All About Inventions and Discoveries
The Romance of modern scientific and mechanical Achievements

72 All About Inventions afford and which the local facilities could provide. Naturally, the curriculum was somewhat limited, but in combination with self-education, young Holland was able to secure the position of teacher. While teaching, young Holland, then twenty years of age, became imbued with an idea. He had been reading about two American inventors, Bushnell and Fulton, and their trials and tribulations in forcing their respective inventions upon an unsympathetic world. One of their fields of investigation particu- larly fascinated him—submarine navigation. It did not appeal to him from the commercial point of view, but essentially in the character of the assassin of the seas, wherewith to strike surreptitiously at the vessels comprising the British Navy, and thereby wreck Britain’s rule of the seas. The feasibility of such a plan of campaign secured such a firm grip upon young Holland’s mind that he already pictured warship after warship flying the hated ensign suddenly foundering from underwater attack. These mental illustrations prompted him to attempt where Bushnell and Fulton had failed. All his spare moments were devoted to the preparation of the plans and designs for a submarine capable of achieving such an intensely desired end. He worked far into the night, physical exhaustion being warded off by the imagination that he had struck the correct line of construction. When his designs were finished he was confident in his own mind that he had solved the problem of underwater navigation, and with the ardour of the young enthusiastic inventor, zealously canvassed his friends and acquaintances for the neces- sary financial support to build such a vessel. But