CHAPTER IX

THE EARLY HISTORY OF SUBMARINE WARFARE

Although no mention of a submarine vessel having been actually constructed can be found earlier than the seventeenth century, and although the torpedo and the mine were not invented till still later, the art of submarine warfare and subaqueous exploration dates back to a very much earlier period.

The earliest form of under-water attack was carried out by divers long before explosive compounds were invented, and the old writers have strange stories to tell of fierce fights beneath the waves.

“The first divers learned their art,” says John Beckmann, in his “History of Inventions and Discoveries,” “by early and adventurous experience, in trying to continue under water as long as possible without breathing, and indeed it must be allowed that some of them carried it to very great perfection. This art, however, excites little surprise, for, like running, throwing, and other bodily dexterities, it requires only practice; but it is certain that those nations called by us uncultivated and savage excel in it the Europeans who through refinement and luxury have become more delicate and less fit for such laborious exercises.”

In early times divers were employed for peaceful as well as for hostile purposes. They were kept in ships to assist in raising anchors and to recover goods thrown overboard in times of danger, and by the laws of the Rhodians they were allowed a share of the wreck, proportional to the depth at which they had gone in search of it. “The pearls of the Greek and Roman ladies,” writes Beckmann, “were fished up by divers at the great hazard of their lives, and by the like means are procured at present those which are purchased as ornaments by our fair.”

In the operations of war divers were used for many purposes. Beckmann tells us that when Alexander was besieging Tyre, divers swam off from the city under water to a great distance and with long hooks tore to pieces the mole with which the besiegers were endeavouring to block up the harbour.

We learn from Herodotus (viii. 8) that when the fleet of Xerxes was advancing to the invasion of Greece, “there was in the force one Skyllias, a Skionaian, the best diver of his time, who in the shipwreck off Pilîon had saved many things for the Persians and had also obtained many things himself.” This diver deserted to the Greeks and gave them the benefit of his skill as well as of recent intelligence concerning their enemy. He was the means of destroying a number of the Persian ships by a curious kind of submarine attack. Accompanied by his daughter Kyane, whom he had instructed in his art, he dived during a storm and “cast off” the cables from the anchors which held the vessels, the result being that they were driven on shore and wrecked.

Thucydides (iv. 26) gives an instance of a case of divers being employed as subaqueous auxiliaries during the siege of Syracuse.

“The besieged had driven piles into the water before their old docks, that their vessels might be in safety behind them and the Athenians be unable to stand in amongst them and do any damage to the shipping.” The latter endeavoured to remove this species of nautical entrenchment, and for this purpose they constructed a raft on which were turrets and parapets to cover the men who embarked on it. It was towed up to a line of piles and used as a kind of covering battery for the crews of boats who removed the piles which had been “sawed off close to the bottom by divers.” A serious obstruction was offered by some piles driven in till their heads were below the surface of the water in the hope that the besieging ships might run upon it. But the divers, by persevering efforts, succeeded in sawing them through, thus enabling the besiegers to remove them.

The Chronicles of the early Middle Ages supply instances of the employment of divers in naval warfare. The Baltic, we read, was so infested with pirates that a Swedish force was sent against them. The Swedish admiral, observing that the pirate vessels lay at anchor in a certain bay, sent in at night men from his own fleet to dive beneath them and make holes in their bottoms. The following day he engaged them. In the action the leaks made by the subaqueous assailants during the night proved so serious that the piratical crews had to turn their attention chiefly to stopping them and to baling out their vessels. The number available to fight their enemy was in consequence so reduced that the Swedes gained a complete victory and the power of the pirates was annihilated.

Again at the siege of Malta by the Turks in the sixteenth century some furious under-water fighting occurred. The Maltese were excellent divers and the Knights took advantage of their skill to assist in the erection of a barricade across the mouth of one of the creeks which indent the shores of the Grand Harbour. This obstruction the Turkish besiegers endeavoured to remove, and accordingly they made upon it a series of determined attacks. The divers left their work to drive them off and a terrible and weird struggle ensued, frequently below the surface of the water, which finally ended in the repulse of the infidel assailants.

One must accept _cum grano salis_ the stories told by writers regarding the time that divers were able to continue under water. Beckmann said that the divers of Astrakhan employed in the fishery there could remain for seven minutes under water. The divers in Holland seem to have been very expert, for an observer, during the time they were under water, was obliged to breathe at least ten times. “Those who collect pearl-shells in the East Indies can remain under water a quarter of an hour, though some are of opinion that it is possible to continue longer; and Mersenne mentions a diver, named John Barrinus, who could dive under water for six hours.” Beckmann evidently found it a little difficult to swallow this, so he adds, “How far this may be true I shall leave others to judge.”

An account of a Sicilian diver, Nicolo Pesce, given by Kircher, is yet more marvellous than any of those just cited. So great was his skill that he carried letters for the king from Sicily to Calabria. The story goes that the king offered him a gold cup if he would explore the terrible Gulf of Charybdis. He remained for three-quarters of an hour amidst the foaming abyss and on his return described all the horrors of the place to the astonished monarch, who requested him to dive once more to further examine the gulf. For some time he hesitated, but upon the promise of a still larger cup and a purse of gold he was tempted to plunge again, with the melancholy result that he never came to the surface again.

A history of the art and practice of diving, although it would present many points of interest, is foreign to our subject, and attention must be confined to the question of submarine warfare.

Some writers on this subject, whilst making such statements as “The confinement of gunpowder in watertight cases and its submarine explosion for the destruction of floating and other bodies is almost as old as villainous saltpetre itself,” or “The ancients understood the manufacture of subaqueous explosives or at least combustibles,” do not trouble to give any particular instances. A French writer is reported to have collected accounts of the use of such devices against ships below the water-line, but a diligent search has failed to reveal the name of the author.

“The fact that some under-water explosive compound,” said Admiral Cyprian Bridge, in an article he contributed to _Fraser’s Magazine_ many years ago, “had been known in ancient times was not lost sight of in the stirring intellectual revolution of the Renaissance, which, amongst other legacies, bequeathed to mankind the outlines of the modern art of war. It is not surprising, therefore, that we should meet with the use of such an agent in the wars of the sixteenth century. The most celebrated instance of its employment was by the Italian Giannibelli (_sic_) at Antioch during the siege of the city by the Prince of Parma.”

Perhaps the Admiral is referring to what Lieutenant Sleeman says is the earliest record of the employment of a torpedo (_i.e._, a case of explosion possessing the power of aggression). In 1585 an Italian engineer named Zambelli invented a floating mine and succeeded in destroying a bridge built over the Scheldt by the Prince of Parma. Zambelli’s mine consisted of a flat boat filled with gunpowder arranged in it so as to secure the maximum effectiveness, and provided with a long sulphur metal rope and clockwork for its ignition.

A few years before this feat (in 1578) an Englishman, by name William Bourne, published a book entitled, “Inventions or Devices.” He suggested in his seventeenth article, “How for to sink a ship that hath laid you aboard without shooting of ordnance.” William Bourne is in some books said to have actually invented a plunging apparatus for use in warfare, but no circumstantial account of such a vessel is extant.

The Marquis of Worcester, in his “Century of Inventions” (1663), describes in section 9 “An engine, portable in one’s pocket, which may be carried and fastened on the inside of the greatest ship, _Tanquam aliud agens_, and at any appointed minute, though a week after, either by day or night it shall irrecoverably sink that ship.” The smallness of the engine suggests some explosive missile connected with clockwork as the only means to insure its being compact and operating on a precise day at a stated point of time. Section 10 is as follows: “A way from a mile off to dive and fasten a like engine to any ship so as it may punctually work the same effect either for time or execution.”

In 1596 John Napier of Merchiston wrote a statement of four “Secret Inventions,” concluding with the remark—“These inventions, besides devices of _sailing under the water_ with divers other devices and stratagems for burning of the enemies, by the grace of God, and work of expert craftsmen, I hope to perform.”

Pepys in his “Diary,” under date March 14, 1662, says: “This afternoon came the German Doctor Knuffler to discourse with us about his engine to blow up ships. We doubted not the matter of fact it being tried in Cromwell’s time, but the safety of carrying them in ships, but he do tell us that when he comes to tell the King his secret, for none but the Kings successively and their heirs must know it, it will appear to be of no danger at all.”

The foregoing extracts show that the possibility of a practical method of submarine attack was beginning to take shape in the minds of philosophers and inventive geniuses. “Fire and Powder Ships,” “Machines,” “Internals,” “Catamarans,” and similar devices for accomplishing the destruction of an enemy were known at this time, and it is not strange that the idea of making the explosion take place _beneath_ the water should have suggested itself.