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'Compared to France and the United States, England has produced very few inventors of submarine vessels. The Rev. G. W. Garret was, of course, a notable exception to this rule, and now we have to describe a submarine invented by two others of our fellow-countrymen, Messrs. Campbell and Ash. The Nautilus – a name very familiar to readers of Jules Verne’s exciting romances – as she was called, attracted a considerable amount of attention in her day, through that day was a short one. She was built to the inventors’ plans by Messrs. Wolseley & Lyon, and carried out her trials in one of the docks at Tilbury in 1886. She was made of Siemens-Martin steel, was 60 feet long and 8 feet wide, and had a displacement of 50 tons. She was of the very usual cigar shape, although more curved below than above from a longitudinal point of view, and fitted with twin screws driven by electric motors. The means provided for sinking and rising recall those of old William Bourne, the Elizabethan gunner, whose design for a submarine boat we have fully noticed. Both boats effected in or out a portion of each side, and the Campbell and Ash boat pushing in or out four cylinders on each side. Drawn in, the volume of water displaced was decreased, wen she would sink. Driven out again by screw gearing turned by the motors on board, the vessel’s displacement was increased, and she came to the surface again. That was the theory, but, as will shortly be seen, it did not work very satisfactorily.' 'When her most important trial took place at Tilbury, she had several distinguished visitors on board, including Lord Charles Beresford and Sir William White, the well-known Naval Constructor. Down she sank right enough, but she remained below so long that the spectators on shore began to get very anxious. What had happened? It afterwards transpired that there was a deal of soft mud in the bottom of the dock, into which the Nautilus settled comfortably down, with the result that her cylinders could not be pushed outboard. The mud offered too much resistance for the mechanism, which was designed for use in clear water. The air supply began to get short, and passengers and crew were beginning to lose hope, when Sir William White suggested that all hands should collect at one end of the boat. This caused the other end to lift clear of the mud, the cylinders could be pushed out and the boat came to the surface. The engineer, who had quite recovered any alarm he may have felt, was now full of confidence, and immediately opened the scuttle to shout to those on shore that they were going to make another descent. But most of those on board had had enough of the Nautilus, and “were not taking” any more experiments. They thought they would look better from terra firma. So the sanguine engineer was hauled down out of the hatch that he was blocking and there was a general exodus to the shore. The unlucky submarine got a bad name, and disappeared from public notice.' |