1Also spelled Van Drebbel, Drebell, Dreble, and Trebel. He is the man Ben Jonson calls “Cornelius’ son.”

2Harsdoffer.

3“New Experiments touching the Spring of the Air and its Effects,” by Robert Boyle, Oxford, 1662, p. 188.

4The only submarine built before this for military purposes, the Rotterdam Boat, remained private property, and King James’s “eel-boats” were merely pleasure craft.

5Sergeant Ezra Lee’s letter to Gen. David Humphreys, written in 1815. Published in the “Magazine of American History,” Vol. 29, p. 261.

6“General Washington and his associates in the secret took their stations upon a house in Broadway, anxiously awaiting the result.” From Ezra Lee’s obituary, New York “Commercial Advertiser,” November 15, 1821.

7According to Bushnell, the screw struck an iron bar securing the rudder.

8This survivor was examined by the captain of the Cerberus, who reported that the schooner’s crew had drawn the machine on board and by rashly tampering with its mechanism caused it to explode.

9See the “Scientific American,” August 7, 1915.

10Herbert C. Fyfe, “Submarine Warfare,” p. 269.

11But Fulton’s Nautilus could not possibly have made the dives with which she is credited except by the use of the horizontal rudders which she possessed in conjunction with the push of her man-power propellor. Holland had carefully studied the plans and letters of Bushnell and Fulton.

12Mr. J. F. Waddington used vertical propellers in tubes through the vessel for keeping her on an even keel or submerging when stationary, on a small electric submarine he invented, built and demonstrated at Liverpool in 1886.

13Quotations in this chapter are from Mr. Lake’s articles published in “International Marine Engineering,” and are here reprinted by his kind permission.

14Electric current.

15From an article by Admiral Selfridge in the “Outlook.”

16The velocity of sound in dry air at a temperature of 32 degrees Fahrenheit is about 1087 feet a second, in water at 44 degrees, about 4708 feet a second.

17The sound of the first gun of the salute fired by the Russian fleet in Cronstadt harbor to celebrate the coronation of Alexander II in 1855 was the signal for the crew of the submerged submarine Le Diable Marin to begin singing the National Anthem. Their voices, accompanied by a band of four pieces, were distinctly heard above the surface. This novel concert had been planned by Wilhelm Bauer, the designer of the submarine and one of the earliest students of under-water acoustics. He succeeded in signaling from one side of the harbor to another by striking a submerged piece of sheet-iron with a hammer.

18“Scientific American,” January 28, 1911, page 87.

19“Scientific American,” November 23, 1912.

20Titherington’s History of the Spanish-American War, p. 139.

21Ibid., page 202.

22He had done notable work with mines himself, during the Russo-Turkish War of 1878.

23This was a very popular type with the Confederate Torpedo Service in the Civil War.

24London, Jan. 4.—A British official statement issued to-day says:

“Sir Edward Grey, secretary for foreign affairs, has answered the complaint by the Germans through the American embassies regarding the destruction off the coast of Ireland of a German submarine and crew, by the British auxiliary Baralong, by referring to various German outrages.

“Sir Edward Grey offers to submit such incidents, including the Baralong case, to an impartial tribunal composed, say, of officers of the United States navy.

“The Foreign Office has presented to the House of Commons the full correspondence between Ambassador Page and Sir Edward Grey concerning the case. A memorandum from Germany concerning the sinking of the submarine includes affidavits from six Americans who were muleteers aboard the steamer Nicosian and witnessed the Baralong’s destruction of the submarine. A further affidavit from Larimore Holland, of Chattanooga, Tennessee, who was a member of the crew of the Baralong, was submitted. All the affidavits speak of the Baralong as disguised and flying the American flag.”

25“Scientific American,” October 16, 1915.

26In “Collier’s Weekly,” August 22, and 29, 1914.

27This submarine was the U-39. On board her was an American boy, Carl Frank List, who was taken off a Norwegian ship and spent eleven days on the U-39, during which time she sank eleven ships. In each case the crew were given ample time to take to the boats. List’s intensely interesting narrative appeared in the “New York American” for September 3, 5, and 7, 1915.

28“Von Weddigen, I was told, met his death chasing an armed British steamer. Commanding the U-29, he went after a whale of a British freighter in the Irish Sea, signaled her to stop. She stopped but hoisted the Spanish flag. As he came alongside, the steamer let drive with her two four-point-sevens at the submarine, sinking it immediately.” Statement of Carl Frank List.

29Statement of Dr. Cecile L. Greil, the only native-born American on board.