Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/176

168 As may be inferred from the quotations at the beginning of this article, the 'Holland' certainly embodies the highest attainments ever made in a submarine war vessel. In the words of Rear Admiral Hichborn, "The 'Holland' is an improvement upon anything that has ever been built in the history of the world." She is fifty-four feet long and is able with her forty-five H. P. gasoline engines to run considerably more than a thousand miles on the surface without recourse to any base of supplies, and, with her storage batteries and electric motors, thirty miles under water. Her offensive equipment is represented by an expulsion tube and three Whitehead torpedoes.

Her plan of operations when in the presence of a hostile vessel is to dive beneath the surface and steer by compass straight for the enemy. At intervals of a mile or so she rises till the top of her conning tower only protrudes, corrects her course and dives again. An emergence of eight to ten seconds only is required. Having arrived within a few hundred yards of the enemy the 'Holland' emerges for the last time, fires her torpedo, dives, turns back on her course and runs home.

During all this time she is perfectly protected by her invisibility. Even when rising she exposes so small a surface and that so low in the water that the chances are all against her being detected at all, especially as no one can tell when or where she will appear. Or if seen by the enemy there is no time to train guns upon her, and if there were, the chances are infinitesimal that so small an object could ever be hit. On the other hand, no defensive armor could save from absolute destruction a vessel once hit by the 'Holland's' torpedo.

After all is said which may be, of the terribly destructive power of the 'Holland,' or of any other submarine boat, it seems unquestionable that the greatest argument in favor of her adoption into a navy is not based thereupon, but rather upon the moral effect which would follow the knowledge that a nation possessed such a boat at all. "There is nothing more terrifying and demoralizing than to be attacked by an invisible foe; nothing more trying, bewildering and ineffective than striving to answer such an attack." If a captain of a battleship should see the turret of a submarine appear at the surface, straighten her course toward him, and then in ten seconds, before a shot could be fired, sink out of sight again, what would be his duty as a brave man, charged with responsibility for millions of property and hundreds of lives and with the performance of effective service for his country? To seek means of defense? There is no defense but flight, swift and immediate.

Hostile transports especially would not dare to approach a coast where the proximity of such a boat was suspected. High authorities insist that blockading also would be impossible if a harbor contained half a dozen of these terrible engines, which strike where no armor can