The invention of a small fabric that sinks under water and rises to the surface at the will of her occupants should indicate a large approach towards the perfecting of the whole theory and practice of submarine warfare. Such a deadly, dangerous engine of destruction has been tried and not found wanting. Unhappily, I think; for unless the murderous inventions of our times are ultimately to render warfare impossible, by occasioning a common dread because of the swiftness and magnitude of the butchery—a probability not to be contemplated—one cannot but wish that the patentee would suffer some of the old elements of manhood to dignify and animate the conflicts of fleets and armies, by a succession of failures in the direction of a hidden and annihilating machinery. “So violent it is,” writes honest old Camden, of the cannon, “in breaking, tearing, bruising, renting, razing, and ruinating walles, towers, castles, ramparts, and all that it encountereth; that it might seem to have been invented by practice of the Devill to the destruction of mankinde as the onely enemy of true valour and manfull couragiousness, by murthering afar off.” Murthering afar off! very different, indeed, as a means of exemplifying courage from the hand-to-hand conflict of the sword and the spear. So Camden implies, speaking of the cannon of his time, a weapon that even the long-tailed guardians of the Taku forts twenty-five years ago would have disdained for their own jingalls. But what would that mostly learned Clarenceux, King of Arms, have found to say on the subject of “true valour and manfull couragiousness” had his theme, instead of the primitive engine whereof the effects as he himself describes were “destruction, violence, fury, and roaring crack,” been an electric boat in which men could go about their duties whilst under water, in which they could softly and hiddenly sneak under the keel of an ironclad of twelve thousand tons, containing a company of perhaps a thousand souls, and attach to her a machine that—after they had withdrawn, still under water, to a safe distance—would blow her and her people into fragments? This craft is no mere fancy; she is an accomplished fact, as the French say. It is not long since that the inventors tested her in the West India Docks. She is a cigar-shaped boat, sixty feet long, and displaces about fifty tons. They sank and raised her readily, kept her under water for some time, and then propelled her. I read that a supply of air—of fresh air—large enough to last for three days, may be stored in this terrible boat, so that the Jonahs who man her will be perhaps better off in the matter of oxygen or ozone than are the occupants of the common above-sea forecastle, even when their hatch is open.

Of course the electric feature is the novelty in this latest invented diving boat. But as a fabric that can be made to float or sink, as those who are inside her may choose, this screw-craft is by no means the first of her kind. In 1801 Fulton experimented with what he called a Bateau-Poisson, or fish-boat at Rouen. The first account of this invention says that the boat sank and rose seven or eight times. The longest period during which it remained under water was eight minutes. The machine was entered by means of an opening shaped like a tunnel. “When those who conducted the experiment wished to descend into the river, and disappear, they let down this opening and lost all communication with the external air. The inventors of this ingenious machine are Americans, the principal of whom is called Fulton. Three of them went into the boat, and remained during the experiment. The Prefect and a vast concourse of spectators were present.”^[54] A fuller account, written by St. Aubin, was printed in 1802. The boat he inspected was in some respects similar to the one that had been exhibited at Rouen, Havre, and Brest. He speaks of it as a nautilus, or diving boat, invented by Mr. Fulton. It could carry eight men, and hold provisions enough for this number of persons to last twenty days. The inventor had contrived a reservoir for air large enough to enable the crew to live under water for eight hours. The boat was of sufficient strength to plunge one hundred feet deep, and to bear the pressure of water at that depth. She was furnished with two sails, and when above water presented the appearance of an ordinary boat. Fulton, in making his experiments at Havre, not only remained an hour under water with his companions, but held his boat parallel to the horizon at any given depth. He proved the compass-points as correctly under water as on the surface, and while under water “the boat made way at half a league an hour, by means contrived for that purpose.” At this point M. St. Aubin indulges in the following prophetical exclamation: “It is not twenty years since all Europe was astonished at the first ascension of men in balloons; perhaps in a few years they will not be less surprised to see a flotilla of diving boats, which, on a given signal, shall, to avoid the pursuit of an enemy, plunge under water, and rise again several leagues from the place where they descended. The invention of balloons has hitherto been of no advantage, because no means have been found to direct their course. But if such means could be discovered what would become of camps, cannon, fortresses, and the whole art of war?” He then proceeds to point out that Fulton’s craft has the advantage of sailing like a common boat, and also of diving when it is pursued. It was therefore fit for carrying secret orders to succour a blockaded port and to examine the force and position of an enemy in their own harbours. He further tells us that Fulton had already added to his boat a machine by means of which he blew up a large craft in the port of Brest. He concludes: “What will become of maritime wars, and where will sailors be found to man ships of war, when it is a physical certainty that they may every moment be blown into the air by means of a diving-boat against which no human foresight could guard them?” St. Aubin does not say how the boat was sunk and raised, and how it was propelled, when sunk, at the rate of a mile and a half in an hour. But that Fulton invented such a boat as the Frenchman describes is indisputable, and it is equally certain that, although its merit as an invention was remarkable, nothing came of it.

Fulton, however, was not the first. In 1774 a man named Day, who had for years been thinking over a method of sinking a vessel under water with a man in it, who should live for a certain time, and then, by his own agency, rise to the surface, fancied he had hit upon the right way at last. The story is worth telling, for it involves a singular tragedy. Day was so sanguine that he determined to test his invention at the Broads, near Yarmouth. He fitted a Norwich market boat, and sank himself thirty feet under water, where he remained for twenty-four hours. His success so elated him that he at once went to work to see how he could get money by it. He accordingly wrote the following letter to a Mr. Blake, a well-known sporting man: “Sir, I have found out an affair by which many thousands may be won. It is of a paradoxical nature, but can be performed with ease. Therefore, sir, if you chuse to be informed of it, and give me one hundred pounds of every thousand you shall win by it, I will very readily wait upon you and inform you of it. I am, myself, but a poor mechanic, and not able to make anything by it without your assistance.—Yours, etc., J. Day.” Blake wrote to Day to call upon him. They met, and Day said that he could sink a ship one hundred yards deep in the sea with himself in it, and remain therein for the space of twenty-four hours without communication with anything above, and at the expiration of the time rise up again in the vessel. Blake asked for a model, which in the course of a month was sent to him. He was struck with the invention, and supplied Day with money enough to enable him to carry out his scheme. The vessel is described as having a false bottom, standing on feet “like a butcher’s block,” which contained the ballast, and by the person unscrewing some pins she was to rise to the surface, leaving the false bottom behind. Plymouth was selected as the scene of the experiment. On the appointed day the vessel was towed to the place agreed upon, the inventor provided himself with whatever he deemed necessary, entered the vessel, retired to the cabin, and shut up the valve. The craft settled slowly down in twenty-two feet of water. The hour was two o’clock in the afternoon of Tuesday, June 28, and she was to rise again at two o’clock on the following morning. Day had furnished himself with some buoys or messengers, which he had arranged to send to the surface to announce his situation below; but none appearing, his patron, Blake, suspected an accident, and applied to the captain of a frigate at anchor close by for assistance. But to no purpose; every effort was made in vain to weigh the vessel, and Day perished.

The comments on the account of which I have given the substance are curious when read side by side with the recent newspaper narratives of the experiment at the West India Docks. “That any man should be able, after having sunk a vessel to so great a depth, to make that vessel at pleasure so much more specifically lighter than water as thereby to enable it to force its way to the surface, through the depressure of so great a weight, is a matter not hastily to be credited.”

But even Day was not first. Cornelius Drebelle, by order of James I. (so says Robert Boyle), built a vessel to be rowed under water. She was furnished with a kind of chemical liquor that served to purify and renew the air. She carried twelve oarsmen besides passengers, and was tried in the river Thames, and Mr. Robert Boyle, the “Father of Modern Chemistry and the Brother of the Earl of Cork,” got his account of her from a person who was in her during her submarine navigation of the river.

And who was before Cornelius Drebelle? “Novelty is only in request,” says Shakespeare, “and it is dangerous to be aged in any kind of course.” But what is novelty?^[55]

What value the diving vessel of to-day has she owes to conditions which are scarcely much older than the date of the application of electricity to purposes of marine locomotion and to naval warfare. And even if you gave her an electric engine, but provided her with no better apparatuses of destruction than those which preceded dynamite, gun-cotton, and the like she could scarcely, for all her twin screws, her forty-five horse power, her glow lamps, condensed air, and her plates of steel prove more useful than such a boat as that of Fulton, or as that of Cornelius Drebelle, which, urged by twelve rowers, swept under the surface of what was then the silver Thames. Our enormous ordnance and the tremendous destructive forces which we have received from the laboratory of the chemist entitle us to smile, perhaps, at the sheet-lightning and faint thunders of our grandsires’ conflicts. Yet, on the whole, every one must admit that they made a fine show with what they had. Individually the sixty-four-pounder would be but a mean weapon, as weapons now go; yet the flames of a triple row of them caused a mighty blaze, and could one even now hear the explosion of the broadside batteries of any wooden liner you may name the aggregate uproar might suggest the detonation of some greater engine of war than was ever cast at Elswick or at Woolwich.

In submarine machinery the old folks never got further than the Fenians manage to go; a clock in a barrel of gunpowder defined the extent of their genius as murderers. On the surface of the water their most formidable arrangements were the fire-ship and the bomb-vessel, the latter a ketch very strongly built and equipped with mortars. An example of what may be termed explosion-machinery dates as far back as 1585. It was used to destroy the bridge of boats at the siege of Antwerp, and consisted of a ship in which was built a vault of stone filled with two hundred barrels of powder, over which were placed stones of all sizes, together with shot, iron chains, spikes, and so forth. This mine was exploded by a secret fuse, and was so contrived that the vessel did not take fire till it bumped against the bridge, which it shivered. There is extant the description of a fire-ship, called The Infernal, that was used at the bombardment of St. Maloes in 1693. She was a new galliot of about three hundred tons. The bottom of her hold was lined with one hundred barrels of gunpowder, covered with pitch, tar, brimstone, resin, tow, straw, and faggots. Over these things was a perforated platform, upon which were three hundred and forty chests or mortars filled with grenades, cannon-balls, iron chains, loaded firearms, and large pieces of metal wrapped in tarpaulins. This abominable contrivance proved a failure, for after it had sailed fairly enough to the foot of the wall to which it was to be fastened a blast of off-shore wind sent it on to a rock, where the people in charge were forced to fire her and hastily withdraw. The chests or mortars were wet, and did not blow up; but the explosion of what was dry was furious enough to level a part of the town wall and destroy the roofs and a portion of the walls of about three hundred houses.

In 1804, the English attempted to blow up some vessels off Boulogne by casks or coffers furnished with clock-work explosives. A naval officer, describing the effect of these machines, says: “Each cask was primed and set, so as to go off at any desired time after drawing out a pin. A reward depended upon bringing away this pin. We came within pistol shot of a corvette before we let go our coffers, under a fire of shot and shells from the shore. The first explosion, which took place in a few minutes, was very great, and seemed to strike the enemy with general consternation.”^[56] Others were sunk, but would not go off. These coffers were made of thick plank lined with lead. When filled they were tarred, covered with canvas, and “payed” with hot pitch. They are described as exactly resembling a large coffin. They each weighed as much as two tons. To one end a line was secured to which was affixed a sort of anchor. Line and anchor were floated with pieces of cork, the idea being that the anchor would catch the cable of the ship that was to be destroyed, and cause the coffer to swing alongside. They were weighted with shot, so that they should only just float, partly that they might come along unnoticed, and partly that, if seen, they would be difficult to hit.

These primitive and, as a rule, inoperative “dodges” find another illustration in an experiment made in the Downs in 1805. A large brig was anchored abreast of Walmer Castle, about three-quarters of a mile from the shore. Two or three boats then rowed off and placed the machine across the cable of the brig. The tide in a few moments carried it under the brig, where it affixed itself. Presently the clock-work exploded the contents, a small cloud of smoke was seen to rise, and the brig is declared to have gone to pieces “without any noise or appearance of fire.” In less than the third of a minute not a vestige of her could be seen from the shore. “General Don, with a number of military and naval officers, went with Sir Sydney Smith to Mr. Pitt’s, at Walmer Castle, to witness the experiment, and expressed the utmost astonishment at the destructive powers of the invention.” This was evidently much such a contrivance as the coffers which had been used in the previous year off Boulogne, with some improvement, as perhaps in its power of sliding with the tide under instead of alongside a vessel and attaching itself to the keel.

I find the Americans using clock-work as a means of exploding gunpowder some time before the period of its adoption by the English. In 1774, Captain Vandeput, in the Asia, of sixty-four guns, whilst stationed off New York, was nearly blown up by a plan to which, unhappily, we in these more civilized times are no strangers. A quantity of powder was put on board a small vessel. In one of the barrels was an alarum or piece of clock-work, that was wound up before it was placed in the barrel and attached to a musket lock that fired the powder around it. The powder was for the use of the Asia, and the barrels would have been received on board together, of course, with that which contained the clock-work arrangement, but for the terror of one of the American prisoners who was in the secret and communicated the plot to Vandeput. There seems a horrible meanness in this manner of waging war. Yet there is nothing more despicable in blowing up a foe by putting a barrel of powder with clock-work in it inside his ship than in annihilating him by means of a coffin load of combustibles fired by clock-work under his ship.

It has been reserved for this age, however, to carry these theories of hidden and deadly warfare to a height assuredly never dreamt of by the most visionary of the old exploders. I call them theories, for so they must remain till a war shall determine them into facts. And, indeed, I think it need not be doubted that many of what in peace-time and on paper we think will be desperately terrible features of all future naval struggles will prove mere impediments and clumsy, fallible, and misleading devices when the time to test them comes. Mr. Pitt and the military officers at Walmer Castle might justly be astonished at the sight of a stout brig crumbling away under a puff of smoke, but it was Jack’s old-fashioned pike that was then doing the real work; that had begun it, and that had to complete it.