by Deborah Lake
Nordenfelt lost interest in submarines when they failed to make money. Rather than build them at a loss, he sold plans to interested governments. Germany was one.
The French designer Gustave Zede produced Gymnote, named for a species of electric eel, in 1888. She, like Goubet’s boats, used batteries, an attribute that inspired her name. She managed 8 knots on the surface but the inventor had not allowed for recharging batteries at sea. This rather limited her usefulness.
The following year, Isaac Peral, a Spanish navy lieutenant, designed and built a fully functional submarine that successfully fired three of Whitehead’s improved torpedoes during her trials. Officialdom failed to pursue his innovation.
The hunt for a practical submarine, a genuine weapon of war, quickened. The minuet of tranquil evolution gave way to the waltz, the quickstep, the polka of furious development as science expanded the horizons. The accumulator battery. The internal combustion engine. Mass production. Powered machinery. All made their mark.
In 1893, the United States government announced a competition for a new submarine. Holland entered his latest proposed design. The two other competitors were Simon Lake and George Baker. Lake’s design was only on paper but Baker had a real, functioning submarine. Its steam engine for surface use also powered an electric motor that acted as a dynamo to charge batteries for underwater running. Lake’s design incorporated wheels to allow the boat to run on the seabed. His knowledge of the ocean floor was, observers felt, limited.
Holland won the competition but no official orders followed. The Irishman copied Nordenfelt’s approach. He inspired the rumour that foreign navies wanted his submarine. On 3 March 1895, the John P. Holland Torpedo Boat Company received a $200,000 contract for a steam-powered submarine. Holland fell out with the authorities over putting a steam engine into his design but there was no turning back. The US navy wanted submarines with steam engines, not dangerous petrol gadgets.
Holland was proved right. The ‘official’ boat, Plunger, never made it to the open water. She was launched in 1897, but the temperature in the fire room reached 137 degrees Fahrenheit at only two-thirds power. Not even American stokers could work in that temperature. Holland had already started work on a new boat, powered by a petrol engine.
In 1898, Simon Lake demonstrated his Argonaut I with a voyage across the open sea from Norfolk, Virginia, to Sandy Hook, New Jersey. At no point did his boat trundle along the bottom. The feat attracted a telegram from Jules Verne. The exploit, he enthused, would spur submersible development across the world. The famous author added that ‘the next war may be largely a contest between submarine boats’.
Europe was not far behind the USA. In France, the Gustav Zede, 148ft long with a weight of 266 tons, took part in the French navy’s annual manoeuvres. To the dismay and consternation of traditional admirals and their acolytes, the umpires ruled that she had successfully torpedoed a moored battleship.
The French announced a submersibles competition. Contestants needed to demonstrate a surface range of 100 miles and travel 10 miles under the water. The contest attracted twenty-nine entries. The winner, Narval, was 188ft long and weighed in at 136 tons. Its designer, Maxime Laubeuf, originally proposed a steam engine to power the boat, but a diesel engine soon replaced it.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the submarine had arrived as a weapon of war.
The djinn had escaped the bottle.
TWO
FRIENDS IN PEACE. FRIENDS FOR EVER
By 1914, the major European powers all had submarines. Sixteen world navies possessed 400 boats. The Royal Navy had seventy-five, a misleading number, for most were small and unable to patrol out to sea. Germany had fewer. When war came in fateful August, the Kaiserliche Marine had twenty-eight boats in service or close to commissioning, with more being built. Although the Imperial Navy had fewer submarines than either the British or French navies, their quality, their design and construction, were superior.
In Britain, Sir John Fisher, the First Sea Lord in 1904, seized upon the potential of the submarine with his usual enthusiasm. His enemies, of whom there were a good number, scoffed at ‘Chinese Jack’s’ interest in the new weapons. ‘Toys’ and ‘playthings’ were the least offensive descriptions. Fisher controlled a service that devoutly believed in battleships with massive armament. Other navies agreed. The Japanese navy subsequently proved its truth when they destroyed the Russian Pacific Fleet by adroit use of heavy guns.
Sir George Goschen, the First Lord of the Admiralty from 1897 until late 1900, considered that the Royal Navy should have submarines, if only to see what they could do. His professional advisers thought likewise. The United States and the French navies took submarines seriously. If those two nations did, Britain had better know what she was up against. Goschen made the point, in typical language, to the House of Commons: ‘The Hon. Member pointed out the enormous importance of submarine boats . . . I do not propose publicly to declare whether the Admiralty believes in submarine boats or not. . . . We do not wish to encourage or discourage other nations by stating . . . how great would be the danger of these submarine boats to ourselves.’ Goschen chose not to mention that, two months earlier, he received a terse minute from the Senior Naval Lord – Fisher changed the title to First Sea Lord when he took office – that said plainly that the ‘matter of submarine boats cannot be ignored and will have to be taken up by us – our first want is a design’.
Short days after Goschen’s speech, Lord Rothschild provided an introduction for Isaac Rice, the new owner of the Holland Company and an extraordinary salesman, to the Admiralty.
By October the deal was done. Britain would build five boats under licence. The design included space for four torpedoes and three white mice. The mice formed an early warning system. They squeaked if poisonous fumes escaped from the primitive petrol engine. In practice, the rodent alarms broke down. Sailors stuffed them full of food. The mice spent much of their service careers in happy lethargy.
Viscount Selborne, Goschen’s successor, announced the purchase in April 1901. Vickers Son & Maxim of Barrow-in-Furness won the contract. The vessels were ‘to assist the Admiralty in assessing their true value’. Despite errors in the technical drawings from the Holland Company, darkly believed to be deliberate by conspiracy theorists, HM Submarine Torpedo Boat Number 1 entered the water on 2 October 1901.
The Holland design suffered from wide-ranging faults. A cupola instead of a proper conning tower marred stability. On the surface, petrol exhaust fumes persuaded crews to leave open the entrance hatch to keep the air fresh. With the boat low in the water, this practice invited flooding from any passing vessel. As the engine also produced a lively range of sparks with the ability to ignite the fumes, most Holland submariners preferred swamping to exploding.
The Admiralty appointed an outstanding officer as its first Inspecting Captain of Submarine Boats. Reginald Bacon, a protégé of Fisher’s and described by him as ‘the cleverest officer in the Navy’, possessed a determined inventiveness that tackled any problem. He would, if required, have devised a scheme to move a battleship across the Gobi Desert. The limitations of the Holland submarine were a ten-course banquet for his quicksilver brain. In collaboration with Vickers, he redesigned it.
The result was half as large again. By 1904, the A Class entered service. They employed proper conning towers. Their batteries had twice the capacity of the Holland Class. The more powerful Wolseley 500hp petrol engine, however, tended to burn out its plugs, as well as turn piping white-hot. As the pipes ran throughout the submarine, their heated proximity to petrol tanks created heart-stopping alarm at regular intervals.
Bacon proposed, possibly in a moment of fine distraction, that the new vessels should bear names like proper ships. He produced suggestions. After a piercing scrutiny, their Lordships disagreed. Given the lower deck penchant for nicknames, HMS Ichthyosaurus, Simosaurus, Plesiosaurus, Discosaurus, Pistosaurus and Nothosaurus fortunately remained on file.
Pl
aythings. Toys. No craft for gentlemen. The early volunteers endured countless insults from the surface fleet. The vagaries of primitive petrol engines, squalid crew conditions, the surroundings that dirtied even the most fastidious fingernails, led to gibes that submarine officers were mechanics, ‘unwashed chauffeurs’, nothing better than tradesmen. In socially stratified Edwardian England, this potent insult became absorbed and turned into a name of honour. ‘The Trade’ remains a title proudly acknowledged by submariners.
In the Navy manoeuvres of 1904, the umpires decided that Bacon’s 1st Submarine Flotilla ‘sank’ two battleships. The submariners believed they accounted for more, but prejudice still ruled. The decision did not please the Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet, Sir Arthur Knyvet Wilson, that same officer who so firmly thwarted earlier developments. An Old Etonian, hereditary baronet, holder of the Victoria Cross, Wilson considered submarine warfare underhand and not worthy of a gentleman.
His dislike boiled over when an A Class ‘torpedoed’ his flagship. The submarine’s commander surfaced to signal: ‘Respectfully submit have torpedoed you. Respectfully submit you are sunk. Respectfully submit you are out of the exercise.’ Wilson seized the semaphore flags from his yeoman of signals to reply personally: ‘You be damned.’
Bacon left his post in 1904. He went to the Admiralty as Fisher’s naval assistant. There he worked on the secret designs for the new revolutionary capital ship. Every navy in the world had copied previous British battleships with their mixed armament of 12in and 9.2in guns. The new class, driven by steam turbines, mounted only big guns. After time at sea to gain enough experience, Bacon took command of the first new ship. HMS Dreadnought carried ten 12in guns in five turrets. She roared along at 21 knots. Built and commissioned in the record time of fourteen months, she made every other fighting ship obsolete. Other nations immediately began to build dreadnoughts and super-dreadnoughts of their own.
A chorus of critics immediately condemned Fisher. They alleged that he threw away the Royal Navy’s superiority at sea. In fact, he preserved it. Admirals in Japan, Italy, Germany and the United States all read, along with Fisher, an article in Jane’s Fighting Ships by the Italian naval designer Cuniberti. This proposed the new type of ship that ignited Fisher’s passion. While others pondered, Fisher acted. The secrecy and speed of Dreadnought’s building left every other navy behind.
Captain Edgar Lees succeeded Bacon. He, in his turn, handed over to Captain Sydney Hall. Both were capable officers, torpedo specialists, whose periods in command saw substantial development in underwater craft. Submarines became less like seals or sharpened pencils. They looked more like ships as designers realised that submarines spent more time on the surface than under the water.
A break with accepted practice came in 1910. Captain Roger John Brownlow Keyes became Inspecting Captain of Submarines at the behest of Sir Arthur Knyvet Wilson, now First Sea Lord. Keyes was no torpedo specialist. Neither had he served in submarines. He was a destroyer man. He described himself as a salt-horse with minimal technical knowledge. He was not an officer who stayed behind a desk to push around paper.A hero during the Boxer Rebellion, he had no lack of courage. No great administrator, he countered this with leadership in abundance.
Wilson required someone who agreed with him on the role of submarines. He wanted them to work in closer touch with the main fleet rather than operate independently. The suggestion that Wilson wanted an officer with good prospects of making admiral persuaded Keyes to take the post. Fisher was safely in retirement. This was one problem out of the new inspecting captain’s way. Admiral Jack had little time for Captain Roger.
Keyes inherited sixty-one boats. Twelve venerable A Class, eleven outdated B Class, thirty-seven coastal C Class and D1, the first of her class. The shipyards had orders for eight more.
The new inspecting captain turned the submarine branch into an élite. Bold, intelligent, and occasionally eccentric officers joined the underwater flotilla. They proved their worth in the years ahead. Keyes also introduced much-needed improvements. He badgered authority for decent-sized depot ships to allow crews to sleep away from their cramped craft when in harbour. Despite his efforts, though, British submariners generally endured squalid conditions appropriate to the Navy of George the First rather than George the Fifth.
By 1914, the E Class were the latest submarines in Royal Naval service. Like their predecessors in the D Class, they were genuine blue-water boats, able to operate away from harbours and depot ships. With a speed of 15½ knots above water and 9½ knots below it, 178ft long with a displacement of 660 tons, they represented the new breed. Their torpedoes, equipped with a gyroscope to maintain a set course, could theoretically hit a target 11,000yd distant. They could safely submerge to 200ft. They had the same task as every other ship in the Royal Navy. Deny the seas to the enemy.
The Admiralty, often accused of technological myopia allied with wanton stupidity, evolved a policy that regarded the submarine as a decisive weapon of battle. The weapon was not yet perfect, but time would make it infinitely better.
The Kaiser’s navy, at least officially, came late to the idea of submarines. Wilhelm, enamoured of big ships, wanted the biggest and best toys for his bath. The German General Staff, traditionalists to a man, saw no need for a navy. The Army was the conquering machine. If the All-Highest wished to play with ships, so be it, as long as he realised that their only use was for coastal defence.
Germany dominated Continental Europe. Wilhelm, though, wanted an empire, a proper empire with overseas colonies. To expand Germany’s global influence, he needed ships. Ships that entered foreign harbours. Ships that hammered home the message of German might. Ships that emphasised Germany’s power.
A fork-bearded genius created Wilhelm’s navy. Grossadmiral Alfred von Tirpitz, an Anglophile of no mean order, admired and envied the Royal Navy. He believed that sea power brought prosperity. A country that controlled the oceans controlled its own fate. Britain itself was proof. She had an empire. She became the leading world power because she owned the world’s largest fleet. Germany, too, needed a large navy, one with battleships, battleships, battleships at its heart. In 1897, an enthralled Wilhelm appointed him as Secretary of State for the German navy.
By 1901, Tirpitz had steered two Navy Bills through the Reichstag. They projected a Kaiserliche Marine of thirty-eight battleships and twenty cruisers. No submarines were contemplated. As the chairman of the Schiffbautechnische Gesellschaft, or Technical Shipbuilding Society, claimed in a speech in 1899: ‘The present technical unreliability of the underwater vessels, especially the factor of lack of longitudinal stability, was such that one can see very little future for them. . . . The German naval authorities are right when they refuse to indulge in expensive and lengthy experiments with under water craft, but confine themselves to battleships, cruisers and sea-going torpedo boats.’ The new German navy did not totally dismiss the Unterseeboot. The Torpedo Inspectorate, in particular, thought they had much to offer. As battleships and cruisers rattled down the slipways, the torpedo specialists investigated U-boats.
Nordenfelt’s original 1885 design sparked serious interest. The Germans bought plans. The Danzigerwerft and the Kiel Germaniawerft both began to build a submarine. Steam-powered, 114ft long with a surface speed of 11 knots and a maximum of 4½ knots under water, the 215-ton boats eventually joined the torpedo flotillas at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven for trials. Neither impressed.
German shipbuilders did not stop with the Nordenfelt boats. They built others from French designs as well as their own. In the autumn of 1903, the Kaiser and Prince Heinrich of Prussia visited the Germaniawerft shipyard to inspect one of the experimental boats. Named Forelle or ‘Trout’, she had a range of 25 nautical miles at a speed of 4 knots. Prince Heinrich not only took part in a diving trial. The royal hands steered the boat under water.
Despite this Imperial interest, Tirpitz refused to spend money on machines that only sailed close to the coast. He disliked any deviat
ion from the task of building a powerful fleet. Rapid developments modified his opinions. U-boats, armed with torpedoes, could be respectable fighting vessels. When Russia ordered three submarines from the Germaniawerft, Tirpitz changed his mind.
The first official ‘experimental’ Unterseeboot received authorisation in 1905. On 4 August 1906, a salvage vessel lowered the finished craft into the water. In September, she went to sea under her own power. In November, she became U 1. The Kaiserliche Marine took delivery of her on 14 December 1906.
She was not greatly unlike her British A Class contemporary at 42m long and a displacement of 238 tons, but for one major exception. No hazardous petrol engine turned pipes white-hot. The German boat had a Körting paraffin motor that developed 400hp for surface running.
Her successors, laid down even before U 1 began her trials, outstripped the British submarines. U 2, U 3 and U 4 each carried four torpedo tubes, two in the bow, two at the stern. The latter two boats also boasted a retractable 37mm deck gun.
Paraffin engines stayed as standard fittings until 1913. Among their major drawbacks was the large exhaust funnel that poured out white smoke by day and sparks and flames at night. Not until U 19 appeared, equipped with Rudolf Diesel’s twenty-year-old invention, did the U-boat finally come of age. So equipped, U 19 travelled more than 4,000 miles at her top speed of 15½ knots. At half that speed, she went twice as far. Under water, she managed 80 miles at 5 knots without draining her batteries. Later boats had a greater range. German designers had taken the words of Tirpitz to heart. U-boats were no longer coastal huggers. They became ocean-going killers.
Developments in underwater craft, battleships, artillery or other forms of nastiness meant little to the ordinary citizen of 1914. War was unimaginable. Austrians, Germans, French, British all felt secure behind the shield provided by the great armies and navies. Even if a European war did break out, it would swiftly finish. Economically, war was impossible. Only a few politicians and retired generals believed otherwise. It was all talk anyway. The statesmen and diplomats resolved problems that might lead to war. They had in the past. They would in the future.
