Submarine

The idea of an underwater vessel was ancient—Leonardo da Vinci had sketched designs, and Cornelius Drebbel had built a leather-covered rowing boat that submerged briefly in the Thames around 1620. David Bushnell's Turtle attacked British ships in New York harbor during the American Revolution in 1776, though without success. But these were curiosities, capable of little more than surviving a brief dive. Robert Fulton's Nautilus, built in Paris in 1800, was the first submarine designed as a serious weapon system, with the range, maneuverability, and armament to threaten warships.

Fulton was an American inventor who had failed to find backing in the United States for his schemes—which included canals, submarines, and later steamboats. Revolutionary France, locked in existential struggle with the British navy, offered more fertile ground. If conventional warships could not challenge British supremacy, perhaps unconventional ones could. Napoleon's government funded Fulton's submarine project, hoping to break the blockade that strangled French trade.

The Nautilus was 21 feet long with a copper hull over iron ribs—the copper chosen both for its resistance to seawater corrosion and its ability to be formed into a smooth, hydrodynamic shape. A hand-cranked propeller drove the vessel underwater; a collapsible mast and sail provided surface propulsion. Ballast tanks filled with water for diving; compressed air expelled the water for surfacing. A conning tower with glass portholes gave the pilot visibility at periscope depth. The vessel could carry four men and remain submerged for hours, limited mainly by the crew's air supply.

The weapon was a detachable explosive charge—a mine that the submarine would attach to an enemy ship's hull, then retreat before detonation. In demonstrations on the Seine in 1801, Fulton successfully sank target vessels. The Nautilus proved that underwater attack was technically feasible. A submarine could approach an anchored warship invisibly, plant a charge, and escape before the explosion revealed its presence.

But Napoleon lost faith. Submarines were slow, limited in range, and dependent on the enemy staying conveniently still. They could not challenge the British navy's mobility or intercept convoys at sea. The traditional weapons of commerce raiding—privateers and coastal batteries—seemed more practical. French naval ministers dismissed the submarine as ungentlemanly warfare, unsuited to the glory of combat. Fulton, disgusted, offered his services to Britain, which also declined after initial interest. The submarine waited for technologies—engines, torpedoes, better hull materials—that would not emerge for decades.

The American Civil War saw the first submarine to sink an enemy warship in combat: the CSS Hunley destroyed the USS Housatonic in 1864, though the Hunley itself was lost. By the 1890s, electric motors for underwater propulsion and internal combustion engines for surface running created the modern submarine pattern. World War I demonstrated that submarines could strangle maritime trade—the German U-boat campaign nearly starved Britain into surrender. By World War II, submarines were decisive weapons; by the Cold War, nuclear-powered submarines carrying ballistic missiles became the ultimate strategic deterrent.

Fulton's Nautilus established the basic concept: a vessel that could submerge to attack invisibly and surface to travel efficiently. The specific technologies—hand-crank to diesel-electric to nuclear; detachable mines to self-propelled torpedoes to guided missiles—evolved beyond anything Fulton imagined. But the operational principle was there in 1800: underwater warfare could neutralize surface superiority. The weak could strike the strong from beneath.