Since we are getting closer & closer to the War boats of the US NAVY's submarine service, it is a good idea to begin some history.

This portion of American submarine history comes from a paper prepared by the Electric Boat Company many years ago. We also have another extremely well-researched piece by CHARLIE GUNDERSEN (205-C-1986) that will follow this.

Throughout history, the element of surprise or ambush has been one of the most valuable weapons available to land armies. Naval commanders, however, have found it difficult to surprise their enemies. The only place to hide on the open sea - is under it. For this reason, military leaders have long been interested in a vessel which could operate under the water.

The first recorded example of this interest is a diving bell, built for Alexander the Great (356 to 323 B.C.), ruler of Macedonia and conqueror of the known world in his time. Aristotle the philosopher wrote that Alexander used them to repel a fleet that was attempting to lift the siege of Tyre.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) Florentine artist and scientist of the Italian renaissance, as well as other inventors of his age, experimented with the idea of a submersible boat.

100 years after da Vinci, Cornelius van Drebbel of Holland built a boat, covered with oil-soaked leather and propelled by oars, which he operated in the Thames River at London. It is said that King James I of England was interested in the venture and even took a short voyage in this EEL BOAT.

The American Revolution saw the next big development of the submarine. Davii Bushnell, a student a Yale College, discovered a means of exploding gunpowder underwater.

His discovery was useless without some means of getting his underwater bombs attached to warships of the enemy, so he built a submarine, solving in a few months a problem that had troubled the best minds of the world for centuries. He called his little one-man craft, completed in 1776, the TURTLE.

Sgt. Ezra Lee, a volunteer Connecticut infantryman, was given command of the tiny oak vessel and he at once set out to destroy the British fleet which was lying in New York Harbor. The plan was to screw the bomb into the wooden bottom of an English ship and set a mechanical fuse to explode after a short period of time.

Unknown to the Americans, the hulls of the British ships had been sheathed in copper to reduce damage from such marine pests as barnacles. Therefore, Sgt. Lee was unable to attach his primitive torpedo, and the plan failed.

Robert Fulton, an American who eventually became famous as the inventor of the steamboat, built at least one submarine in Europe. At the time, France and England were at war and he interested Napoleon in the submarine. He launched one in 1800, but the French regarded undersea warfare as impractical and barbaric, so Fulton destroyed his own craft.

Conclusion