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We'd love to hear from the submarine world. Of course, if you are an expert in the field, what follows will probably not be news to you but, while we wait for you to tell us about the submarines of this century, we though it might be interesting to look back at how it all began...

Although many attempts to get a boat to function underwater between 1578 and 1763 were successful, including 17 chronicled designs, the problem with getting funding for any serious manufacture of such vessels was their lack of attack capacity, rendering them of no interest to the military forces of the world at that time.

Born in 1742, American inventor, David Bushnell, was instrumental in bringing the submarine out of the realms of gimmickry and giving it credibility as a fighting craft.
In 1775, Bushnell graduated from Yale, at the time when the first skirmishes between British troops and American colonists were taking place. His bitterness towards Britain fuelled his desire to put his engineering ability to use in aiding the colonist revolt. 

He designed, and built, a small submarine which could be trimmed down until the conning tower was awash by letting water in to two small internal tanks.
Her armament consisted of a detachable charge of 150 lbs (about 68 kilos) of gunpowder which could be attached to the underside of an enemy vessel by means of a screw.

In 1776, as the British lay off New York, Bushnell, together with Ezra Lee, a Sergeant in the American army, launched the submarine and Lee managed to place it underneath the hull of H.M.S. Eagle, commander Lord Howe, but was unable to attach the charge.
Bushnell had been unaware of the fact that British warships, at that time, were sheathed with copper, to prevent infestation of their timbers by marine parasites.

A further two attempts were no more successful than the first and , in 1782, when the war ended, Bushnell abandoned his submarine experiments. He changed his name and became a successful medical practitioner. 

Fellow American, Robert Fulton was born in 1765 and, when he came of age, was apprenticed to a jeweller for a while, before taking up portrait and landscape painting professionally. During a visit to England, in 1794, he was inspired to take up a career in engineering and turned his early attentions, unsuccessfully, to attempts to improve upon the lock system for canals.

In 1797, Fulton settled in Paris. He was a visionary in marine terms and so intensely certain of his ideas that, by 1801, even Napoleon Bonaparte was convinced that the answer to Britain's superior naval strength lay in arming France with a fleet of submarines.

Receiving a grant of 10,000 francs enabled Fulton to build a prototype which he named the 'Nautilus' which is, perhaps, where Jules Verne gained his inspiration for 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and other works.
The vessel was 21' long and 7' across at the widest point and had internal tanks which could be flooded to submerge it. 'Nautilus' had a hand-turned propeller for underwater travel and a de-mountable sailing rig for surface voyaging.

To demonstrate the capacity of the 'Nautilus', Fulton succeeded in placing a charge beneath an old schooner, anchored centrally in a bay, for the purpose, by taking 'Nautilus' beneath the hull of the vessel and placing a charge, before retiring to a safe distance to watch the explosion, along with members of the French Ministry of Marine Affairs.

Unfortunately, they remained unimpressed in spite of the total success of the demonstration, possibly because the water was clear and calm in the bay and it seemed to them that the 'Nautilus' would have been observed long before she was able to place the charge. 
Under normal circumstances, of course, this would have been most unlikely. Fulton's very choice of location, therefore, allowing a clear view of the proceedings, may have worked against him that day.
Fulton, not prepared to see his invention disregarded, crossed to England to demonstrate his submarine to the British Admiralty. 

The British, lacking foresight in equal measure to their enemies across the Channel, showed no greater interest than had the French Ministry and Fulton returned, with 'Nautilus', to his native America. It would be nice to be able to say that his countrymen received his invention with the acclaim it deserved but the truth is that Fulton was just too far ahead of his time and he and 'Nautilus' were ignored at home too. 
It might be said that he was the Barnes Wallace* of the nautical world.

Keith Robinson and Linnet Woods for MarineZine

* British inventor Barnes Wallace, born in the late nineteenth century, was most famous for inventing the bouncing bomb, used to demolish dams and other structures over water which could not be destroyed from above but crumbled when their foundations were hit by relatively small charges. The British Government ridiculed his invention, saying that it could not possibly work.

In fact it worked perfectly, although it required some finesse to hit targets accurately. The bomb had to be dropped at a fixed distance from the target and at an exact height of 150'.
In those days there was no system in existence to allow pilots to know when they were at an exact height above ground and so Wallace hit upon the idea of placing two spotlights on the aircraft carrying the bomb. When the beams of the two spotlights merged on the surface of the water, the bomb was dropped, bouncing along on the surface of the water towards the target and reaching it at its most vulnerable point.

While the British Government procrastinated over admission of its earlier failure to know a successful idea when it saw one, the war raged on and thousands of lives were lost until, at last, it was agreed that the bomb should be used and a squadron of Lancaster Bombers succeeded in destroying their target of three enemy dams in the course of a single mission. 
This story was immortalised in the great movie "The Dam Busters".
Wallace's swing-wing aircraft was also offered to the British air force but was considered a 'foolish aberration'. America, on the other hand, immediately saw the possibilities and the rest, as they say, is history.

On the rather lighter note for which we aim to become known:

Back when  we were wondering how to get this page started, an Italian cruiser sitting at the next table in the bar, read out an advertisement in a local, Caribbean, free marine newspaper All At Sea,  Here is the advertisement (from the January 2000 edition):

FOR SALE:

246' Whiskey Class Submarine, 1957 model of the world's most popular sub. Sleeps 56. 15,000 mile range. One owner. Cruise missiles optional. $555,000 /obo, (or best offer) ...

Hmm, we thought...optional Cruise missiles? It gets better...the kind Italian let us have the paper, which turns out to be an excellent read,  we recommend it highly to anyone who can get it...it's a free paper around the islands of the Caribbean.
There was an article on page 43 of the All At Sea newspaper, entitled "ANYONE WANT A RUSSIAN SUB?" Apparently, the vessel also sported six 533mm torpedo tubes and storage space for up to a dozen torpedoes...standard armaments appear to include a single SM-24 Zif twin 57mm and one 2M-8 twin 25mm gun...

The sub is on display in a Swedish sub but was re-fitted for service just before the break-up of the Soviet Union. She was in active service until 1991. It was suggested she could be converted to a private yacht. Our imaginations ran wild... wouldn't it be grand to be able to surface anywhere, anytime, armed to the teeth to ward off pirates...yes, yes, we know we'd have to give up the guns! We didn't even have ten percent of the asking price handy at the moment, so don't worry! It was just one of those silly daydreams...

Talk to us about your submarine experiences, please, we'd love to hear! Meanwhile, if naval history is your strong point, have a go at our In-Quiz-ition No.1 on the InQuizitive page - ten questions and links to the answers so that you can check on how you're doing...