Holland’s plans for a high-speed submarine were shelved, and John Holland’s involvement with submarines was at an end.
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*Cable, American Submarine, 251. The Holland boats were designated “Type 6” submarines. Both saw extensive service and served as prototypes for Japan’s extensive submarine program. The first of these, the “#6,” came to as tragic an end as has ever appeared in submarine annals. Whether as a result of a construction error, or a mistake by a crew member, a valve was left open to the sea during a dive. Before the valve could be closed, the boat, commanded by Lieutenant Tsutomu Sakuma, with a crew of fourteen, had taken on water and sunk in Hiroshima Bay. When the boat was raised the following day, all were dead, suffocated by battery gas. Lieutenant Sakuma, it was discovered, had left a detailed, heartbreaking record of the crew’s two-hour-forty-minute ordeal. It began, “Words of apology fail me for having sunk His Majesty’s submarine #6. My subordinates are killed by my fault, but it is with pride that I inform you that the crew to a man have discharged their duties as sailors should, with the utmost coolness until their dying moments. We now sacrifice our lives for the sake of our country, but my fear is that the disaster will affect the future development of submarines. It is my hope that nothing will daunt your determination to study the submarine until it is a perfect machine, absolutely reliable. We can then die without regret.” At one point, Lieutenant Sakuma wrote, “Surrounded by poisonous gas, the crew strove to pump out the water, and later, “The electric current has become useless, gas cannot be generated, and the hand pump is our only hope.” He described the effort of his men, “wet and extremely cold,” to pump out the water. When the effort became fruitless, Sakuma wrote, “A word to His Majesty the Emperor. It is my earnest hope that Your Majesty will supply the means of living to the poor families of the crew. This is my only desire and I am anxious to have it fulfilled.” Finally, two and a half hours after the submarine sank, he wrote, “My breathing is so difficult and painful,” and ten minutes after that, “I thought I could blow out the gasoline, but I am intoxicated with it.” The log was published in newspapers and for their bravery and sacrifice, Lieutenant Sakuma and his crew were held up as heroes throughout Japan. They would remain so during the militarization that preceded the attack on Pearl Harbor, an attack in which five two-man “midget” submarines participated but did little or no damage.
CHAPTER 26
EXCESSIVE BALLAST
With Holland on the sidelines, Electric Boat’s only remaining opponent was Simon Lake. Fortunately for Rice and Frost, Lake, unable to control either his temper or his judgment, made it easy for them.
The Lake Company wasted no time petitioning Paul Morton, William Moody’s successor as navy secretary. Lake himself being out of the country, Fred Whitney delivered a letter on July 1, 1904, Morton’s first day in office. “The Lake Torpedo Boat Company has the honor to give the ‘reasonable notice,’ and requests to have its submarine boat tested by both competition and comparison with Government submarine boats, or any private competitor, provided there be any such, prior to the purchase or contract for $850,000 worth of submarine boats as provided by the act of Congress taking effect July 1, 1904.”1 The problem, of course, was that the Lake Company no longer had a submarine to submit for the trial. Both Lake and the Protector were in Russia. He was building another attack boat, the Simon Lake X, at a Newport News, Virginia, shipyard, but it would not be completed for months, and even then it would need testing and debugging. Morton, aware of the delay, and having been no doubt apprised of Lake’s previous dealings with the board of inspection, tabled the request until September and then fired back a terse response. “When will your company be ready to make the test above referred to? An early reply will be appreciated. Yours, respectfully, Paul Morton, Secretary.”
Whitney assured Morton that the Lake boat would be ready by the third Thursday of November and available for testing off the Virginia coast. The navy agreed on the date but asked that the test be in Narragansett Bay, “under precisely similar conditions to the recent test of a submarine boat in June, 1904, [Fulton] there being available in the vicinity of Newport excellent ranges and greater depth of water than is available in the vicinity of Newport News.” That was acceptable to Whitney, and he reported to the navy in October that the Simon Lake X had been successfully launched.
But the trials never came off. In his autobiography, Simon Lake recounted the events, where once more he was the aggrieved innocent treated shabbily and perhaps illegally by a cabal that included corrupt naval officers, venal government bureaucrats, and disreputable capitalists.
It had seemed to me that my successes in Russia and Europe generally might have somewhat softened the heart of the Navy Department. After all, I had only been making and selling boats to Russia because I had not been able to sell them at home. I had a very real desire to put in the hands of our Navy a submarine which was better than the best anywhere else in the world, so I had instructed the Lake Torpedo Boat Company to proceed with the building of the Simon Lake X at the Newport News yards. There was an informal understanding that if Number Ten was all I said it would be, the Navy would buy it. When I was informed that Number Ten was about ready for its trial runs I came home, and brought some members of my operating staff along. My heart was light. I was a proud man. I should have known better. At the Newport News yards, I was told that although the men had been working overtime, the Number Ten would not be ready on the date promised. I asked the United States Navy Department to grant me ten days’ more time.
“No,” was the curt reply.
The Navy Department absolutely refused to look at the Number Ten. Some unofficial runs were made by officers stationed at Newport News, along with officers representing England, Germany, and Brazil. One American officer went to Washington at his own expense to beg the officials of the Navy Department to conduct a test of the Number Ten. When he returned to Newport News he kept out of my way for several days. At last I met him by accident, and asked him what luck he had had.
“I feel like retiring from the Navy,” he said bitterly. “I am ashamed, soiled.”2
Lake was even stronger when speaking at the time. In January 1905, after he lost the contract for new submarines to Electric Boat, he spoke to reporters. “‘I am up against stacked cards and have decided to throw up my hands and leave the country,’ said Captain Simon Lake, inventor of the Lake submarine torpedo boat, today. Five of his craft have recently been bought by the Russian Government. Captain Lake made the above remark when shown a dispatch from Washington, saying that his company would file charges against Secretary Morton because the Lake Company had not been permitted to compete in the submarine boat tests. Captain Lake is indignant over the action of the Navy Department in giving additional contracts to the Holland Company without permitting him to demonstrate whether or not his invention is a more practical type of submarine boat. When asked whether or not charges would be brought, Captain Lake refused to talk.”3
A damning assessment to be sure and, if true, charges most certainly should have been filed. But they were not—Lake’s charges, as his correspondence with the Navy Department makes clear, were a total fabrication.
In the same letter of September 24 in which he required the test to be in Narragansett Bay, Secretary Morton noted that “in order that the proposed test may also conform to previous requirements of the Department”—to which Electric Boat had complied—“the Lake Torpedo Boat [sign] a formal statement that ‘the boat which you submit to the Department for test is at that time finally completed and that you are prepared to accept as final, for the purpose of this act, the results which your boat is capable of developing on trial at the present time.’” Morton did not require the signed statement in advance but only “by the time of formally offering its vessel for trial In November.”
Lake’s justification for refusing to sign a similar statement the previous January was that the Protector had not yet fixed the design flaw th
at kept its speed below the acceptable minimum. Here, however, as he would have ample time to test the Lake X and ensure that all required minimums were met, there seemed little reason to refuse to conform to the navy’s requirement.
Fred Whitney certainly thought so. He replied to the navy secretary that his company was “pleased to do everything possible you desire.” But on November 15, just days before the testing date that Lake had requested, Whitney had to inform the navy that the boat was not yet ready.
“In conformity with your verbal request for a definite date for trials of the Lake submarine, I beg to state that the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company is doing everything possible, day and night, to rush the submarine Simon Lake X to completion for trials. If no untoward accidents occur it is estimated that she will be ready by the first of the month, and so I suggest that we settle on the fixed day of Monday or Tuesday, December 5 or 6, as may suit the convenience of the board, to begin the tests.”
It was this request that Simon Lake later claimed received a “curt no” from the navy. The actual reply was, “The board of inspection and survey will hold itself in readiness to make an inspection and trial of the submarine boat of the Lake Torpedo Boat Company, the Simon Lake X, on December 5, 1904.” On November 22, while continuing to accede to the delay, Secretary Morton forwarded “copies of the general programme under which competitive trials of submarine boats have been conducted by the board of inspection and survey,” and also “pointed out that the formal statement requested by the secretary had not yet been received.”
Morton received no reply, so on December 3, he asked whether the Lake X would be ready on the December 5 test day. Whitney replied that it would not. “Owing to unavoidable delays the owners of the craft will not be quite ready for test on date named, but will have their boat ready a few days thereafter. It will be ready for Government trial December 22, 1904.” Whitney further added, “we respectfully suggest that the final decision of the matter of submarine boats, now under advisement by the Department, be postponed for a time until the utility of the Lake boat can be determined.”
The navy once again acceded to the delay, but insisted on the declaration that once the Lake X was tested, the company agree that those results be accepted as final. To this, Simon Lake responded personally in a four-page, special-delivery letter to Paul Morton, the tone of which could not have been more insulting. Virtually assuring the secretary’s enmity, Lake began by accusing Morton of not reading his own correspondence. “I take it for granted that you either dictated or signed this letter as a matter of routine and are absolutely unaware of the purpose or effect of the statement you demand.” From there, Lake went on to say how he had spent $400,000 in development, how the Holland people had tried to frustrate him at every turn, and that even after Congress had passed the $500,000 appropriation “my requests for actual competition were ignored by the Department, and finally the board refused to proceed with trials, in January, 1904, and an attempt was made to have me sign the very statement you now demand.” Then he noted how Holland influences prevented his contract with the army and “with bankruptcy impending from the Government’s action toward me, I was forced to abandon my fondest hope, to protect the United States.”
Then Lake made an extraordinary claim. “After refusing competition for months, the minute the Protector was out of the way the Fulton was tested by board, Secretary Moody having been assured in the Department that the Protector and the Fulton would be tested in competition together.” After asserting the board’s report had harmed his sales prospects overseas, Lake wrote, “The references to the Protector in the Fulton report were malicious defamation by a naval officer, but even under all this provocation my patriotism prevented me from discrediting the United States Navy abroad by revealing the true facts to the world when the embarrassing condition was created by practically one member of the board [J. J. Woodward] whose attitude and acts for and against the Holland and Lake submarines I will not now characterize.” This from the man who just months earlier had been forced to admit that he had no evidence of wrongdoing by anyone in the navy.
From there Lake repeated his call for a “fair and open competition,” and recited, at great length, the history of submarine procurement by the navy, during which Rice and Frost had consistently employed means at the very least unethical and probably even worse to strangle competition. And this despite almost universal agreement among naval officers that Lake had produced the objectively superior boat.
An attempt is now made to have you unconsciously do what Congress positively refused to do—eliminate competition—by forcing me to sign in advance a statement that I will, in effect, accept as final a test of my submarine alone and not side by side under equal conditions with the Holland type. This is in effect a departmental amendment to an act of Congress. I refused to sign this statement once, and I now appeal to you to most carefully investigate affairs and reconsider your refusal to proceed with trials unless I waive what I regard as a lawful right, granted by Congress, in its folly or wisdom, but nevertheless clearly granted after an open debate and a decisive vote on the very question of competition. . . . An attempt has been made to studiously misinform and prejudice you against me, and I have taken our Mr. Whitney’s advice and kept silent under the idea that direct competition would protect me from insidious influences. I am now denied a trial unless I sign a statement waiving lawful rights. I am forced to ask you to reconsider, as I feel this is doing us a great wrong.
Lake closed, at length, describing the pressure-filled conditions under which his constructors were laboring to complete the Lake X.
It is difficult to gauge Morton’s reaction to this extraordinary document. But it could not have been positive as two days later, December 7, he replied with a scathing rebuke, in which he rebutted each of Lake’s many distortions, half-truths, and outright misstatements.
He began by reminding Lake that he had responded to a solicitation from the Navy Department to compete for the 1903 $500,000 appropriation in a competition to be held October 15. When neither Lake nor Holland could be ready by then, the test was postponed until November 16, with the understanding that each boat might be tested at a different time. Lake not only offered no objection to the board of inspection seeing the Protector before the Fulton, “this recommendation [was] in direct response to a request of the Lake Torpedo Boat Company that the trial be not postponed beyond November 16, even though the competing boat be not ready for the trial. The Department approved this recommendation of the board of inspection and survey and so advised the Lake Torpedo Boat Company on October 20, 1903.”
Morton then walked Lake through the chronology of delays initiated solely at Lake’s request, followed by an admission that the Protector could not meet the minimum specifications required by the navy and agreed to by both parties in advance. He reminded Lake that he had insisted on an immediate test for a substandard boat, with the stipulation that he could ask for one or more retests until the Protector passed muster. The navy responded by declining to test any boat more than once but would wait until Lake was ready, as long as he agreed, as Electric Boat did, to make that one test final.
“Subsequent to January 12, 1904,” Morton went on, “no communication has been received by the Department from the Lake Torpedo Boat Company stating that the defects in design and construction of their competing boat, Protector, had been remedied, or that they desired to fix a particular date for the trial of that vessel.”
Then Morton penned a damning paragraph to the man who claimed to have been treated unfairly. “The Holland Torpedo Company accompanied their communication of May 13 with the formal certificate required by the Department, viz, that the Holland Torpedo Company were prepared to accept as final, etc., the results which the Fulton were capable of developing on trial on or after the date above noted. Under date of May 16, 1904, the trial board advised the Lake Torpedo Boat Company, of Bridgeport, Conn., of the prospective trial of the Fulton, and suggested that if th
eir boat ‘should be at the same time in all respects ready for this trial it would be of advantage for trial purposes that the two boats be tried at the same time,’ to which communication the Lake Torpedo Boat Company apparently made no reply.”
Morton then listed the delays requested by the Lake Company of the Lake X, each of which the navy agreed to, but requiring that Lake sign precisely the same release as had Electric Boat. “The Department,” he noted, “has endeavored to afford the Lake Torpedo Boat Company every reasonable opportunity to submit a boat of their type for thorough trial under the terms of the acts making appropriations for submarine boats, and in doing so has possibly placed at a disadvantage a competing company, which, as reported by the trial board, submitted for test a boat which met the Department’s conditions in all essential respects.”
In view of the weight of evidence, Morton refused to promise delays beyond December 22 to test the Lake X. “Despite the liberal treatment accorded to the Lake Torpedo Boat Company by the Department, that company now questions the Department’s understanding of its own correspondence in this matter, and disputes its legal right to impose conditions which have been long since accepted in good faith by the other competing company and which have hitherto been undisputed by the Lake Torpedo Boat Company itself.” For emphasis, Morton included an advisory opinion from the judge advocate general that affirmed that the navy secretary had at all times acted within the law.
Even then, Morton tried to give Lake a chance to demonstrate his boat. On December 16, he wired Lake to ask if the boat would be ready. Lake, more contrite this time, replied that shipyard was working “day and night” to complete construction. He promised “a definite reply as soon as possible,” to which Morton replied that Lake’s response was “very indefinite.” Lake then asked for “a few days more,” beyond December 22.
Going Deep Page 32
