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Updated: July 20, 2025
When the submarines first began their attacks upon British war-ships and merchant vessels the admiralty was faced by a state of affairs which had been dealt with more or less in the abstract, the only practical lessons at hand being those of the Russo-Japanese War, which conflict, as a matter of fact, left rather an unbalanced showing so far as the undersea boat and the surface craft were concerned; in other words, the submersible had by all odds the advantage.
Through the windows you could see their enormous mouths paved with teeth, their fearsome eyes. Losing all self-control, Ned Land hurled threats and insults at them. You could feel them clinging to the submersible like hounds atop a wild boar in the underbrush.
"I turned away the searchlight, and the eyes of that creature stared straight at us with a dreadful, stony look; and then the effect of the phosphorescence, heightened by the absence of the greater light, became more terrible than before. We were unmanned, and I hardly had nerve enough to turn the submersible away and hurry from the neighborhood."
Far off we could see the ripple from the periscope of the submarine that was bearing Del Mar away. Would Kennedy's invention for which Del Mar had dared so much in the first place prove his final undoing? We sped ahead. Down below in the submersible Del Mar was giving hasty orders to his men, to dip down as soon as all the shipping and the sand bars were cleared.
We will then make a reality of that marvelous dream of our countryman of old, that prince of dreamers, Jules Verne." "Let's name it for him!" cried one. "Admirable! Charming!" they all exclaimed. "Vive le 'Jules Verne'!" Within two days, but without the knowledge of the public, the keel of the submersible Jules Verne was laid. But we shall hear of that remarkable craft again.
In a letter to William Pitt, of January 6, 1806, relating to his invention of a submersible boat, Robert Fulton wrote prophetically, "Now, in this business, I will not disguise that I have full confidence in the power which I possess, which is no less than to be the means, should I think proper, of giving to the world a system which must of necessity sweep all military marines from the ocean, by giving the weaker maritime powers advantages over the stronger, which the stronger cannot prevent."
In order to use it effectively, the submersible must be not more than from eight hundred to two thousand yards from its target, and must run submerged at reduced speed, thus greatly lessening its potentiality for destruction. To-day, submersibles are actually running down and destroying merchant vessels by gunfire.
Then I saw what that madman of a skipper planned since his first scheme had gone wrong. With a loud-yelled command, he leaped to the slippery deck of the submersible, and at his heels came his hardy crew. I sprang from the pilot-house and followed, not to be left out in the cold when it came to strafing the boches.
The submersible was safely moored alongside, where she rode easily in company with the larger vessel, and all mounted the companion-ladder. The Frenchman's six companions were dressed, like himself, in the uniform of the army. "Curious," muttered Captain Arms in Cosmo's ear, "that these soldiers should be the only ones to get off and in a vessel, too. What were the seamen about?"
The necessity of approaching the target so closely is, of course, a tremendous handicap in the general operation of these boats. In view of these facts, it is not surprising that the submersible should not have been able to sweep the capital ship from the seas, as was predicted by certain experts before the war.
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