100 YEARS OF BARROW-BUILT RN SUBMARINES, 1901-2001
HOLLAND 1 - ABOUT THE CREW
Inspecting Captain of Submarines
On hearing that five submarines were to be purchased for evaluation trials with the Royal Navy from Vickers Sons & Maxim's shipyard at Barrow-in-Furness, Reginald Bacon - an ex-torpedo Lieutenant (later to become Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon KCB KCVO DSO) applied to be given their Command. His appointment was duly sanctioned by the Admiralty and he came to Barrow as Inspecting Captain of Submarine Boats.
In his own words,
"On taking up my appointment, I called on Sir William White, the Director of Naval Construction, and Sir John Dunstan, the Engineer-in-Chief. Both washed their hands entirely of submarines and refused to have anything to do with them. So I took over constructional and engineering control with regard to both design and practical working. This suited me down to the ground."
The stand taken by these two respected naval men had probably been influenced by the Controller of the Navy, Rear-Admiral Arthur Wilson who is alleged to have said, " Underwater weapons they call 'em. I call them underhand, unfair and damned un-English. They'll never be any use in war and I'll tell you why: I'm going to get the First Lord to announce that we intend to treat all submarines as pirate vessels in wartime and that we'll hang all the crews". It also transpired that Sir William White had once taken a journey in the French submarine Nautilus which got stuck in mud and was held fast for some considerable time, prompting all occupants to fear for their lives before the boat was freed and rose to the surface. Fortunately, Admiral Jackie Fisher saw submarines in quite a different light and supported and advanced their cause behind the scenes, resulting in the Admiralty reversing their position declared just three months earlier that they were not going to have anything to do with these "products of a weaker, defensive maritime nation".
Continuing in Captain Bacon's own words, "I knew nothing about submarines; nor did anyone else, so the first thing to do was to sit down and think out what were the difficulties that we were likely to come across, and arrive at methods by which they could be forestalled. The result was rather peculiar; for all the problems that I originally considered to be difficult turned out to be simple, and several of those that appeared to be simple gave, in the end, an infinity of trouble".
Hazard - the base for a bunch of 'pirates'
As soon as the first 'Holland' boat neared completion, Captain Bacon asked for a vessel to be stationed at Barrow as a mother ship, and for the first crews to be selected. HMS Hazard, a former gunboat now fitted as a sea-going tender, was selected by the Admiralty, commissioned and stationed at Barrow. A headquarters named Hazard was no doubt deemed eminently suitable by the Admiralty of the day as the base for a bunch of 'pirates'.
The first RN submariners
The first Officers and men appointed to the submarine service in September 1901, were as follows:
Lieut F D Arnold-Forster
Lieut S Bowles Evans
Lieut J B Moreton
Engineer Robert Spence
William R Waller PO 1 cl
F C Knight PO 1 cl
Joseph B Rees PO 1 cl
Ernest R Neville PO 1 cl
Wm J Robinson ERA 3cl
Wm Muirhead ERA 3 cl
The 2 officers and five rates forming the first RN crew were drawn from this pioneering band of ten submariners who served in Holland 1 at Barrow.
The Captain arrives at Barrow
On arriving at the shipyard, Holland 1's Captain elect, Lieut Arnold-Forster asked the whereabouts of the submarine but nobody in the yard seemed to have heard of any submarine at all. After a few hours being passed from one part of the yard to another, he was eventually directed to a building identified in large white letters 'Yacht Shed' wherein the submarine was being built with the utmost secrecy. Only selected, trustworthy men were allowed inside. All frames and other parts for the novel craft taking shape were deliberately identified with the non-attributable marking 'For Pontoon No. One' so they would arouse no interest in the busy workshops. All the men working on 'Pontoon No. One ' had been told to 'keep their traps shut' and, faced with a naval fellow with gold braid asking to see his new submarine, did well to follow orders. Security was thus seen to have been quite effective at Barrow!
Lt Arnold-Forster's observations make interesting reading:
"What surprised me most when I did find the boat was her small size. She was only sixty-three feet long and was shaped like a very fat stumpy cigar. She had fins and a tail, with a single propeller and two rudders, one for steering and the other for diving. There was a small conning tower on top, just big enough to put one's head and shoulders in.
The ingenious designer in New York evidently did not realise that the average naval officer has only two eyes and two hands; the little conning tower was simply plastered with wheels, levers, valves and gauges, with which some superman was to fire torpedoes, dive and steer at the same time, and the inside of the boat was stuffed with wonderful automatic boxes".
The first 'periscope'
As designed, the Holland boat had no periscope, so Captain Bacon invented a basic optical tube design which, taken to the Dublin optician Howard Grub, was made into a viable, albeit basic, periscope on a long mast, attached by ball and socket joint to the casing.
Alterations were made, and whilst the boat was being made shipshape and less like a box of conjuring tricks, those with artistic ideas tried their hands at painting the long periscope tubes in various ways to make them invisible. One was striped like a barber's pole painted in rainbow colours which, when whizzed round by a small electric motor, might appear invisible like a raindrop. It didn't and the painting craze died a death.
The launch of Submarine Boat Number One (Holland 1)
According to the Naval and Military Record, HM Submarine Boat No. 1 (which only later became known as Holland 1) was launched on October 2nd 1901 without any ceremony, the Admiralty having stated that they "regard these boats as wholly in the nature of an experiment and, like all other experiments carried out from time to time, this one will be carried out with every privacy".
Design amendments and improvements
The submarine design which had been chosen by the Admiralty for the Royal Navy was the American Adder Class - a new design from the Irish-American J P Holland which had not yet been built. Construction of the British boat was therefore in advance of its American counterpart. Consequently, the many problems which were encountered at Barrow had no precedent but Vickers were not allowed to make changes without infringing the performance guarantee. Indeed, it was only after the boat nearly turned turtle in Barrow docks with a supposed American 'specialist' from Holland Boat and a member of the British Admiralty on board that Vickers was given free rein to make necessary changes to the design.
Eventually the shipbuilders made many amendments in order to produce a basically seaworthy boat. James McKechnie, later Sir James, was in charge of submarine construction, assisted by Mr J H Boold who had responsibility for hull construction. Together, they gradually overcame a host of problems and the design was amended to reflect each change.
Through necessity, improvisation and invention, the shipyard became so knowledgeable about submarine boats that they designed their own - submitted the design to the Admiralty - and had it accepted. The first of the Vickers-designed craft, Submarine Boat No. 6 (later renamed A.1), was launched in 1902, the same year as Number One Holland was completed.
The American Captain
Vickers requested assistance with the trials of Number One Holland as per their contract and the Holland Boat Company sent an American captain with submersible ship experience, Captain Cable, who arrived at Barrow with a crew. He was an extremely cautious man with a healthy respect for the sea and all those who might sink in her. His comment "I don't go submarining for my health" was not lost on the embryo British crew.
Captain Cable readily agreed with Bacon that the boat as designed contained several difficult operating mechanisms and these were amended and the problems rectified at Barrow.
Trials in the Dock basin
After further trials in the docks basin, Captain Cable took the first Holland boat out to sea in Morecambe Bay but insisted on taking a compass with him, having grave reservations about relying on Bacon's optical tube for navigation.
Lieut Arnold-Forster, a man imbued with a safety conscious attitude which equalled if not exceeded that of Captain Cable, provides us with a graphic account of the first diving trials of Holland 1 in the basin of Barrow Docks, and the first sea trial:
" When the boat was ready, we tried trimming her down and blowing her up again in the basin, with big chains passed underneath her to pull us up if we got stuck at the bottom."
The first dive
"The first real dive and underwater run was made in Morecambe Bay, and an American crew that had done some trial runs in the United States were sent over by the Holland Boat Company to go out with us for our first effort.
After the boat was trimmed down, everyone except the American working the diving rudder wheel, the 'boss diver' as he called himself, was seated about the boat on canvas stools opposite their work, and warned that if they moved they might upset the balance, and perhaps cause a nose-dive into the mud.
Then the motor went ahead, the diving rudder was put down and green water was seen through the conning tower windows. Gradually, the depth gauge showed we were running underwater for the first time; and those who could see it watched anxiously whilst listening to the hum of the motor and the queer-sounding American orders given by our temporary Captain.
The boat ran, as these boats always did, with her nose well down and to those who could not see the depth gauge it seemed as though we were bound for the bottom. When a bucket got loose and clattered down the engine-room floorplates it sent hearts into mouths.
The working of the diving rudder wheel was rather a cunning business in those early boats and when the American crew left after the first underwater run, care had to be taken to select suitable petty officers to train as 'diving coxswain', the English version of boss diver".
Handy underwater - a brute on the surface
"After a little practice, the boat was found to be very handy underwater, but on the surface she was a brute. They are proud of the great expanse of their basin at Barrow, but it was not nearly big enough for little Number One Holland to manoeuvre in comfortably.
Being short and stumpy, she was awkward to steer on the surface; and one day she alarmed the inmates of the sick-bay in the Hazard, her parent ship, by poking her big nose through the ship's side into their berths. Her plates were so stout that it did not hurt her at all, but the ship had to go into dock.
When it was at all rough, the boat, when running on the surface, was all awash, and nothing could be seen from the little conning tower. Everything had to be battened down; those below had to stay there; and those on deck, the captain and the coxswain, had to hang on as best they could. They could stop inside, of course, the captain using the periscope for looking out, but its lenses had an annoying habit of clouding over at critical moments; then he was done, and had to trust entirely to Providence and the compass."
Of mice and men
"It was in these Holland boats that the famous white mice were kept in cages. White mice are far more sensitive than man to the ill-effects of (carbon monoxide) gas, and their behaviour in the submarine (excited squeaking) gave warning to the crew of its presence. If a mouse actually died, it was high time to come to the surface, open up everything, and blow the boat through with the fans. The presence of petrol vapour or battery gases, which were also dangerous, could be detected in good time by smell".
Left to their own devices
Out in the Bay, Lieut Arnold-Forster and his crew were gradually taught the rudiments of submarining before being left to their own devices. The Holland had space for 'a crew of 8 and two passengers' so the British crew went to sea in groups until each had received his very basic training.
On returning to America, Captain Cable took with him drawings of Bacon's periscope; very soon, all American submarines had these fitted.
Lt Arnold-Forster determined that he could manage to operate his boat with a seven man crew and that became operating policy.
When the second Holland boat had been completed at Barrow, Lieut Arnold-Forster decided to take the first two boats away from the fatherly stewardship of Messrs Vickers down to Portsmouth so that the crew could proceed with their own refinements by experiment, experience, trial and error.
Improved periscopes
The later Holland boats 3-5 received a more sophisticated periscope from the Dublin optician Howard Grub, based on Bacon's optical tube but which had prisms to enable the operator to view adequately all round without the image rotating as well! This was the first real periscope, but could not be patented because a similar medical device had been patented for viewing the bowel!
Achievements of the crew
Of the original crew of Holland 1, the captain Lieut Arnold-Forster rose to the rank of Rear-Admiral, Lieut Bowles-Evans became a Commander, Lieut Moreton became a Captain, and Robert Spence became an Engineer Captain and engineer inspector of later boats built at Barrow.
A proud safety record
It must be said in conclusion that, despite several mishaps in the early pioneering days, the Holland Class remained in Royal Navy service for around 10 years, during which time not one life was lost from any cause.
Further reading
If you are interested in learning more about the pioneering days of RN submarines, the source of quotations repeated herein is Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon's authoritative book "From 1900 Onwards" published by Hutchinson & Co in 1940.
For further reference, an excellent account of trials in Holland Number Three written by Rear-Admiral C G Brodie is unexpectedly contained in the chapter entitled 'Early Days in 'A' Boats' in the book "The Submariners - Life in British Submarines 1901-1999" by John Winton, published by Constable & Co, London in 1999 [ISBN 0094:788:103]
