We
all know that the submarine was given to the world by an American
inventor--that is to say, the submarine in very much the form that we
know it to-day, the effective, practical submarine. The writer recalls
witnessing experiments more than twenty years ago on the Holland
submarine--the first modern submarine type--and he recalls how closely
it was guarded in the early days of 1898, when it lay at Elizabethport
and the Spanish war-ship _Viscaya_, Captain Eulate, lay in our harbor.
This was a month or so after the destruction of the battleship _Maine_
in Havana Harbor, and threats against the Spanish had led, among other
precautions, to an armed guard about the _Holland_ lest some excitable
person take her out and do damage to the _Viscaya_. There was no real
danger, of course, that this would happen; it merely tends to show the
state of public mind.
Well, in any event, the _Holland_, and improved undersea craft
subsequently developed, converted the seemingly impossible into the
actual. To an Englishman, William Bourne, a seaman-gunner must be
credited the first concrete exposition of the possibilities of an
undersea fighter. His book, "Inventions or Devices," published in 1578,
contains a comprehensive description of the essential characteristics of
the undersea boat as they are applied to-day. From the days of the
sixteenth century on down through the years to the present time,
submarine construction and navigation have passed through various stages
of development.
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