Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/244

226 off the American coast, break the communications of Great Britain with her revolting colonies, and in this way win our liberty. Bushnell did not succeed in this ambitious enterprise for reasons which it is hardly necessary to set forth in this place ; the fact which I wish to emphasize is that he regarded his submarine as an agency which would make it possible for the young United States, a weak naval power, to deprive Great Britain, the dominant sea power, of its supremacy. His successor, Robert Fulton, was inspired by a similar ambition. In 1801 Fulton took his Nautilus into the harbour of Brest, and blew a merchant vessel into a thousand pieces; this dramatic experiment was intended to convince Napoleon that there was one way in which he could destroy the British fleet and thus deprive England of her sea control. Dramatic as this demonstration was, it did not convince Napoleon of the value of the submarine; Fulton therefore took his ship to England and exhibited it to William Pitt, who was then Prime Minister. The great statesman was much impressed, but he did not regard the submarine as an innovation that should arouse much enthusiasm in England. "If we adopt this kind of fighting," he said, "it will be the end of all navies."

Despite his own forebodings, Pitt sent Fulton to St. Vincent, who was then the First Lord of the Admiralty.

"Pitt is the biggest fool in the world," remarked the head of the victorious British navy. "Why does he encourage a kind of warfare which is useless to those who are the masters of the sea, and which, if it succeeds, will deprive them of this supremacy?"

The reason for St. Vincent's opposition is apparent. He formed the conception of the submarine which has prevailed almost up to the present time. In his opinion, a submarine was a vessel which could constantly remain under the surface, approach great warships unseen and blow them to pieces at will. This being the case, a nation which possessed two or three successfully working engines of this kind could apparently wipe out the entire British fleet. It therefore needed no argument to show that this was a weapon which was hardly likely to prove useful to the British navy. If the submarine could fulfil its appointed mission, it would give the control of the sea to that nation which used it successfully; but since Great