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“Wilhelm Bauer (1822-75) was a Bavarian non-commissioned officer of artillery in the Duke of Holstein’s army. His talent and ingenuity took him high above his humble beginnings and, according to one authority, he became ‘the most persistent inventor to be found in the whole history of submarine navigation’. In January 1850 he submitted plans for a submarine boat to break the blockade imposed by Schleswig-Holstein; and he persuaded the Minister of Marine to allocate him thirty Prussian thalers, from the naval budget. This was enough to construct a 70 x 18 x 29 cm clockwork model which, demonstrated in Kiel harbour to an assemblage of notables, led to construction of a full-sized submarine at Kiel funded – inadequately – by voluntary contributions from army personnel and local civilians. The structure of the boat, which he called Der Brandtaucher (‘Diving Incendiary’), had to be degraded in order to economize. Bauer cautioned that diving depth would consequently be reduced from 30 m to 9.5 m, but the warning was not heeded. “Der Brandtaucher was completed on 18 December 1850 at the iron foundry of Schweffel and Howalt and towed, on rails, into the water. The craft was 8.07 m long, 2.02 m at maximum beam and drew 2.63 m. Displacement submerged was 30.5 tons with a 3-ton margin of buoyancy – that is displacement on the surface was 27.5 tons. A crew of three navigated and propelled the boat by means of a treadwheel with two gears which revolved a three-bladed propeller at 60-115 rpm according to the gear selected. The treadwheel, hideously reminiscent of contemporary penal punishments, could be turned at up to 20 rpm which generated a speed of 3 knots, although that pace could not be maintained for long. Space between the keel and interior decking served for ballast and compensating water. Water, admitted through a hull valve and a regulating valve, was expelled by two hand-operated piston pumps. External water pressure, indicating diving depth, was measured by a spring gauge; and fore-and-aft trim was corrected by a hand-wheel in the steering compartment which moved a 500 kg cast-iron weight to and fro along rails under the deck plating – an excellent idea. There was the usual steering rudder but no diving rudders because Bauer reasoned that pitch, for changing depth, could just as well be achieved by the sliding weight. “During the initial trial an undeclared fault caused Brandtaucher, unmanned, to sink at her berth, but she was raised and ready for further trials on 1 February 1851. At 9 a.m., Bauer, together with a blacksmith and a carpenter named Thomsen and Witt, climbed down through the hatch with the intention of proving to the navy that the boat could dive to a depth of 1 atmosphere (10 m or 33 ft), a touch beyond the inventor’s calculated limit. The crew had no practical experience and no safety precautions were taken. “Passing 9.4 m, and still going down fast, the slab sided submarine creaked and groaned alarmingly while the hull plating started to distort. The bottom at 16.3 m was reached in 54 seconds with a stern-down angle of 34 degrees, the treadwheel having broken adrift. The pumps could not cope and water poured in through popped rivets. “Observers quickly realized that something had gone wrong; but attempts to raise the boat by grappling were ineffectual and nearly blocked the crew’s eventual escape. There are two versions of what happened inside the submarine which was not itself salvaged until 5 July 1887. “The official story is that Bauer waited six-and-a-half hours until internal and external pressures had become equal (by reason of the leaks), at which point he opened the hatch, allowing the crew to float to the surface in a bubble of air. (Equalizing air pressure has always been the single most important aspect of submarine escape, but it requires a trapped crew to do what instinct forbids: open valves to admit more water from the insistent sea outside.) The alternative account – entirely credible – has Bauer, worried about foul air, threatening his two companions with a spanner in order to persuade them that the boat had to be deliberately flooded, as quickly as possible, so that the hatch could be opened. “Submarine activities at Kiel came to an end when Schleswig-Holstein was restored to Denmark. Bauer took his plans elsewhere, eventually leaving Germany for Austria and then traveling on to Great Britain. In the summer of 1853, the Bavarian projector demonstrated a model submarine to the Royal Family at Osborne, and Prince Albert 9top Freeman and technological enthusiast) was enthralled. “The German-speaking Prince Consort decided to help Bauer, who spoke no English, and eventually told Prime Minister Palmerston: ‘it is a priori impossible that so important and new a fact as submarine navigation should be useless in the hands of men of genius,’ With such influential support, Bauer was sure of a hearing in high places. In spite of rejections at the outset the Admiralty Surveyor’s Department undertook, on 26 August 1854, to re-examine Bauer’s proposal and arrange an interview with the distinguished professor Michael Faraday. Prince Albert also arranged an introduction to the renowned naval architect John Scott Russell who owned a shipyard bordering the Thames on the Isle of Dogs. Bauer thereupon moved to nearby Greenwich where he drew up a new design. “Russell’s role (to please Albert) was to assist Bauer in presenting his plans, through an interpreter, to the British Admiralty Surveyor (later the Controller). Misunderstandings were inevitable: Bauer became convinced that his ideas were being plagiarized ad that the contract offered in due course by the Admiralty was crooked. “Distrust was mutual; and, with war in the Crimea looming, the paranoid Bauer hurriedly took himself to Russia where he was brought before Russia’s Navy Minister, the Grand Duke Constantine. Meanwhile, Scott Russell’s yard finished Bauer’s boat and tested it in the Thames. It sank. “There was no need to cajole Imperial Russia into playing an active role in the development of underwater warfare. Between 1720 and 1724, half a century before David Bushnell’s Turtle, peter the Great sponsored Efim Nikinov’s efforts to construct two secret submersibles for defending the shallow Baltic approaches to the capital, and experiments with mines were initiated between 1807 and 1810 by Ivan Ivanovitch Fitstum (c. 1765-1829), an Army engineer who had gleaned Western whispers about such matters. The Committee on Underwater Experiments, formed in 1839 within the Engineering Section of the Army, researched the feasibility of using mines for harbour defence, and it was expertise acquired in the 1840s that enabled Russia to employ sophisticated, albeit poorly managed, defensive mining systems in the Black and Baltic seas during the Crimean War. “Thus it was in a receptive atmosphere that Bauer, in May 1855, accepted a commission to build his third submarine at the Duke of Leuchtenberg’s machine factory, St. Petersburg. The Seeteufel (Sea Devil) was completed within six months, to stringent specifications, on 1 November. She was twice the size of Brandtaucher, 16.132 m long and 3.45 m broad; the propeller was again powered by treadmill. Bauer calculated the safe diving depth as 47 m. “It took an additional six months for the Russian Navy to transport the boat from St. Petersburg to Kronstadt, the principal Baltic naval base which the Grand Duke was anxious to protect against marauding British men-of-war. Here, a four piece band was embarked to play on the harbour bottom to celebrate tsar Alexander II’s coronation day: the music was much enjoyed from the surface. “Bauer conducted no less than 134 diving trials; but, tantalizingly, there is no record of what they comprised – very likely bumping on the bottom in the main. On 2 October 1856, the submarine’s crew tangled with an obstruction on the seabed – tending to confirm an assumption that Seeteufel performed either on the bottom or on the surface, but not much in between. Pumping out water brought the bow up, but to more, whereupon a Russian lieutenant on board opened the hatch before it was fully clear of the water (a stupidity frequently to be repeated in submarine history) and the boat sank swiftly back again. “Everybody escaped and the boat was salvaged but not refitted. The Navy Ministry informed Bauer:’ … your ideas on underwater travel are basically correct … if your boat is perfected more satisfactory results can be achieved.’ “The inventor’s expenses were paid and he started modeling a 24-gun submersible corvette propelled by steam. The boat was to approach an enemy vessel underwater, surface, fire her guns and then submerge to reload. The concept did not find favour. (However, it was seen again in the Royal Navy’s M-Class monitor submarines towards the end of the first World War, but they had to reload their single 12-in guns on the surface.) “Bauer, still disappointed, left Russia in the spring of 1858. He did not return to the submarine world until the end of 1864, during the German-Danish War, when he volunteered for Prussian service and embarked on his final but uncompleted submarine project, the Küstenbrander (‘Coastal Incendiary’). On 18 December he wrote perceptively to the Royal Prussian War and Naval Ministry:
“Admiral Donitz would proclaim similar sentiments before the onset of the Second World War. Significantly, the thickness of the hull for Bauer’s boat above the waterline was 25 mm but only 12.7 mm below, implying that, in common with practically all submersible designs, the boat was expected to spend its time on the surface in the presence of an enemy, diving only when it had to. The principal weapon was a huge mortar mounted on the bow for firing a shell directly upwards into an enemy ship. If that did not do the trick, the captain had recourse to a battery of horizontal underwater guns with arrangements (unexplained) to minimize the effects of recoil on stability – an advance on colombiads. “Two propositions for Küstenbrander were eminently sensible. The ten-man crew would have been sufficient air for twenty-four hours, but a remarkably advanced air purification system, providing oxygen for breathing and caustic potash for absorbing exhaled carbon dioxide, would increase the time shut down for a further day. And Bauer’s internal combustion engine pre-dated Dr. Walter’s air-independent hydrogen peroxide plant for U-boats by some eighty years. Parafin mixed with oxygen (generated by manganese dioxide) would be ignited by an electric spark to create high-pressure gas to force water out of cylinders on to turbine blades (it was not yet feasible to use steam directly for a turbine). “Nothing came of Bauer’s dedication to submarine development – other than encouragement for others; ill-tempered outbursts and mistrust distanced him from backers. He inevitably suffered from low social standing in a class-ridden society and carried a sizeable chip on his shoulder. “Engineers and inventors in the United States, often immigrants from humble backgrounds in Europe, were not so prone to encounter class barriers – at least, not if they showed a way of making money – and technology prospered accordingly. But, for the time being, America, a world away from Crimean battles, produced only one submariner, and he confined himself to the Great Lakes. |