Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The History of the Submarine

Episode Date: February 4, 2022

Subscribe to the podcast!  https://podfollow.com/everythingeverywhere/ For thousands of years, humans have traveled on the water and have wondered if it was possible to travel under the water like a fish.  The idea of underwater travel stuck around for centuries, but eventually, humans did figure out how to travel underwater, even if the first efforts were not successful.  Learn more about the submarine, how it was invented, and how they work, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. -------------------------------- Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/EEDailyPodcast/ Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For thousands of years, humans have traveled on the surface of the water, and at the same time have wondered if it was possible to travel under the water like a fish. The idea of underwater travel stuck around for centuries, but eventually humans did figure out how to travel underwater, even if the first efforts were not successful. Learn more about submarines, how they were invented, and how they work on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thulein podcast from NPR.

The idea of traveling underwater goes back a long way. All it took was to look at a fish swimming to wonder what it would be like to be that fish. When humans began using ships to engage in warfare, it didn't require much imagination to realize that if you could sneak up in your enemy below the surface of the water, you could wreak havoc on them. There are images of ancient Egyptians who used papyrus reeds to breathe underwater to sneak up on prey while hunting. Likewise, Alexander the Great supposedly used an early diving bell during the siege of Tyre, which is in modern-day Lebanon. These, of course, weren't really submersible vehicles, but they did show the desire to be able to travel and explore underwater. The problem of underwater transportation was actually much bigger than the ancients realized.

First, you need a body for your vehicle that'll be watertight. Ancient ships are made out of wood, which would often have slow leaks. The state of metallurgy at the time wouldn't have allowed for watertight seams between metal sheets to make up the hull. This is especially true when you consider the great pressures that submarines must face when they're underwater. For every 10 meters you descend below the surface, water pressure increases by one atmosphere. Holding back pressurized water is much more challenging than just trying to be watertight at the surface. Then you need to be able to control your buoyancy. It's easy to build a ship that floats, and it would also be easy to build a ship that would sink to the bottom of the sea.

What is really challenging is to create a vessel that can ascend, descend, and hover at depth. Next, you need a system of propulsion. Ships usually had two methods of propulsion, sails and oars. Sales obviously can't work under water, and oars would require you to take the ore out of the water. move it through less dense air, and then move it back into denser water. Finally, and most obviously, you have to be able to breathe. This is what made undersea transportation so dangerous initially. An enclosed space only has so much oxygen, and if the vessel leaks, it'll fill up with water, and you have no oxygen. All of these problems would need to be solved if underwater vehicles were to be practical.

The first person we know of who seriously considered the problem of underwater travel was the English mathematician William Bourne. He came up with plans for a submarine in a book of inventions that he published in 1578. Nothing was ever built, but it was an example of serious thought being given to the subject. The first attempt at actually building something which could be submerged was undertaken by the Dutch engineer Cornelius Drebel. He built an ore-powered submersible for King James I of England in 1620. Technically, since it was powered by oars, it would be categorized as semi-submersible. There was no practical application found for his device, and it was soon forgotten. The 18th century saw several patents filed on the concept of a submersible craft.

They addressed many of the problems of ballast, propulsion, and stability. The first real breakthrough in submersible watercraft, however, occurred in 1775 with the creation of the turtle. The turtle was a semi-submersible craft built by American inventor David Bushnell. It looked like a large, apple-shaped wooden barrel. Just a small turret would sit above the water line which allowed the person inside to see and breathe. Inside there were two cranks attached to water screws outside the vehicle for propulsion. There was also a build system used to provide ballast. The goal of the vehicle was to sneak up on British ships in New York Harbor and attach gunpowder

explosives to the hulls to sink them. It was a very difficult ship to maneuver as it was propelled and steered by a single person inside. On September 6, 1776, the Turtle actually went out to attack the British flagship Eagle, which was in New York Harbor. The turtle managed to make it to the hull of the ship. However, it literally had to drill a hole to attach the explosives. It failed to drill the hole because of a copper lining outside of the ship's hull. Although it wasn't successful, it was the first actual use of a subversible craft in military history.

In 1800, American Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat, built a ship called the Nautilus in France. It was a long cylinder, which at least superficially looked like the shape of a modern submarine. It had a hand crank for underwater propulsion and a sail from when it was at the surface. The big innovation is that it had tanks of compressed air which allowed for a two-person crew to breathe when they were underwater. It also had a snorkel which allowed for unlimited air when it was near the surface. With the compressed air, the crew could stay submerged for up to five hours. In 1801, he took the Nautilus down to a then record depth of 25 feet or 7.5 meters,

and he managed to stay at that depth for a full hour. He ended up dismantling the ship because it was leaking, and he had planned on building a second version for the British, but it never happened. A half-century passed before the next big innovation, and this took place during the American Civil War. The Confederate Navy commissioned the construction of three submarines, which were designed by the Confederate engineer Horace Lawson-Hunley. The first submarine was the pioneer, which was built in New Orleans,

but had to be scuttled after the Union attacked the city. The second submarine was the American Diver, which was built in Mobile, Alabama, but it sunk when it was caught in a storm. The third submarine was the H.L. Hunley, which was posthumously named after Hunley when he died in 1863, and was built in Charleston, South Carolina. The Hunley had a crew of eight people, seven of which were there just for propulsion.

On February 17, 1864, the Hunley became the first submarine in history to sink a ship, when it sank the USS Houstonic. Five sailors on the Houstonatonic died, but the Hunley sank after being in the range of the explosion, killing all eight crew members. The Hunley was later raised from the surface of the harbor and sank again, and then raised again and then sank again. A total of 21 sailors were killed in the three sinkings.

The Hunley was raised for the final time in August of 2000 after being submerged for 136 years. Submarine development kept making incremental progress at solving its problems. In 1863, the French submersible Poulanger was launched. It was the first submarine that didn't require human-powered propulsion. It was driven by compressed air, which also served to provide air to the crew inside. In 1864, a Spanish submarine named the Ictinio Dos was the first to be powered with a steam engine. The big innovation, which finally made submarines practical as a military weapon, came from the Irish-engineer.

year John Philip Holland. He created a series of four submarines in the last years of the 19th century, culminating in what he called the Holland Four. The Holland Four had the world's first combined internal combustion electric propulsion system. It used engines when it was at the surface to charge the ship's batteries, and then below the surface, the submarine ran on electrical power. The U.S. Navy was so impressed, they purchased the Holland Four and commissioned the ship, renaming it the USS Holland. The diesel-electric submarine was to be the standard propulsion system for submarines for the next 50 years. The First World War saw the first conflict where submarines saw wide-scale use.

German Untersea boots, known as U-boats, reeked havoc on shipping in the North Atlantic. Over 5,000 ships were sunk by U-boats during World War I. In World War II, unrestricted submarine warfare once again was let loose in the North Atlantic. Over 3,000 ships were sunk by U-boats. However, anti-submarine warfare had improved as well. A full 70% of the 41,000 German U-boat sailors were killed in action during the war. Submarines proved to be invaluable in the Pacific as well. Only 2% of the American fleet were submarines,

but they accounted for 30% of the ships destroyed by the U.S. Navy in the Pacific. US submarines destroyed 60% of Japan's merchant fleet, crippling their ability to get necessary resources for the war. The war also saw the development of sonar, which allowed for submarines to detect and hunt down other submarines. The next major advance in submarines came in the early 1950s. Admiral Hyman Rickover, of whom there will be a future episode, advocated the creation of nuclear-powered submarines.

A nuclear-powered submarine radically changed everything about a submarine and eliminated most of its weaknesses. For starters, a nuclear power plant doesn't require oxygen for combustion, so it never needs to surface to charge batteries. It can create its own oxygen on board the ship via the electrolysis of water, and likewise can produce its own freshwater from the sea. Oxygen scrubbers can remove CO2 from the air. Basically, the only thing which limited the amount of time a nuclear submarine could stay under

water was the amount of food on board. On January 15, 1955, the USS Nautilus set sail from New London, Connecticut, becoming the first nuclear-powered ship in history. It immediately began smashing every record for submarines. Its first trip went from New London to San Juan Puerto Rico. It traveled the entire distance of 2,200 kilometers or 1,400 miles in just under 90 hours, breaking the record for the longest underwater journey and the fastest sustained underwater journey. On August 3rd, 1958, the Nautilus became the first ship in history to sail to the geographic North Pole,

and it did so under the ice. In 1960, the Nautilus's sister ship, the USS Triton, became the first submarine to circumnavigate the globe completely underwater. The journey took two months. The record for the longest underwater duration by a submarine was set in 1983 by the British HMS war spite, which spent 111 days submerged. The advent of nuclear submarines created a brand new category of vessels, the strategic submarine. The strategic submarine wasn't designed to hunt other ships. In fact, its job was just the opposite, to remain hidden as it carried nuclear missiles. A strategic submarine could launch missiles from anywhere in the world, making it almost impossible to counter with a first strike.

Both the Americans and the Soviets use strategic submarines for almost the entirety of the Cold War. France, China, India, and the UK have also all deployed strategic submarines as well. The performance limits of modern submarines are far beyond what they were 50 years ago. A Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine could, in theory, dive to a maximum depth of about 900 meters or 3,000 feet. And this would really be pushing the safety limits at this depth. Likewise, a Los Angeles-class submarine can travel at a top speed of 32 knots or 59 kilometers per hour. While the majority of submarines are for military use, there are some civilian submarines.

Some of them are used for tourism, and they don't go very far beneath the surface. Others are used for industrial use doing repairs and inspections at oil platforms. In 1960, the Trieste was a civilian research submarine that managed to go to the lowest point in the ocean, Challenger Deep at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. This type of submarine is known as a bath escape. The unique thing about its design is that the inside of the hall was filled with gasoline. The reason for this is that gasoline is lighter than water, and it's almost impossible to compress. It took the Trieste 45 minutes to descend 35,000 feet, and then three hours and 15 minutes to return to the surface.

There has been some discussion about the creation of merchant submarines. For the most part, they could never possibly compete with surface transportation on price. However, they could be used for two purposes. The first would be to bypass naval blockades to get supplies in restricted areas. Drug cartels have actually been using small submarines for exactly this purpose for decades. The second would be to travel quickly between Asia and Europe under the Arctic Ocean. One possible use would be a submersible oil tanker that would service oil fields above the Arctic Circle. The submarine was the rare invention that was envisioned thousands of years before it was actually built.

Even then, it took decades to perfect to the point where it could be practically used. And today, they are a vital part of any modern Navy. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. If you'd like to support the show, you can do so over at patreon.com. And remember, if you leave a review or send in a question, you two can have it read on the show.