BORIS BURDA: how to learn to travel underwater
Silent Evolution’ by Jason deCaires Taylor. MUSA, Mexico / factbrainiac.com
ATTENTION — QUESTION!
On June 1, 1917, aboard a certain warship, the cook burned the cutlets, and the galley filled with smoke. The cook decided to air out the room — and as a result, the ship perished along with its entire crew. What type of ship was it?
ATTENTION — THE CORRECT ANSWER!
A submarine, of course — they fry cutlets even while submerged, and the cook simply forgot…
MOVEMENT INTO THE DEPTHS
F
or the first couple of million years of their existence, humans moved only on a plane (technically — on the surface of a sphere, but the sphere was so large that it was hardly noticeable), that is, in two dimensions. At the same time, they were constantly in contact with three-dimensional media — the ground, water, and air. However, moving through them in three dimensions was not easy.
It seemed that movement underground was impossible. But already in the 1930s in Germany, real work was underway on several projects at once, like the «Zmey Midgard» machine weighing 60,000 tonnes, armed with thousands of mines and capable of 10 km/h in soft soil and 2 km/h in rocky ground (to mine enemy ports). Rumor now has it they’re building them, but that’s all secret…
The solid element successfully resists the intrusive humans, but the gaseous one — air — is practically conquered. First kites and gliders, in the eighteenth century — balloons, and in the twentieth — heavier-than-air machines — increased speed, range, and altitude so quickly that now at any given moment there are roughly 12,000 airplanes in the sky…
Water, of course, is softer than ground, but significantly firmer than air. So penetrating its depths turned out to be not difficult for a person — you simply have to dive. As expected, this was immediately put to use, and almost from the outset, for military purposes: to damage an enemy ship’s keel, cut its anchor, or, if possible, bore a hole in it altogether.
Such specialists were in demand even in Homeric times and were called arnauters, in the age of Pericles — kolumbetes, and among the Romans — urinatores. They were tied to their ship with a rope, swam to an enemy vessel, and did whatever mischief they could. For that special underwater vessel, they did not need — after all, it wasn’t far…
A MULTIFUNCTIONAL PIONEER
Sailing the sea on a vessel is more convenient than doing it with the crawl or breaststroke — so perhaps it’s the same underwater? Roger Bacon and Leonardo da Vinci both wrote about the possibility of creating underwater vessels. In 1578, the Englishman Bourne mentioned a Greenland submarine made of sealskin, and in the same year, his compatriot Burgess designed a «torpedo machine»… But no results followed.
However, the Dutchman in the service of the English king James I, Cornelis Drebbel, didn’t stop at theory — in 1620, he built a fully functional submarine made of wood covered with leather. Over the next four years, he built two more vessels — each larger than the previous one. There are descriptions of a demonstration of one of his boats on the Thames, in the presence of the king and thousands of Londoners.
Drebbel’s submarine had many advantages. The first and main one — it actually worked and could carry up to 24 people underwater from Greenwich to Westminster (today, a ferry takes just under an hour to cover that route). For about ten years, such underwater trips were an entertainment for the local nobility. Submersion and surfacing were achieved by pumping in or expelling water with bellows.
In addition, Drebbel figured out how to use a mercury barometer as a depth gauge — for the first time in history. Even more importantly, he was the first to use chemical air regeneration inside the vessel, producing oxygen by heating saltpeter, and he used a compass for underwater navigation. In short, the project was remarkably advanced.
Drebbel had less success with the engine and propulsion — the submarine was moved by hand power applied to oars (up to eight), fitted with leather cuffs to prevent water from seeping in. A pole (also with a leather cuff) used to push off the bottom played an almost equally important role. Most likely, that’s why his submarine never went into mass production.
ONTO THE BATTLEFIELDS
Drebbel’s submarine was made of wood, and a little later, the inventor of the pressure cooker, Denis Papin, proposed a metal one. It was propelled by the same oars, but Papin specifically noted that through such openings «one could come into contact with an enemy ship and destroy it in some way». Thus appeared the first military application — though still only in theory…
Drebbel and Papin were not much celebrated in the USSR during the «era of struggles for priority» — only the carpenter Yefim Nikonov was remembered, as he managed to interest Peter the Great himself in the idea of a «stealth vessel». His first boat was even able to submerge and surface; the second one struck the bottom, the third also failed to meet expectations, and the inventor was exiled all the way to Astrakhan.
However, the American Bushnell’s «Turtle» submarine in 1776 truly became the first to attack an enemy ship — the British frigate Eagle: it approached the hull from below and began drilling in order to attach a mine. But the wooden hull was sheathed with copper, which the drill could not pierce, so the mine had to be released and the vessel retreated. The second attempt failed — the British sank the sloop that was transporting the submarine.
A fully functional submarine was built by the Englishman Robert Fulton — during trials it easily blew up an old sloop. He offered it to Napoleon, but the French navy refused even to assign military ranks to the submarine’s crew, which would have turned them into pirates — such a «dishonorable method of killing, from under the water». Fie!
Fulton then tried to interest Napoleon’s opponent, Great Britain, but there they decided that such vessels would make naval warfare altogether impossible — and why would the British, with the world’s most powerful fleet, want that? They offered Fulton a pension on the condition that he hide the project and show it to no one. In his despair, he went on to invent the steamboat — and rightly so!
FOR WAR AND PEACE
A milestone result was achieved in 1864 by the Confederate submarine Hunley — a vessel with an ill-fated destiny. At first, a passing steamer’s wave caused it to list, take on water, and sink with its entire crew of five. It was raised and repaired, only to sink again — once more with all hands on board. And then — imagine this — it was raised yet again!
But this twice-sunken craft, on February 17, 1864, managed to blow up the Union sloop Housatonic, sending it to the bottom! The Hunley stayed true to its nature — the sinking sloop collapsed onto it and dragged it down as well, again with its entire crew. Still, the fact remains: that was the first time in world history a submarine sank an enemy ship (though, admittedly, along with itself).
By that time, everyone except the lazy was building submarines. Even in the not-so-advanced Russian navy, there was Shilder’s submarine — as early as the late 1830s, it could fire rockets from underwater — as well as Aleksandrovsky’s vessel with an engine powered by compressed air, and Gern’s submarine driven by a steam engine; and in other countries there were even more!
Soon the invention of the torpedo made submarines truly dangerous. By World War I their role had become quite significant, and during World War II they nearly strangled Britain with their blockade. Today, nuclear-powered submarines armed with missiles are perhaps an even more formidable force than surface fleets. I’m not sure it was worth the effort…
Yet submarines are not used solely for military purposes. During wars, they were employed to transport valuable cargo and deliver mail. In peacetime, demand arose for research submarines, as well as tourist submersibles. They are even used by drug cartels — for covert transport of their «goods» (after all, detecting such vessels remains very difficult).
Nevertheless, all of them are descendants of Cornelis Drebbel’s submarine, though several countries have their own pioneers: for instance, in Spain it was Narcís Monturiol — there are two replicas of his 1859-tested submarine in Barcelona alone — and many others have their own trailblazers as well. Let them all be honored as they deserve — but Drebbel was the first!
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