbance in the water as it neared the surface.

  The Protector had three torpedo tubes to the Fulton’s one, two forward, above the diving compartment, and one aft, above the propellers. Torpedoes were carried within the tubes, with no extra missiles for reloading. Lake fitted the Protector with a five-ton detachable keel, which could be jettisoned from inside the boat—the two one ton anchors could be released as well—to provide an extra measure of positive buoyancy in an emergency.

  The interior of the Protector was ingeniously laid out and, by the standard of the time, commodious. At the front of the craft, as always, was the diving chamber, from which a suited diver could pass outside “to cut mine connections and submarine cables.” Immediately to the rear was an air lock, which could be pressurized to link the diving compartment to the rest of the boat. Astern of the air lock were living quarters, where eight men could sleep comfortably on padded berths, which folded back against the bulkheads when not in use. Next, separated by swinging double doors with glass upper panels, was a pantry, fitted with electric burners for cooking. A solid door separated the pantry from the engine room, which was in the sternmost section of the boat. The engine room was described in a journal as “a wonderful example of skillful installation. There is a wide, free passage between the engines, and space enough overhead for a six-foot man to stand upright.”2 The boat was also equipped with electric heaters, and an internal telephone hookup to allow communication between various sections of the boat. The compressed air reserve was sufficient to allow for sixty hours submerged.