The Submarine Torpedo Boat
Its Characteristics And Modern Development

viii PREFACE length and 40 feet in beam, make it incredible. A sub- marine vessel of this size would be excessively unwieldy, and to make its accredited speed of ten knots an hour across the Atlantic, it would require such an enormous weight in power plant equipment and fuel oil, that, together with the necessary percentage of weight to be allotted to the ballast system for submergence, there would be but a very small percentage of the gross tonnage left for cargo transportation. It would be, to say the least, scarcely an economic means of transportation, no matter what the hazard for surface vessels might be. In the first chapter on the history of submarine devel- opment, an attempt has been made to point out rather sketchily only the more important incidents which have had a direct bearing upon the actual development of the submarine boat of today. While the inventors and in- ventions dealing with the subject number into the thou- sands, a very large proportion of them are merely freak ideas having no practical value at all, and yet there are a great many very ingenious and worthy of consideration. Space, however, in this little volume forbids going into them, indeed, to do so would require several volumes the size of this. The reader who is interested in this phase of the subject is referred to “Submarine Navigation, Past and Present,” in two volumes, by Allan H. Burgoyne. The chapters on the future development of the sub- marine, and means of defense against it were written some- what over a year ago, and the author is gratified to state that after two years of employment of the submarine in actual warfare in Europe he finds no occasion to change in any respect his opinions expressed on these matters in this volume. Of late it is interesting to note that much