History of submarines
Posted in Egypt History on January 30th, 2012Article by jekky
Early history of submarines and the first submersibles A 16th century Islamic painting depicting Alexander the Great being lowered in a glass submersible The concept of an underwater boat has roots deep in antiquity Although there are images of men using hollow reeds to breathe underwater for hunting at the temples at Thebes the first known military use is of divers being used to clear obstructions during the siege of Syracuse about 413 BC according to the History of the Peloponesian War At the siege of Tyre in 332 BC divers were again used by Alexander the Great according to Aristotle Later legends from Alexandria Egypt in the 12th century AD suggested that he had used a primitive submersible for reconnaissance missions This seems to have been a form of diving bell and was depicted in a 16th century Islamic painting Submarine by Guido da Vigevano 1280 1349 Submarine by Roberto Valturio in De Re Militari 1472 Submarine by William Bourne in Inventions or devices 1578 After various plans for submersibles or submarines during the Middle Ages the Englishman William Bourne designed a prototype submarine in 1578 Unfortunately for him these ideas never got beyond the planning stage However the first submersible proper to be actually built in modern times was constructed in 1605 by Magnus Pegelius but this became buried in mud The first successful submarine was built in 1620 by Cornelius Jacobszoon Drebbel a Dutchman in the service of James I it may have been based on Bourne s design It was propelled by oars The precise nature of the submarine type is a matter of some controversy some claim that it was merely a bell towed by a boat Two improved types were tested in the Thames between 1620 and 1624 Submarine of Cornelius Jacobszoon Drebbel 1620 and 1624 Submarine by Giovanni Alfonso Borelli in De Motu Animalium 1680 Fish like submarine by Jean Baptiste Chabert 1689 Though the first submersible vehicles were tools for exploring under water it did not take long for inventors to recognize their military potential The strategic advantages of submarines were set out by Bishop John Wilkins of Chester in Mathematicall Magick in 1648 Tis private a man may thus go to any coast in the world invisibly without discovery or prevented in his journey Tis safe from the uncertainty of Tides and the violence of Tempests which do never move the sea above five or six paces deep From Pirates and Robbers which do so infest other voyages from ice and great frost which do so much endanger the passages towards the Poles It may be of great advantages against a Navy of enemies who by this may be undermined in the water and blown up It may be of special use for the relief of any place besieged by water to convey unto them invisible supplies and so likewise for the surprisal of any place that is accessible by water It may be of unspeakable benefit for submarine experiments Denis Papin s submarine first design 1690 Between 1690 and 1692 the French physicist Denis Papin designed and built two submarines A detailed description of his work is given in the book named recueil de diverses pices 1695 The first design 1690 was a strong and heavy metallic square box equipped with an efficient pump Once the hull in the water and weights loaded onboard the man hole is bolted and it is time to pump air to raise the inner pressure When the barometer shows that air pressure inside is high enough holes F on the floor can be opened to let the operator intake the necessary amount of water This first machine was destroyed by accident before it was tested in water Denis Papin s submarine second design 1690 The second design was built in 1692 the hull has now an oval shape naturally resistant to the outside pressure outside air goes in and out freely in the hull thanks to a centrifugal air pump After having loaded the hull with enough solid weight the top of the hull nearly match the water surface and the man hole has to be bolted A water pump allows then to take in or out a volume of water to control buoyancy According to some sources a spy of Leibniz called Haes related that Papin and another man met success in experimenting this second design on the river Lahn By the 17th century the Ukrainian Cossacks were using a riverboat called the chaika gull that was used underwater for reconnaissance and infiltration missions citation needed This seems to have been closer to and may have been developed from Aristotle s description of the submersible used by Alexander the Great The Chaika could be easily capsized and submerged so that the crew was able to breathe underneath like in a modern diving bell and propel the vessel by walking on the bottom of river Special plummets for submerging and pipes for additional breathing were used By 1727 14 types of submarine had been patented in England In 1749 the Gentlemen s Magazine described a proposal made by Giovanni Borelli in 1680 for a boat with goatskins in the hull each being connected to an opening The boat would have been submerged by letting water into the goatskins and surfaced by forcing water out by a twisting rod This seems to be the first approach to the modern ballast tank The first military submarines The Nautilus 1800 Brandtaucher in the Military History Museum in Dresden The first military submarine was Turtle in 1776 a hand powered egg shaped device designed by the American David Bushnell to accommodate a single man It was the first verified submarine capable of independent underwater operation and movement and the first to use screws for propulsion During the American Revolutionary War Turtle operated by Sgt Ezra Lee Continental Army tried and failed to sink a British warship HMS Eagle flagship of the blockaders in New York harbor on September 7 1776 There is no record of any attack in the ships logs In 1800 France built a human powered submarine designed by Robert Fulton the Nautilus It also had a sail for use on the surface and so was the first known use of dual propulsion on a submarine It proved capable of using mines to destroy two warships during demonstrations The French eventually gave up with the experiment in 1804 as did the British when they later tried the submarine During the War of 1812 in 1814 Silas Halsey lost his life while using a submarine in an unsuccessful attack on a British warship stationed in New London harbor In 1834 a Russian naval designer Karl Shilder built and tested an all metal submarine in Saint Peterburg His submarine was equipped by 6 Congreve rockets In 1851 a Bavarian artillery corporal Wilhelm Bauer took a submarine designed by him called the Brandtaucher fire diver to sea in Kiel Harbour This submarine was built by August Howaldt and powered by a treadwheel It sank but the crew of 3 managed to escape The submarine was raised in 1887 and is on display in a museum in Dresden Submarines in the American Civil War The French designed 1862 Alligator first submarine of the US Navy During the American Civil War the Union was the first to field a submarine The French designed Alligator was the first U S Navy sub and the first to feature compressed air for air supply and an air filtration system It was the first submarine to carry a diver lock which allowed a diver to plant electrically detonated mines on enemy ships Initially hand powered by oars it was converted after 6 months to a screw propeller powered by a hand crank With a crew of 20 it was larger than Confederate submarines Alligator was 47 feet 14 3 m long and about 4 feet 1 2 m in diameter It was lost in a storm off Cape Hatteras on April 1 1863 while uncrewed and under tow to its first combat deployment at Charleston The Intelligent Whale was built by Oliver Halstead and caused the deaths of 39 men during trials The Confederate States of America fielded several human powered submarines including CSS H L Hunley named for one of its financiers Horace Lawson Hunley The first Confederate submarine was the 30 foot long Pioneer which sank a target schooner using a towed mine during tests on Lake Pontchartrain but it was not used in combat It was scuttled after New Orleans was captured and in 1868 was sold for scrap the similar Bayou St John Confederate Submarine is preserved in the Louisiana State Museum CSS Hunley was intended for attacking Union ships which were blockading Confederate seaports The submarine had a long pole with an explosive charge in the bow called a spar torpedo The sub had to approach an enemy vessel attach the explosive move away and then detonate it It was extremely hazardous to operate and had no air supply other than what was contained inside the main compartment On two occasions the sub sank on the first occasion half the crew died and on the second the entire eight man crew including Hunley himself drowned On February 17 1864 Hunley sank USS Housatonic off the Charleston Harbor the first time a submarine successfully sank another ship though it sank in the same engagement shortly after signaling its success Submarines did not have a major impact on the outcome of the war but did portend their coming importance to naval warfare and increased interest in their use in naval warfare Early submarines in Latin America The first submarine in Latin America was the Flach commissioned in 1865 by the Chilean government during the war between Chile and Peru against Spain 18641866 It was built by the German engineer Karl Flach The submarine sank during tests in Valparaiso bay on May 3 1866 with the entire eleven man crew In 1879 the Peruvian government during the War of the Pacific commissioned and built a submarine That was the fully operational Toro Submarino which nevertheless never saw military action before being scuttled after the defeat of that country in the war to prevent its capture by the enemy European American submarines mid 1800s Plongeur the first submarine that did not rely on human power for propulsion The first submarine that did not rely on human power for propulsion was the French Navy submarine Plongeur launched in 1863 and equipped with a reciprocating engine using compressed air from 23 tanks at 180 psi The Ictineo II designed by Narcs Monturiol was the first combustion driven submarine and the first fully functional submarine A replica of Monturiol s wooden Ictineo II stands near Barcelona harbor Originally launched in 1864 as a human powered vessel propelled by 16 men it was converted to peroxide propulsion and steam in 1867 The 14 meter 46 ft craft was designed for a crew of two could dive to 30 metres 96 ft and demonstrated dives of two hours On the surface it ran on a steam engine but underwater such an engine would quickly consume the submarine s oxygen so Monturiol invented an air independent propulsion system As the air independent power system drove the screw the chemical process driving it also released oxygen into the hull for the crew and an auxiliary steam engine Apart from being mechanically powered Monturiol s pioneering double hulled vessels also solved pressure buoyancy stability diving and ascending problems that had bedeviled earlier designs In 1870 French writer Jules Verne published the science fiction classic Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea which concerns the adventures of a maverick inventor in Nautilus a submarine more advanced than any that existed at that time The story inspired inventors to build more advanced submarines in 1878 a Manchester curate the Reverend George Garrett obtained a patent for Improvements in and appertaining to Submarine or Subaqueous Boats and set up a company to build them His first prototype Resurgam was hand powered and next year the company built the steam powered Resurgam II at Birkenhead Garrett intended to demonstrate the 12 m long vehicle to the Royal Navy at Portsmouth but had mechanical problems and while under tow the submarine was swamped and sank off North Wales The first submarine built in series however was human powered It was the submarine of the Polish inventor Stefan Drzewiecki 50 units were built in 1881 for Russian government In 1884 the same inventor built an electric powered submarine Discussions between George Garret and Swede Thorsten Nordenfelt led to a series of steam powered submarines The first was the Nordenfelt I a 56 tonne 19 5 metre long spindle shaped vessel similar to the Resurgam II with a range of 240 kilometres and armed with a single external torpedo completed in 1885 Greece fearful of the return of the Ottomans purchased it Nordenfelt then built at Chertsey the Nordenfelt II Abdlhamid in 1886 and Nordenfelt III Abdlmecid in 1887 a pair of 30 metre long submarines with twin torpedo tubes for a worried Ottoman navy Abdlhamid achieved fame as the world s first submarine to fire a torpedo underwater Nordenfelt s efforts culminated in 1887 with the Nordenfelt IV with twin motors and twin torpedoes built at Barrow in Furness It was sold to the worried Russians but proved unstable ran aground and was scrapped The Peral submarine in 1888 Its hull can be seen today at Cartagena The first fully capable military submarine was the electrically powered vessel built by the Spanish engineer and sailor Isaac Peral for the Spanish Navy It was launched on September 8 1888 It had two torpedoes new air systems hull shape and propeller and cruciform external controls anticipating later designs Its underwater speed was ten knots When fully charged it was the fastest submarine yet built with performance levels except for range that matched or exceeded those of First World War U boats In June 1890 Peral s submarine launched a torpedo under the sea It was also the first submarine to incorporate a fully reliable underwater navigation system However conservatives in the naval hierarchy terminated the project despite two years of successful tests Also marking an important milestone in the development of military submarines was the French navy s Gymnote launched on
