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"We now come to what may be fairly regarded as the most successful of all diving and wrecking boats, the Argonaut of Simon Lake, of which mention has more than once been made in formaer chapters. It is interesting to note that this successful inventor drew his first inspiration direct from Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea," that remarkable romance of a submarine vessel. This was at the age of ten, and a very few years later he produced the crude but highly practical submarine Argonaut Junior, which has been fairly described. But this only spurred the inventor on to further efforts, and in 1897 he launched the Argonaut I. This was of the orthodox cigar shape, and built of steel plating over string frames. She was 36 feet long with a beam of 9 feet, and was constructed in Baltimore. She carried a 30 h. p. White and Middleton gas engine, a dynamo, searchlight, air-compressor and water-ballast pumps. She was provided with a diving compartment, with geared wheels for movement along the sea-floor, and with a propeller for propulsion at the surface. Although so small in size, a crew of five men cruised over 2,000 miles in her in 1898, partly at the surface and partly submerged, in Chesapeake Bay and on the Atlantic coast. During this extended cruise she was put through every trial and experiment that could be devised, coming out triumphantly from almost all, and finally vindicated her surface seaworthiness by braving the terrible storms of November and December, in which over two hundred vessels were wrecked. Here are a few extracts from the inventor's own account of the cruise.1 We have been in some pretty rough weather and found that she was perfectly seaworthy. Of course, being so small and of such weight, the seas at times would wash clear over her decks. This, however, caused no inconvenience to those below, as her stability was such that she would roll or pitch very little, even though the seas were breaking over her in great volume.We have been cruising on the bottom in rivers, in Chesapeake Bay and beneath the broad Atlantic. In the rivers we invariably found a muddy bed; in the bay we found bottoms of various kinds, in some places so soft that our divers would sink up to their knees, while in other places the ground would be hard, and at one place we ran across a bottom which was composed of loose gravel, resembling shelled corn. Out in the ocean, however, was found the ideal submarine course, consisting of a fine grey sand, almost as hard as a macadamized road, and very level and uniform. During this trip we investigated several sunken wrecks. We found one old wreck, said to have gone down some forty years ago near the mouth of the Patuxent River. … Toad-fish had evidently found this old wreck a congenial habitation, and when the diver's hand comes in contact with one of these horrible-looking, strong-jawed, big mouthed fish, he pulls it back pretty quickly. We spent some hours with Hampton Roads as head-quarters, and made several descents in the waters adjacent thereto; we were desirous of making a search for cables that connected with the mines guarding the entrance to the harbour, but could not obtain permission from the authorities, who were afraid we might accidentally sever them, which would, of course, make their entire system of defense useless. It was therefore necessary for us, in order to demonstrate the practicability of vessels of this type for this purpose to lay a cable ourselves, which we did, across the channel leading to the Patuxent River. We then submerged and, taking our bearings by the compass, ran over the bottom, with the door in our diving compartment open, until we came across the cable, which we hauled up into the compartment with a hook only about four and a half feet long, and we could not avoid the impression that it would be a very easy thing to destroy the efficiency of the present mine system. And how many lives might have been saved and millions of dollars besides, had our Navy been provided with a craft of this type to lead the way into Santiago, Havana or San Juan, off which ports squadrons were compelled to lie for weeks and months owing to fear of mines? On another trip we had a college professor on board, who could not understand exactly how our men could get out of the boat. I told him to come into the diver's compartment and I would explain it to him. Accordingly, he, reluctantly, as I thought, entered the compartment, which in the Argonaut is a little room only 4 feet long and a little wider. After closing the door I noticed that the colour was leaving his face and a few beads of perspiration were standing out upon his forehead, and had he been any one else but a professor or, possibly, a newspaperman, I would not have gone any further with the experiment. The door, however, was closed and securely fastened. I then opened the valve a full turn, and the air began to rush in with a great noise. He grabbed hold of one of the frames and glanced with longing eyes at the door we had just entered. After getting the desired pressure I stooped down and commenced to unscrew the bolts, holding the door which leads out into the water. Our professor said, 'What are you doing now?' I answered, 'I am going to open this door so that you can see the bottom.' Throwing out his hands he said, 'No, no, don't do that. I would not put you to that much trouble for the world.' However about that time the door dropped down, and as he saw the water did not come in, the colour returned to his face, and he exclaimed, 'Well, if I had not seen it, I never would have believed it.' But Mr. Lake found that the cigar shape, as has so often proved the case, did not give him quite as much horizontal stability as he would have liked, and so he set to work to reconstruct his boat, finally transforming her into the Argonaut II. When finished, about 1900, she had a cigar-shaped hull as before, but was 20 feet longer and carried above a buoyant superstructure with a swan bow and overhanging stern, so that at the surface her hull looked very like that of an ordinary yacht. Her engines were by the same makers but were twice as powerful, and she carried a 4-h.p. auxiliary engine in addition. Her internal arrangements were very similar to those she had before alteration, and she proved as great a success as before, with the advantage of greater stability, seaworthiness and accommodation, for she could now carry a crew of eight men and had a cruising radius of 3,000 miles. From this improved Argonaut to the Protector was but one step. 1. Quoted by Herbert Fyfe in "Submarine Warfare." |