Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and How Stuff Works and a lot
Speaker 1: of all things tech and over on Twitter, a listener
Speaker 1: named Steve sent me a message asking me to do
Speaker 1: an episode about submarines, and I was sure I had
Speaker 1: done a full episode about submarines before, But then after
Speaker 1: I searched the archives, the best I could find was
Speaker 1: an episode I did with Scott Benjamin about personal submarines
Speaker 1: that was more about the expensive and frankly dangerous toys
Speaker 1: of people who have way more money than they have
Speaker 1: self preservation instincts. So in this episode, I'm really going
Speaker 1: to cover the history of submarines and how they work. Actually,
Speaker 1: this is the first of a couple of episodes because
Speaker 1: the history is pretty long, and while I could have
Speaker 1: summarized the early history of submarines, I find that that
Speaker 1: development is really fascinating. I mean, you think about what
Speaker 1: it would take to risk everything by building a contraption
Speaker 1: that can travel under the water where and you may
Speaker 1: not know this, people can't normally breathe so we're gonna
Speaker 1: look at the early history of submarines, not even getting
Speaker 1: into the twentieth century in this episode. Spoiler alert. So
Speaker 1: part of what makes this a fun topic to research
Speaker 1: is that you really get to see when humans first
Speaker 1: began to suss out why stuff floats or sinks. Archimedes
Speaker 1: or Archie as I like to call him, wrote down
Speaker 1: the earliest account of why this is at least the
Speaker 1: earliest that we know of. There may have been earlier accounts,
Speaker 1: but this is the one that we know about. He
Speaker 1: described a force of a body partially submerged in a
Speaker 1: fluid that would then push that body upward. And the
Speaker 1: story goes that he figured this out while taking a bath,
Speaker 1: that he figured out that this force that would hold
Speaker 1: a body up in water. Uh, was something that came
Speaker 1: to him while he was he himself was actually in water.
Speaker 1: And one of the principles that describes this force, it's
Speaker 1: called bullyancy. Essentially, it's saying that the amount of force
Speaker 1: that is exerted on the submerged object is equal to
Speaker 1: the weight of the water that the object is displacing. Now,
Speaker 1: as a kid, I remember being a bit confused about
Speaker 1: this concept because you take a look at stuff around you,
Speaker 1: and you see what floats or sinks, and it it's
Speaker 1: not always you know, uh, intuitive to a child, or,
Speaker 1: if I'm going to be honest, to a young adult.
Speaker 1: It took me a while to grasp this thing because
Speaker 1: you know, like rocks sing in the water, right, rock sinks.
Speaker 1: But then you have giant ships, like enormous, huge ships
Speaker 1: that are clearly much heavier than rocks are, and those float. Now,
Speaker 1: in my kid brain, I couldn't reconcile this. I mean,
Speaker 1: clearly it had to be the weight of stuff that
Speaker 1: determined whether or not it sank. Right, obviously, now that's
Speaker 1: not correct, But it took a while before my brain
Speaker 1: could wrap itself around the reasons why. So, the reason
Speaker 1: is all about displacement water displacement. If the object displaces
Speaker 1: enough water so that the weight of the water it
Speaker 1: displaces is greater than the weight of the object, then
Speaker 1: the object will float. If the object displaces too little
Speaker 1: water so that the displaced water weighs less than the
Speaker 1: weight of the object, then it will sink. And really
Speaker 1: it comes down to density, not so much weight, but
Speaker 1: really density. So if the density of the object is
Speaker 1: less than that of water, it will float. If it
Speaker 1: is greater than water, it will sink. And density and
Speaker 1: mass are pretty easy to confuse. For goofballs like me.
Speaker 1: Mass is how much stuff an object has. You know
Speaker 1: how much stuff is to that particular thing. A chair
Speaker 1: has a certain mass, but that's just part of an
Speaker 1: object's physical features. You also have to take into account
Speaker 1: the density, which is what you can think of as
Speaker 1: the distribution of mass within an object. So a dense
Speaker 1: object is going to have its mass packed in more
Speaker 1: tightly than a less dense object of the same size.
Speaker 1: So you have to think about the size, shape, and
Speaker 1: mass of a thing before you'll know whether it will
Speaker 1: displace enough water to keep it afloat. Our comedees actually
Speaker 1: used water displacement to determine density as well. So the
Speaker 1: basic formula for density is you take an objects mass
Speaker 1: and you divide it by the objects volume, And you
Speaker 1: would use scales to determine an object's mass, right, you
Speaker 1: would have weights that you knew equalled out to a
Speaker 1: specific amount of mass, like a kilogram weight, for example,
Speaker 1: and you would weigh an object against that. But unless
Speaker 1: the object is of a standard sort of shape, like
Speaker 1: you know, a box, you might not have a neat
Speaker 1: and nifty formula you could use to describe its volume.
Speaker 1: You know, if it's an irregular shape, it's tricky. How
Speaker 1: do you figure out the volume of an irregularly shaped object. Well,
Speaker 1: you could use water, and that's because we know that
Speaker 1: water behaves with displacement in a very consistent way under
Speaker 1: specific conditions. So one millilet of water will occupy one
Speaker 1: cubic centimeter of space. And this is specifically when water
Speaker 1: is at standard conditions, which a standard temperature is zero
Speaker 1: degrees celsius and standard pressure would be at one atmosphere.
Speaker 1: And that's because we want to make sure we're using
Speaker 1: standard conditions because you know, obviously water molecules will move
Speaker 1: apart as you heat them up, so you'll get some
Speaker 1: expansion and more air pressure adds compressive elements. Although to
Speaker 1: be fair, water is extremely difficult to compress and that
Speaker 1: would change the measurements slightly. So under standard conditions we
Speaker 1: have this idea that water occupies one million leader or
Speaker 1: one million eader of water. Rather we'll occupy one cubic
Speaker 1: centimeter space. So an object completely submerged in water displaces
Speaker 1: or offsets a volume of water equal to the volume
Speaker 1: of the object. So if you put an object in
Speaker 1: water at standard conditions and you have a little you know,
Speaker 1: measuring stick there that lets you read how much water
Speaker 1: has been displaced, and you see that the water has
Speaker 1: been displaced by a hundred millilaters, that would mean that
Speaker 1: the object you put in the water has a volume
Speaker 1: of one hundred cubic centimeters. One million leader equals one
Speaker 1: cubic centimeter. So then you would take the objects mass,
Speaker 1: you would divide it by that one dred cubic center meters,
Speaker 1: and that would tell you what the object's density is. Now,
Speaker 1: water's density at twenty degrees celsius is one gram per
Speaker 1: cubic centimeter, So if the object's density is less than that,
Speaker 1: it will float. If it's greater than that, it'll sink.
Speaker 1: This is why giant warships made out of metal can
Speaker 1: cruise along the waves, and while they weigh a lot,
Speaker 1: the water they displace has much greater density, so the
Speaker 1: boats will stay afloat. But what if you designed a
Speaker 1: vessel that could travel under the water, or better yet,
Speaker 1: you designed the vessel that could have some sort of
Speaker 1: control mechanism to allow it to either float or dive
Speaker 1: under the water. On top of that, there's another pesky
Speaker 1: problem to work out besides figuring out how to get
Speaker 1: a vessel to go above or below the waves. Assuming
Speaker 1: this vessel is also meant to hold people, there has
Speaker 1: to be some sort of method for getting air to
Speaker 1: the people inside, as we don't tend to funk action
Speaker 1: too well if we can't breathe, So that also was
Speaker 1: a problem that had to be solved now. Since ancient times,
Speaker 1: we knew we could bring air down with us under water,
Speaker 1: but that air would only last a short while before
Speaker 1: the oxygen levels were too low to be useful and
Speaker 1: we would asphyxiate. We didn't have a grasp on oxygen
Speaker 1: and carbon dioxide just yet, but we did know that
Speaker 1: you couldn't just keep breathing the same air indefinitely. Eventually
Speaker 1: you would have exhausted all the breathable air and you
Speaker 1: would need to resurface. Aristotle wrote about diving bells, which
Speaker 1: are containers that could be lowered with the open side
Speaker 1: of the container facing the floor of the ocean or
Speaker 1: the lake or river or whatever, and they could be
Speaker 1: dense enough to sink even with the added buoyancy of
Speaker 1: the captured air inside the container, and water pressure would
Speaker 1: keep the air from escaping the container, and he wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: they enable the divers to respire equally well by letting
Speaker 1: down a cauldron, for this does not fill with water,
Speaker 1: but retains the air in the quote, So essentially a
Speaker 1: diving bell. And that was way back in the fourth
Speaker 1: century b c. But that was also before we had
Speaker 1: susced out a way to replenish the air in the
Speaker 1: diving bell. So while you could use it to go underwater,
Speaker 1: you couldn't hang out for very long before you had
Speaker 1: consumed all the breathable air and you needed to resurface.
Speaker 1: So another problem is that water pressure that I just
Speaker 1: talked about. It would compress the air inside a diving bell,
Speaker 1: so the air would take up less space inside the bell,
Speaker 1: and the bottom of the bell, assuming you're looking at
Speaker 1: it with the bottom being the open side, would fill
Speaker 1: a little bit with water. The water would come up
Speaker 1: a little bit along the inside of the container, which
Speaker 1: means you have a reduced work area as well a
Speaker 1: reduced amount of useful area where you, as a person
Speaker 1: could inhabit and still breathe. One way to fix that
Speaker 1: would be to have a supply of pressurized air continue
Speaker 1: to come down into the bell. But it would take
Speaker 1: centuries to get that point. If you just included, say
Speaker 1: a breathing tube from the bell to the surface, well
Speaker 1: that wouldn't do any good at all. The water would
Speaker 1: just go right up the bell and up the tube
Speaker 1: a great deal. It's like if you put a straw
Speaker 1: inside a glass of liquid. You know, unless you cap
Speaker 1: the end of the straw, the liquid goes up the straw.
Speaker 1: You don't have any way of pressurizing it to keep
Speaker 1: the water from coming in. So you would have to
Speaker 1: have this pressurized system and it would take hundreds of
Speaker 1: years to get to that point. So when it comes
Speaker 1: to getting really great details about the origin of submarines,
Speaker 1: we hit some pretty big snags. There are reports about them,
Speaker 1: but they aren't necessarily the most reliable. A lot of
Speaker 1: them are second or third hand reports, and they don't
Speaker 1: tend to have a whole lot of information about what
Speaker 1: exactly happened or how it happened. But the general can
Speaker 1: census is that a design for what would be the
Speaker 1: first submarine that we have on record came from a
Speaker 1: guy named William Bourne born was an English mathematician way
Speaker 1: back in the sixteenth century, and the record of his
Speaker 1: design dates to fifteen seventy eight, so just to give
Speaker 1: you a little bit of context, at that time, England
Speaker 1: was ruled by Queen Elizabeth the First and Shakespeare was
Speaker 1: just fourteen years old. Born's design called for a totally
Speaker 1: enclosed wooden boat, and then covering this wooden boat would
Speaker 1: be oiled or greased leather that would help keep the
Speaker 1: vessel water tight in order to reduce buoyancy. Borne's proposal
Speaker 1: was to have hand cranked vices that connected to the
Speaker 1: interior of the boat's hull. Now, in some descriptions that
Speaker 1: I've read, it said that Borne intended to use the
Speaker 1: vices to pull the sides in a little bit like
Speaker 1: you're you're squeezing the boat from the in side, pulling
Speaker 1: the inner walls inward and reducing the overall volume of
Speaker 1: the boat, thus increasing your density. An illustration seems to
Speaker 1: indicate that the idea was actually to have an inner
Speaker 1: chamber inside this vessel, and that uh the inner chamber,
Speaker 1: the innermost chamber where a person would be, would be waterproofed,
Speaker 1: and then you would have space between this inner chamber
Speaker 1: and these the hull or the outer sides of the boat,
Speaker 1: So you would have this secondary chamber on either side
Speaker 1: of the place where the operator would sit, and so
Speaker 1: the visas would actually pull the boat's sections of whole
Speaker 1: inward and allow those parts of the boat to be
Speaker 1: flooded with water. So you're essentially pulling open almost like
Speaker 1: a trap door. You're pulling in sides of the hull
Speaker 1: of the boat. Water rushes in into a watertight section
Speaker 1: that it surrounds the inner chamber where the operator sits,
Speaker 1: and that would increase the density of the overall vessel.
Speaker 1: That's what would allow you to sink beneath the waves.
Speaker 1: If that's the case, I'm not sure what the plan
Speaker 1: was to return buoyancy to the boat, because you would
Speaker 1: need to have some way to purge the water out
Speaker 1: of the space between the whole and the inner chamber
Speaker 1: while sealing the boat closed. Again, you have to have
Speaker 1: some way to force the water back out, otherwise you're
Speaker 1: not gonna You're not going to decrease the density and
Speaker 1: thus increase the buoyancy and be able to rise back
Speaker 1: up above the waves. And maybe that's why Bourne never
Speaker 1: made the darn thing as far as we can tell. Instead,
Speaker 1: his design would remain an intriguing thought experiment for the
Speaker 1: time being. Skip ahead of Monarch to the time of
Speaker 1: James the First of England, and we do get to
Speaker 1: what most people consider to be the first submarine. A
Speaker 1: Dutch inventor named Cornelius van Drebble reportedly built a submarine,
Speaker 1: which he called a diving boat in the early sixteen twenties.
Speaker 1: Like Bourns proposed craft, Drebble's submarine was made of wood
Speaker 1: and coated with greased leather. Propulsion came from ores that
Speaker 1: extended out the sides of the vessel. These oars, you know,
Speaker 1: the parts where the ore extended out from inside the boat.
Speaker 1: Those had to be coated with flaps of leather to
Speaker 1: create a waterproof seal, because otherwise they're going to get
Speaker 1: water coming into your submarine. That's bad business. According to accounts,
Speaker 1: it could dip as far as twelve or even fifteen
Speaker 1: feet beneath the surface of the water, and Drebble demonstrate
Speaker 1: the craft along the Thames River in London. Supposedly, even
Speaker 1: Jimmy the King took a ride at one point. Now,
Speaker 1: if Drebble made any detailed records of how this boat
Speaker 1: actually worked, they have long since been lost. To time,
Speaker 1: we're not entire really certain what mechanism he relied upon
Speaker 1: to get the boat to go underwater. Some people have
Speaker 1: suggested that the boat had some form of ballast barrels
Speaker 1: or bladders that could be opened which would allow water
Speaker 1: to come inside of them, increasing the overall density of
Speaker 1: the boat, and this causing it to sink beneath the waves,
Speaker 1: though I've not seen any description of how the vessel
Speaker 1: would then expel the water to regain buoyancy. Uh. In
Speaker 1: my just jettison the ballast, in which case then it
Speaker 1: would rise up it's buoyancy would be returned. The earliest
Speaker 1: records I can find of any kind of ballast system
Speaker 1: actually comes two hundred years after this particular example. Others
Speaker 1: suggest that perhaps the sloped shape of the bow that's
Speaker 1: the front part of the boat acted as a sort
Speaker 1: of reverse airplane wing, that when the boat began to
Speaker 1: move forward, the slope would cause the water to flow
Speaker 1: over the top of the boat, and that would push
Speaker 1: the boat downward into the wall watter uh, And that
Speaker 1: maybe with a system of weights could have added a
Speaker 1: bit more downward force. I find that particular idea, the
Speaker 1: idea of forward motion creating the downward force to allow
Speaker 1: the boat to dive to be a little unlikely, simply
Speaker 1: because I don't think you'd be able to go very
Speaker 1: fast with oars. I don't think you could row fast
Speaker 1: enough to make that downward motion, uh strong enough to
Speaker 1: keep the boat underwater. You might bob a bit in
Speaker 1: the Thames, but I don't think you would be able
Speaker 1: to go twelve to fifteen feet beneath the surface. That's
Speaker 1: just my own gut feeling there, because I don't think
Speaker 1: you could get up the speed necessary to maintain that.
Speaker 1: But we just don't really know for sure what the
Speaker 1: mechanism was. Drebble made sure that the vessel had a
Speaker 1: study supply of air by attaching to air hoses to
Speaker 1: the boat, and the other ends of the hoses were
Speaker 1: attached to floats that would drift on the surface of
Speaker 1: the Thames above the boat. Now, I'm assuming that there
Speaker 1: must have been some method of pumping the air down
Speaker 1: into the boat, because otherwise you would have a problem. See,
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide is denser than air, which means you need
Speaker 1: a way to force breathable air down the hose to
Speaker 1: the interior of the submarine. Otherwise it would become saturated
Speaker 1: with C O two and you would eventually suffocate. This
Speaker 1: was something an inventor named de Lorena, an Italian inventor,
Speaker 1: had figured out way back in fift thirty five. He
Speaker 1: made a diving bell with an apparatus that would replenish pressurized,
Speaker 1: breathable air into the bell. Though he took the secret
Speaker 1: of that invention to the grave. One other person reportedly
Speaker 1: understood how it worked, but had sworn an oath never
Speaker 1: to reveal it. So we don't know the precise methodology
Speaker 1: used in that case either. Now, I'm sure it got
Speaker 1: stuffy and humid inside Drebble's boat, but at least you
Speaker 1: could get some air down there, and the crew wouldn't
Speaker 1: automatically just die of asphyxiation. So the submarine as a working,
Speaker 1: though primitive concept, dates back about five years, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure it will come as a shock to learn that
Speaker 1: since then we've made a few advancements. When we come back,
Speaker 1: I'll talk a bit more about some of the earliest
Speaker 1: subs and technology that made them work. But first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break. Okay, So, by the seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 1: several inventors had experimented with different designs for submersible vehicles,
Speaker 1: and they weren't really practical craft just yet, though the
Speaker 1: potential military applications were immediately apparent. So this was during
Speaker 1: the age when countries were imposing their will on others,
Speaker 1: primarily through naval supremacy. Countries like Spain and England in
Speaker 1: particular were known for doing this, and a common tactic
Speaker 1: was to create a naval blockade around a port city
Speaker 1: to prevent ships from leaving or arriving at that port city.
Speaker 1: Creating a submersible that could secretly approach a blockade and
Speaker 1: disrupt it, typically through the use of explosives that some
Speaker 1: poor submarner would have to try and attach to those
Speaker 1: boats was an obvious application for a submarine. It would
Speaker 1: be an incredibly useful war tool. In se we get
Speaker 1: the earliest published account of a ballast bladder, which some
Speaker 1: unknown inventor suggested using bags made out of goat skin
Speaker 1: to take in water so that submarine could dive below
Speaker 1: the waves, and the bags would have a twisting rod
Speaker 1: attached to them that would extend into the interior of
Speaker 1: the submarine itself, so the submarner could grab all of
Speaker 1: the rod and give it a good twist, and that
Speaker 1: in turn would twist the ballast bag and that would
Speaker 1: force water out of the ballast bag. It would have
Speaker 1: a valve on the end of the bag so that
Speaker 1: the water couldn't just come right back in, and that
Speaker 1: would decrease the vessel's density and allow it to surface.
Speaker 1: This was a predecessor for ballast tanks essentially do the
Speaker 1: same thing, though you don't typically have to hand operate
Speaker 1: them these days. A few decades later, we have the
Speaker 1: first use of a submarine in war. That was the
Speaker 1: American Revolutionary War. There was actually a submarine in the
Speaker 1: American Revolutionary War. The submarine was called the Turtle. And
Speaker 1: this was a pretty modest submarine. It's not like the
Speaker 1: Red October or anything like that. It could hold precisely
Speaker 1: one person. It was the design of David Bushnell, a
Speaker 1: an engineering student who was studying at Yale at the time.
Speaker 1: He and his brother Ezra built the dang Durn thing.
Speaker 1: The Encyclopedia Britannica describes the shape of the submarine as
Speaker 1: a quote walnut standing on end end to quote. And
Speaker 1: if you see illustrations or the recreations of this particular submarine,
Speaker 1: you'll see exactly what they mean. It does kind of
Speaker 1: look like a sort of oval shaped submarine, large enough
Speaker 1: to hold a single person on the inside. Facing forward
Speaker 1: from the submarine, at least from the perspective of the pilot,
Speaker 1: would be the propulsion system, which was a screw propeller
Speaker 1: and it worked on as similar principle as the Archimedes
Speaker 1: screw pump, which was used to lift water from areas
Speaker 1: of low elevation to areas of high elevation. The submarine
Speaker 1: operator would crank a handle in order to turn this
Speaker 1: screw propeller, which would effectively pull the submarine through the water,
Speaker 1: and then with the other hand, the operator would control
Speaker 1: a rudder that is in the back of the vessel
Speaker 1: to provide the steering mechanism. The vessel also had a
Speaker 1: secondary screw propeller, one that was oriented vertically, which meant
Speaker 1: it was meant to help the submariner navigate critically through
Speaker 1: the water, So if you were to dive beneath the waves,
Speaker 1: you would use the vertical screw propeller to push you
Speaker 1: down further into the water or to pull you up
Speaker 1: to actually drive. The turtle had a chamber that would
Speaker 1: be flooded with opening a valve, and that would just
Speaker 1: decrease the ship's buoyancy, so it would start to sink
Speaker 1: uh to surface. The operator could work some pumps inside
Speaker 1: the turtle that would push this water back out of
Speaker 1: that chamber. It also had ballast, both inside and attached
Speaker 1: to the outside of the vessel that was used to
Speaker 1: make sure the craft would maintain the proper orientation in
Speaker 1: the water and not just you know, start flipping over
Speaker 1: tilting to the side, which would be disastrous to the operator.
Speaker 1: So the weights were really meant to make sure that
Speaker 1: it maintained that up down orientation. Air came in through
Speaker 1: a pair of snorkels, and the snoricles had lids that
Speaker 1: would close whenever the vessel were to go underwater. Windows
Speaker 1: on the hatch above the the operator would allow some
Speaker 1: light to come into the interior of the vessel, although
Speaker 1: it was meant primarily to be operated at night, and
Speaker 1: the design also meant that if you went underwater, you
Speaker 1: would have a limited supply of air because the snorkels
Speaker 1: now would be closed, and you would also have much
Speaker 1: less light to work from. The intent was to operate
Speaker 1: so that only the hatch would be above the surface
Speaker 1: of the water for most of a mission, so that
Speaker 1: the operator would still be able to get a look
Speaker 1: around seeing where they were in relation to a target.
Speaker 1: They would also be able to breathe because the snorkels
Speaker 1: would be exposed to the air, and then the operator
Speaker 1: would only dive with the submarine in order to avoid
Speaker 1: being seen or when it came time to actually attach
Speaker 1: an explosive device to the target. To do that, the
Speaker 1: ship had a drill that was also pointed up from
Speaker 1: the top of a turtle, and this was to drill
Speaker 1: a hole in a blockade ship, and then in that
Speaker 1: hole the operator could attach a line for a gunpowder charge.
Speaker 1: And this gunpowder charge was in the form of a
Speaker 1: mine with an ingenious clockwork fuse mechanism, which I'll describe
Speaker 1: in just a second. Now, Bushnell had already conducted experiments
Speaker 1: while at Yale to find ways to make gunpowder explode underwater, which,
Speaker 1: as I understand it, caused a bit of a stir
Speaker 1: on campus. His mind was most likely a keg that
Speaker 1: was about two and a half feet long or about
Speaker 1: point seven six ms and one and a half feet
Speaker 1: in diameter or point for six meters, and it could
Speaker 1: hold about a hundred fifty pounds or about sixty eight
Speaker 1: ms of gunpowder to create a timing mechanism for the explosive.
Speaker 1: He actually worked with a pair of clockmakers. They were
Speaker 1: known as a Phineas Pratt and Isaac Doolittle, And I
Speaker 1: just want to say that I'm really loving these names
Speaker 1: so far. Anyway, together Pratt, Doolittle and Bushnell came up
Speaker 1: with a clockwork device that would trigger a flintlock mechanism.
Speaker 1: It's the kind that you would find on a flint
Speaker 1: lock musket, and the flintlock would have a piece of
Speaker 1: flint and steel that would come together when the when
Speaker 1: the mechanism activated, it would uh spring shut and that
Speaker 1: would cause a spark. And the idea was that the
Speaker 1: spark would then ignite a priming charge of gunpowder. The
Speaker 1: priming charge would in turn ignite the explosive charge. So
Speaker 1: the idea was that the sub operator would set a
Speaker 1: timer on this device and attached the mind to a
Speaker 1: ship using the hole that had been drilled into the
Speaker 1: ship's hull, and then they would try and get the
Speaker 1: heck out a dodge. They would be turning that hand
Speaker 1: crank frantically to move the propeller in order to get
Speaker 1: a safe distance away from the explosive. The team's mind
Speaker 1: design would in theory give the operator enough time to
Speaker 1: get the hack away from the exploding ship, and it
Speaker 1: was a novel idea, but it turned out in practice
Speaker 1: to fall short of expectations. The Turtles target was a
Speaker 1: big one for its main mission. It was the HMS Eagle,
Speaker 1: which happened to be the flagship of the British Admiral
Speaker 1: Richard how As, the brother to General William how of
Speaker 1: the British troops. But the Turtles drill turned out to
Speaker 1: be incapable of cutting through the eagles copper plated hull.
Speaker 1: By that time, dawn was breaking and the Turtles pilot,
Speaker 1: a soldier named Ezra Lee, was in danger of being discovered.
Speaker 1: So he attempted to sneak away, but he was spotted
Speaker 1: and the Eagle let out a pursuit boat. Lee decided that, well,
Speaker 1: the best thing for me to do is to set
Speaker 1: the timer on this mine, because if they're gonna get me,
Speaker 1: maybe they'll get the mind too and we'll all go
Speaker 1: up together. So then he detached the mind from the Turtle,
Speaker 1: and the mind did explode. It did not blow up
Speaker 1: the pursuing boat, but it did scare them off, and
Speaker 1: it gave him the opportunity to actually make an escape.
Speaker 1: The Turtle would go on two more unsuccessful missions, one
Speaker 1: of them under the operation of Phineas Pratt himself, but
Speaker 1: nothing ever quite came of it, and the British eventually
Speaker 1: sunk a ship that happened to be carrying the Turtle,
Speaker 1: and the submarine was lost in that particular engagement. But
Speaker 1: while the Turtle failed in its mission, the potential was obvious.
Speaker 1: They just had to refine the technology. Moving ahead a
Speaker 1: couple of decades, we come to Robert Fulton, an American
Speaker 1: engineer and inventor who perhaps is best known. Maybe he's
Speaker 1: most famously associated with steamboats, but in the early eight
Speaker 1: hundreds he also developed an early submarine and was also
Speaker 1: perhaps the most American of all classifications a capitalist. In fact,
Speaker 1: you could call him an arms dealer. I'll explain. So
Speaker 1: in seventeen seven, Fulton was living in France and he
Speaker 1: goes to Paris and he pitches this idea for a
Speaker 1: submarine that he calls the Nautilus. Jules Verne would take
Speaker 1: note of this decade later, France and Britain have been
Speaker 1: involved in a series of military conflicts for more than
Speaker 1: a century. Uh In fact, some modern historians refer to
Speaker 1: this as the Second hundred Years War. But the French
Speaker 1: looked at Fulton's proposal and they said manon, because they
Speaker 1: thought it was a dirty, underhanded way to fight a war.
Speaker 1: Because this was a time when people thought war was
Speaker 1: somehow better if everyone could see what everyone was doing
Speaker 1: all the time, and sneaky stuff was considered to be
Speaker 1: generally unfair. The mental gymnastics humans go through in order
Speaker 1: to determine what is and isn't a fair way to
Speaker 1: kill each other never really fails to confuse me. And
Speaker 1: for the record, I'm pretty much against the whole killing
Speaker 1: thing entirely, but I realized that the world we live
Speaker 1: in makes that an impractical philosophy to be applied at
Speaker 1: large in every situation. Anyway, Fulton appealed the decision and said, well, hey,
Speaker 1: what about um, how about I build this sucker pretty
Speaker 1: much on my own dime, and in return, if we
Speaker 1: use it to attack British ships, you can pay me,
Speaker 1: and that that payment will be based upon how big
Speaker 1: the ship was, how many guns it carried, and for
Speaker 1: British shipping vessels. You can give me a portion of
Speaker 1: whatever you end up taking from those shipping vessels. And
Speaker 1: the French minister said that cord, which means okay, because heck,
Speaker 1: I mean the France wouldn't have to spend a single
Speaker 1: franc on this, and they would only have to pay
Speaker 1: out a portion of any spoils if the thing actually worked.
Speaker 1: So by eight Fulton had the Nautilus ready to go
Speaker 1: and he wanted to demonstrate its capabilities on the Sin,
Speaker 1: the river that runs through Paris. And unlike the Turtle,
Speaker 1: the Nautilus had an iron ribbed hull coated with copper sheets.
Speaker 1: It also had a conning tower or con. Now, a
Speaker 1: ship's con is a designated area. It's typically raised above
Speaker 1: other areas, from which the commander of the ship can
Speaker 1: control or con the ship by issuing commands to the crew.
Speaker 1: Future submarines would incorporate the con within a structure on
Speaker 1: the top side of the submarine called the sail or
Speaker 1: the fin, until technological advancements would render such an arrangement unnecessary.
Speaker 1: The Nautilus also had a collapsible mast and a sales
Speaker 1: system so that it could deploy a fan sail very
Speaker 1: similar to what would be found on a Chinese junk
Speaker 1: ship at the time. This would allow the Nautilus to
Speaker 1: operate more like a classic ship when it's surfaced. The
Speaker 1: Nautilus was a cigar or tear drop shape, taking the
Speaker 1: basic form that we would see used in a lot
Speaker 1: of submarines moving forward. It was nearly seven meters long
Speaker 1: and two meters wide. They had horizontal wings or planes
Speaker 1: that were meant to aid in directing the ship's incline
Speaker 1: or decline as it was moving through the water. A
Speaker 1: section of the keel was a hollow chamber that could
Speaker 1: be flooded to increase the ship's density so it could
Speaker 1: dive under the water. Hand powered pumps could push the
Speaker 1: water back out of the hull and thus returned the
Speaker 1: buoyancy to the ship and allow it to rise back
Speaker 1: up and and surface. Propulsion once again came in the
Speaker 1: form of a hand cranked screw propeller, and Fulton claimed
Speaker 1: that the ship could operate safely at a depth of
Speaker 1: thirty feet or nine meters, although a lot of people
Speaker 1: were skeptical of that. Also, whenever he was doing demonstrations
Speaker 1: on the seine, he always made a point to go
Speaker 1: in the same direction as the current of the river itself,
Speaker 1: which gave the sense that this boat was actually able
Speaker 1: to move much faster than it really could in normal conditions.
Speaker 1: The attack mechanism on this particular submarine was a spike
Speaker 1: with an eye in it, so you can think of
Speaker 1: it like a giant sewing needle, but attached to the
Speaker 1: eye was a cable, and attached the cable was a
Speaker 1: mine an explosive, and the mind was designed to explode
Speaker 1: upon coming into contact with an enemy ship's hull. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Fulton realized that he never build up the speed and
Speaker 1: forced necessary to penetrate a ship's hull with this spike,
Speaker 1: and so he decided instead to use a towed explosive
Speaker 1: device called a carcass. Now it turned out to be moot,
Speaker 1: because when Fulton tried to use the Nautilus in a
Speaker 1: real world setting, it just couldn't keep up with the
Speaker 1: ships it was targeting. Ships could spot it and then
Speaker 1: maneuver out of the way, and this Nautilus was so
Speaker 1: slow it can never catch up. The French eventually canceled
Speaker 1: all contracts with Fulton, who then did the incredibly American
Speaker 1: thing that I mentioned earlier. He switched sides. He had
Speaker 1: been marketing the submarine to the French to use against
Speaker 1: the British, so then he turned around to the British
Speaker 1: to sell them essentially the very same technology to be
Speaker 1: used against the French. Robert Fulton, pioneering arms dealer. His
Speaker 1: attempts at using the submarine for the British were just
Speaker 1: as fruitless as they had been for the French, and
Speaker 1: the Breads were able to dominate the seas with their
Speaker 1: more conventional navy, and ultimately Fulton submarine would never see
Speaker 1: a successful wartime use and he would scrap it, focusing
Speaker 1: on steamboats instead. The next advances in submarines would arrive
Speaker 1: before and during the Civil War in the United States.
Speaker 1: I'll explain more in just a second, but first let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break. In eighteen fifty five, a Bavarian
Speaker 1: engineer named Wilhelm Bower built a submarine for Russia. It
Speaker 1: was called the C Devil and it would require a
Speaker 1: crew of about a dozen sailors. Rather than a hand
Speaker 1: crank propeller, this submarine used a treadmill to provide the
Speaker 1: power needed to drive the propeller's motion, with four sailors
Speaker 1: providing the foot power to do so. Bauer had built
Speaker 1: an earlier submarine back in Bavaria, but it had sunk
Speaker 1: on a test run, and Bower and two other men
Speaker 1: aboard had to actually wait while the vessel slowly filled
Speaker 1: with water until it reached a point where the pressure
Speaker 1: on the inside of the submarine had equalized enough to
Speaker 1: open the hatch and swim out. Because the water pressure
Speaker 1: outside the submarine was so great, they could not physically
Speaker 1: open the hatch the water weight was too great. Once
Speaker 1: the pressure equalized, they were able to open it. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine sitting in a sunken submarine for hours waiting
Speaker 1: for there to be enough water in the summer so
Speaker 1: you can open up that hatch. It must have been terrifying.
Speaker 1: For that reason, Bower, in his Sea Devil design, included
Speaker 1: a primitive airlock so that the crew could escape if
Speaker 1: such an event were to occur. With the new submarine,
Speaker 1: the Sea Devil had more than one thirty successful dives,
Speaker 1: including one during the coronation ceremony, in which the submarine
Speaker 1: carried a four piece band which played beneath the water. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the Sea Devil would end up getting stuck in the
Speaker 1: mud at the bottom of a river, reportedly because Russian admirals,
Speaker 1: who had grown envious of Bower's success and his favor
Speaker 1: with the Tsar, gave Bauer incorrect information about the depth
Speaker 1: of the water, so, according to the story, they sabotaged
Speaker 1: the effort. They said, oh, no, the river isn't that
Speaker 1: you know. The river is is something like forty ft deep,
Speaker 1: when in fact the river was twenty feet deep. So
Speaker 1: then Bower dives further than what he actually can and
Speaker 1: get stuck in the mud. During the American Civil War,
Speaker 1: both the Union and the Confederacy experimented with submersible military boats.
Speaker 1: The Union, for example, constructed a ship called the USS Alligator,
Speaker 1: and the U. S. Navy gave the job of building
Speaker 1: the Alligator to a firm called Nify and Levi, which
Speaker 1: in turn was following the designs of a French engineer
Speaker 1: named Brutus de Ville Roy or a de Ville Ras,
Speaker 1: if you prefer. The purpose of the Alligator was to
Speaker 1: counteract ironclad Confederate ships like the Merrimack. Now, this contract
Speaker 1: called for a ship that was quote at least fifty
Speaker 1: six inches in width and sixty six inches in height
Speaker 1: and forty five feet in length, that equals out to
Speaker 1: one point four meters wide, about one point seven ms high,
Speaker 1: and about thirteen point seven ms long. The actual ship
Speaker 1: would end up being a little different from those dimensions,
Speaker 1: but you get the rough idea. The original propulsion system
Speaker 1: of the Alligator was a set of ores that would
Speaker 1: need to be operated by twenty two sailors. That ended
Speaker 1: up being too slow and too crowded, so the Navy
Speaker 1: scrapped that in favor of a screw type propeller, and
Speaker 1: not only did that propeller provide a faster means of propulsion,
Speaker 1: it also reduced the crew needed to operate the propulsion
Speaker 1: system to just eight sailors instead of twenty two. The
Speaker 1: submarine also had a diver lockout chamber, so again a
Speaker 1: very primitive airlock system, and it also was said to
Speaker 1: have an air purification system, but I couldn't find really
Speaker 1: any information on how that actually worked, so I don't
Speaker 1: really know what that was. You know, whether or not
Speaker 1: it was fully self contained within the vessel, or it
Speaker 1: was a system of hoses and pumps, I don't know. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the Alligator would be more of a headache and also
Speaker 1: a sunken cost literal as it turned out more than
Speaker 1: a viable military asset. It was being towed to South
Speaker 1: Carolina for its first true military mission, but during that
Speaker 1: trip bad weather struck and the towing ship had to
Speaker 1: cut loose the submarine, which was unmanned at the time,
Speaker 1: and the submarine ultimately sank beneath the waves and was lost.
Speaker 1: The Confederacy built a semi submerged to torpedo ship called
Speaker 1: the c. S. S. David. This was not a true submarine.
Speaker 1: It could not dive beneath the water, but most of
Speaker 1: the ship's body was beneath the water. It was steam powered, though,
Speaker 1: which meant that it had to have a smoke stack
Speaker 1: to exhaust the smoke from the coal that they were
Speaker 1: burning in order to heat the boiler. And if you
Speaker 1: have a smoke stack, it's got to stick out over
Speaker 1: the water, so that part was always exposed to the air.
Speaker 1: The ship was designed to hold four bowl three sailors
Speaker 1: and a commanding officer. At the front end was a
Speaker 1: long spar that had a torpedo at the very tip,
Speaker 1: so this was a boat that was meant to ram
Speaker 1: a ship, and the tip of the spar would explode
Speaker 1: upon contact. The David attacked a Union ship called the
Speaker 1: USS New Iron Sides on October Free while the David
Speaker 1: struck New Iron Sides and the torpedo exploded as planned.
Speaker 1: The resulting splash of water slashed into the David and
Speaker 1: extinguished the fire for the ship's boiler, so now there
Speaker 1: was no power to the ship anymore. The commanding officer
Speaker 1: and one of the crew abandoned the ship. Technically, actually
Speaker 1: two of the crew abandoned the ship. The third crew
Speaker 1: member could not swim, so one of the other crew
Speaker 1: members swam back, and then those two guys were actually
Speaker 1: able to re light the boiler fire and then eventually
Speaker 1: navigate away from the New irons Sides. Sailors aboard the
Speaker 1: New Iron Sides had been firing with small arms to
Speaker 1: against the David, but didn't do any significant damage. So uh,
Speaker 1: those two guys got away. The other two were actually captured.
Speaker 1: The most famous Confederate submarine was called the h L. Huntley,
Speaker 1: which was named after Horace Huntley, who designed it. The
Speaker 1: submarine used a spar torpedo similar to what the David
Speaker 1: had used, but unlike the David, the Hunley could actually
Speaker 1: dive beneath the water. It carried a crew of eight,
Speaker 1: including the commanding officer. Sometimes some reports say could hold
Speaker 1: up as as many as nine, but eight was the
Speaker 1: standard crew and seven people were needed to hand crank
Speaker 1: the propeller. The eighth wooden man a rudder to steer
Speaker 1: the vessel. The vessel was nearly forty ft or twelve
Speaker 1: meters long, and inside the height of the vessel was
Speaker 1: just over four ft three inches or one point three meters,
Speaker 1: which meant it was pretty cramped and said that submarine
Speaker 1: you could not stand, you know, tall in there. The
Speaker 1: ship had ballast tanks that could take on water and
Speaker 1: also expel it using hand powered pumps. The ship also
Speaker 1: carried weights to help act as ballast, and the weights
Speaker 1: could be quickly jettisoned if the ship needed to surface quickly,
Speaker 1: and it had a pair of snorkels that could bring
Speaker 1: fresh air into the vessel when it was close to
Speaker 1: the surface, Otherwise the ship was cut off from fresh air.
Speaker 1: And according to some accounts, a single candle provided light
Speaker 1: inside the submarine, and it also provided a warning when
Speaker 1: the oxygen level was getting low because the candle's flame
Speaker 1: would begin to flicker. Part of the reason why the
Speaker 1: Hunley is famous is because it was responsible for a
Speaker 1: couple of dozen deaths, most of them Confederate soldiers, and
Speaker 1: remember this was a Confederate ship. During the testing of
Speaker 1: the vessel, the Honley sank twice, the first result in
Speaker 1: the loss of five crewmen, and in the second accident,
Speaker 1: all eight of the crew died, including Hunley himself, who
Speaker 1: was at the time acting as the commanding officer. Even
Speaker 1: with those two accidents during the testing phase, the Confederacy
Speaker 1: salvaged the ship, repaired it for use, and put it
Speaker 1: back into official military use. On February seventeen sixty four,
Speaker 1: the Hunley attacked the Union ship the Housatonic, which was
Speaker 1: a wooden ship of war, and the Huntley's attack was
Speaker 1: technically successful. The Housatonic did sink and five crew of
Speaker 1: the Hausatonic died as a result. However, the Huntley itself
Speaker 1: failed to return to port, and for many years no
Speaker 1: one was really sure what had happened. I mean, clearly,
Speaker 1: somewhere along the line the Hunley sank, but no one
Speaker 1: was sure where or why. The Huntley, which was only
Speaker 1: in thirty feet or nine meters of water, remained lost
Speaker 1: until nineteen five years later. Crews were able to retrieve
Speaker 1: the Huntley. Upon opening the submarine, the retrieval crews were
Speaker 1: surprised to find that the Hunley's crew were all at
Speaker 1: their stations, which suggested there was no effort to abandon ship.
Speaker 1: There was no struggle to try and open the hatches
Speaker 1: or anything like that, which raises the question what actually
Speaker 1: killed the crew before the ship had been unsealed. The
Speaker 1: general theory was that the crew had either suffocated or
Speaker 1: they had drowned, but the submarine had no signs of
Speaker 1: any damage that would have caused them to drown, So
Speaker 1: the leading hypothesis now is that the shock wave from
Speaker 1: the exploding torpedo actually killed the crew. A ruptured blood
Speaker 1: vessels in their lungs and led to them becoming incapacitated
Speaker 1: and then ultimately dying. However, we do not know for
Speaker 1: sure what did it now. I'm going to conclude this
Speaker 1: episode with the description of one other early submarine built
Speaker 1: while the Union and Confederacy were both attempting to make
Speaker 1: practical use of submarines of their own. This ship's name
Speaker 1: was Le Planeur, and this was designed by a man
Speaker 1: named Bourgeois in the late eighteen fifties. Actual construction began
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty and it took a couple of years
Speaker 1: for it to be finished, And as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, it was the first submarine to use a
Speaker 1: mechanical means of propulsion rather than relying directly on manpower.
Speaker 1: The submarine carried containers of compressed air, and the air
Speaker 1: served many purposes. It provided the power needed to drive
Speaker 1: the propellers of the submarine. So you know, we released
Speaker 1: the compressed air and it moves the mechanical elements that
Speaker 1: actually make the propeller turn. So this was an air
Speaker 1: powered vehicle, and the subs engine was an eighty horsepower engine.
Speaker 1: The compressed air would also keep pressure inside the submarine
Speaker 1: greater than it was outside the submarine, which was said
Speaker 1: to be good to keep water from seeping into the vessel,
Speaker 1: which for submarines is considered to be a bad thing.
Speaker 1: Tanks used to hold the compressed air were quite large.
Speaker 1: They needed to be to hold enough air to operate
Speaker 1: the submarine for longer than just a few moments. That
Speaker 1: meant that the size of the overall vessel had to
Speaker 1: be quite big as well. It measured one hundred forty
Speaker 1: feet long or nearly forty three meters far larger than
Speaker 1: any submarine before it. It required a crew of twelve
Speaker 1: sailors to man the ship, and the innovations were pretty important,
Speaker 1: but the sub also had its share of drawbacks. One
Speaker 1: of those was that initially relied on a series of
Speaker 1: pipes and pistons inside the submarine that could move water
Speaker 1: around to act as ballast and to help provide stability
Speaker 1: as the ship was diving or where when it was climbing. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it was made more difficult because of the ship's size. Right,
Speaker 1: You've got a ship that's very long, and you get
Speaker 1: a sort of lever effect. Right, a small change at
Speaker 1: a pivot point would end up being a huge change
Speaker 1: toward either end of the submarine. And unfortunately, the system
Speaker 1: wasn't able to react very quickly to changes in the
Speaker 1: ship's orientation, so a typical trip under the waves would
Speaker 1: be pretty harrowing. The ship would dive and the systems
Speaker 1: needed to correct its attitude in the water to level
Speaker 1: it out, would very slowly kick in, and then the
Speaker 1: ship would start to level out, but it would overcorrect
Speaker 1: and then it would start to climb and the whole
Speaker 1: cycle would start up again. Now the system would be
Speaker 1: trying to correct for the change in attitude where now
Speaker 1: it's it's tilted up instead of down, and the process
Speaker 1: would keep going, so you had this see saw effect
Speaker 1: in the water as you're riding on the submarine. It
Speaker 1: could not maintain a level heading with zero buoyancy, and
Speaker 1: so ultimately the project was scrapped because it was just
Speaker 1: too risky. There needed to be more innovation in the
Speaker 1: field to stabilize the submarine so that it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: so unmanageable underwater. Now. In our next episode, will continue
Speaker 1: down the path of history to explore how marine technology
Speaker 1: advanced over time and how modern submarines work today. But
Speaker 1: there's a lot more to cover that will probably skip
Speaker 1: around a little bit because in some cases we're talking
Speaker 1: about evolutionary changes where it's you know, important changes, important
Speaker 1: significant innovations in submarine technology. But to cover every single
Speaker 1: one would be pretty exhausting, so I'll probably lump them
Speaker 1: together in sections. But that's for the next episode. If
Speaker 1: you guys have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: send me a message. The email addresses tech Stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Dropped by our website that's
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Speaker 1: we are on social media. You also find an archive
Speaker 1: of all of our past episodes up there, and there's
Speaker 1: a link to our online store, where every purchase you
Speaker 1: make goes to help the show, and we greatly appreciate it,
Speaker 1: and I will talk to you again really soon. Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
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