INTRODUCTION IT is not generally known that had some Limerick connections. He was born in a coast-guard's house in Liscannor,. Co. Clare, on 29th February 1841. In 1853, after his father's death, the family moved to Limerick. John became a pupil at Sexton Street School. and joined the Christian Brothers' Order on 15th June 1858. Holland had an interest in scientific experiments from an early age. He was fortunate to be transferred to the North Monastery. , on 3rd November 1858,for further training as a teacher. Here he came under the tutelage of a Limerick man, Brother Dominic Burke, an excellent science teacher who encpuraged him in his designs. As early as 1859 he completed his first drafts of a design he never fundamen- tally changed. The Holland famil-y remained in Limerick for nearly twenty years while John taught in five different schools throughout the country. Hi,s brother Mick became involved with the Fenians and, being for2ed to flee the country, took up with other members of the Brotherhood iin America. In 1873 John Holland left the Christian Brothers through ill-health and followed his family to . Having worked for a period with an engineering firm, Holland took up teaching for a further six years. He submitted a design for a sub- marine to the U.S. Navy but the Secretary of the Navy contemptuously rejected it as "a fantastic scheme of a civilian landsman". However, through his brother Mick, he met some fellow-countrymen who liked the sound of his strange ideas. Thus began the story of the "" and the first faltering stages in the development of the modern submarine. After twenty years of experiments and failures the U.S. government finally bought the "Holland No. 6" on 12th April 1900 for 150,000 dollars - a bargain price because it had cost twice that much money to produce. The submarine was commissioned on 12th October 1900. the'American Navy's first craft of its kind. By this time Holland had severed all connections with the Fenians. He sold his designs to the British Navy in 1901 and it launched its first Holland-designed submarine in October of that year. He then built two for Japan which were used against Russia in the war of 1904-5. For his contribution to the Japanese naval victory Holland received the Order of the Rising Sun from the Emperor of Japan. Submarines had by then become big business and the large corporations had taken control of their manufacture. Following a merger bet- ween Holland's Torpedo Boat Company and the Electric Storage Battery Company in 1898 to form the New Electric Boat Company, disagree- ments developed between the inventor and the engineers and directors of the new firm. He was bitterly disappoited in 1907 when his next submarine was rejected by the U.S. Government. Holland's last years were not happy. Manoeuvred out of his company and plagued by ill-health, he pondered on the future of his invention. He was deeply perturbed by its terrible destructive powers and stressed that further research should be concentrated on its peaceful use. Before his death he had a long discussion with the first of the American Red Cross, who asked if he considered that the invention of the submarine had increased the danger of war. Holland stated that the arms' race of the time was a menace to mankind but said that he saw the submarine as adeterrent towar and expressed the hope that it would be so. In his last year he proposed to go to Britain to warn the government of the catastrophic dangers of submarine warfare but bad health prevented him from undertaking the journey. John Philip Holland died on 12th , just as the first World War was breaking out in Europe, a conflict which was to confirm with horrific finality the deadly capabilities of his invention. This article tells the little known story of Holland's adventures with the Fenians in America, involv~ngthe launching and confiscation of the Fenian Ram. THE SALT WATER ENTERPRISE ne Autumn day in 1876 a second boat, the Fenian Ram,became a group of intense, rugged- BY JOHN sort of missing link - a break-out from looking Irishmen gathered evolutionary pause. "After the comple- at Coney Island outside WALSH tion of this boat", wrote an admiral New York and watched a who did take the idea seriously, frail bespectacled little later years put it: "It belongs to me "Holland led the world far and away in man do tricks with a record to say that the Irish question the solution of submarine problems". clockwork boat. The spies produced the modern submarine". Yet, For his part, he gave the title "father who dogged the Fenians would have in Ireland the story is not much known. of the submarine" to David Bushnell, been amused. More lunacy! Had they Holland did not invent the sub- whose one-man Turtle had very nearly known the truth, the verdict would har- marine, of course. The idea had been sunk a British frigate during the dly have changed. The man with the knocking about for centuries, now and American War of Independence. In his clockwork boat was trying to convince then spawning craft which were own time he was influenced by the the Fenians he could build them blighted by the lack of theory and the Hunley, a hand-cranked affair used by something like it that would challenge lack of underwater power better than the Confederates. Mainly it killed its British supremacy at sea. And they human muscle. In Holland's day they own. It sankfive times with a total loss bought the idea. were still such an exotic notion they of thirty-five men, but achieved fame They were, as it turned out, on to had not even acquired a name. Sub- on the last disaster by becoming the something big, these Fenians gathered marine was the adjective. The noun first submarine to sink an enemy round John P. Holland. They could was torpedo-boat, or wrecking-boat, or vessel. boast in time to come that they knew ram - for ramming an enemyr vessel That happened in 1864, while the father of the modern submarine below the waterline was one use. No- Holland was teaching in Enniscorthy. when he was only an ex-Christian one had ever quite succeeded in Later he recalled that he had first Brother from Liscannor with a bee in making one do what it was supposed designed a flying-machine in 1863, his bonnet about underwater boats. to do. "shortly before I began the study of They backed him when no-one else Holland did. His ideas on how to submarines". It is fair to suppose that would, and they financed his first three make them work got to be so much news of the Hunley's finest hour had its boats. As one of Holland's men in the better than anyone else's that his effect. He was soon experimenting, it is said, with models in a tub. dynamite and "burning up" towns. dog's instinct for something that would Others, such as O'Leary and Devoy, change the rules favouring a powerful had the grace to be shocked. But a sub- maritime enemy. Most of the early sub- marine - that had possibilities. The marines were the product of that sort Probably not even John P. at the trustees of the fund sent Breslin to of thinking. For that matter, potential end of his days could say how much he Coney Island, heard his report, and ap- targets disapproved of them for quite had been spurred by the desire to strike pointed him head of what was cryp- the same reason. "Damned un- a blow at the British, He liked them as tically called "the salt water enter- English", said an admiral. The French of, little as any other child of the Famine. prise". The Fenians were to take on the Napoleon's day declared them "fit only! When he left'the Brothers and ruler of the waves. for Algerians and pirates". emigrated in 1873 he chose America, Vincent saw in them "a rnode of W r partly for health reasons, partly which those who commanded the seas because it might provide scope for his In some respects it sounded even did not want, and which, if successful, inventions but also, he said, because "I more far-fetched then than it does to- would deprive them of it". An odd addi- had no mind to do anything that would day - a fourteen-foot box, with a range tion to such company was a speaker in make John Bull any stronger". of a few miles. Did the Fenians see the Treaty Debates of 1922. "1 hold It is doubtful if he had actually been their boat as a sort of Bruce Lee of the that the submarine is a mean and in the 7RB. His brother Michael was, ocean, laying waste the ranks of H.M. treacherous form of attack . . ." and had been obliged to get out of warships as they closed in from every Ireland on that account. In New York side? It was not quite that bad. The he introduced John to O'Donovan prime movers accepted there would Rossa, ,who put him in touch with have to be a phase of experiment With high hopes, at any rate, the Fe- Jerome Collins, then science editor of before anything much emerged. Nor nians commissioned an engineering the New York Herald. did they seriously think of going it firm to make them a submarine. Work The big chance came in August alone. At best, Devoy reckoned, "we went on at first in New York, and later 1876, at the reception for those in- could only begin operations when the across the Hudson at Paterson, where volved in the Catalpa rescue. This was Home Organisation was ready for a Holland taught school. There, on the the most spectacular stroke the fight and we had a few more boats". At Passaic river, Holland's first submarine American Fenians ever pulled. They other times they felt the best bet was was launched on May 22, 1878. hired a whaler (the Catalpa), and sailed to chip in on the opposition side in the She was a funny little thing, of to Australia, plucked six Fenian event of Britain's ever going to war. square cross-section, with diving- prisoners from a work-gang in the Russia was a likely contender at this planes midships. Holland would later desert and, four months law jailed time. take a porpoise for prototype - this one into New York Harbour an .4 general Holland was being more than op- looked a bit like a penguin with its head euphoria. "The men who sent the timistic if, as Devoy said, he envisaged stuck on wrong. Catalpa to Australia', said John Boyle a boat "that would cross the Atlantic, She did not behave well. She sank O'Reilly of the Boston , "are just go unseen into Southampton or on launching, and the primitive petrol- the yen to send out a hundred Portsmouth Harbour, throw a engine never worked. But Holland Catalpas to wipe British commerce petroleum shell into an English ship, hooked it up to work on steam from an from the seas". John P. Holland and get away undiscovered". But he accompanying launch, trusted her to thought he knew how to help them do was telling no more than the truth take him below the waters of the it. when he wrote, as late as 1900, that Pzssaic, and learned a lot about sub- John Devoy had organised the ex- "the submarine was indeed a sea-devil marines. pedition. J.J. Breslin had led it. Holland against which no means that we The Fenians responded with com- met them at the reception and told possess at present can prevail". ASDlC mendable imagination (Rossa, indeed, them: "You gentlemen have a fund for was a development of the nineteen- seems to have given the enterprise a making war on England. And you could twenties, and not a particularly suc- bad press among some of them by the put it to no better use than enabling me cessful submarine-tracker. Back in the extravagance of his talk). The trustees to build a submarine boat . . .". eighteen seventies a submarine offered of the Skirmishing Fund decided to a prospect akin to a laser-toting stick with the salt water enterprise. helicopter that could vanish at will. "A Holland scuttled the little boat in the He was, as we would now say, in weapon", said Holland, "against which Passaic, left his teaching, and became with the heavy gang. These veterans of there is no defence". a fulltime submariner in the pay of the jail and revolution were turbulent, Fenians. talented, given to ferocious internecine strife, in some cases mad, in all cases colourful. Devoy was a deserter from So it may have seemed to the Fe- the French Foreign Legion. Rossa was nian leadership who heard Breslin's The boat that came to be known as a spectacular drunk. Jerome Collins report from Coney Island. They cannot the Fenian Ram was built at the was soon to die on an Arctic expedi- have had more than the vaguest idea Delamater Iron Works in the heart of tion. Breslin was the hero of the how it was to work. Devoy's memoirs, New York. It was all supposed to be Catalpa. But Holland spoke to them, admittedly written long after the event, highly secret. It was not, of course. said Devoy, "like a headmaster to his show that he did not really know what Mick Holland said the builder children". was happening on the technical side. sometimes invited friends of his "to "We were startled by the proposi- For expert opinion they consulted come and look at this damn fool thing tion." But they took it seriously. And someone who, as Captain of Engineers the Fenians were spending the poor they did have the money. Dollars and in the Civil War, "was in charge of fif- servant girls' money on to destroy the cents were then rolling in, as Holland teen miles of earthworks in front of English sea power". Foreign dignitaries knew, to the Skirmishing Fund started Petersburg". Breslin, Devoy thought, knew where to come to talk with the by O'Donovan Rossa. What it would be "understood it better than any of us." inventor about the possibility of acquir- used for was a matter for speculation - But Breslin in Mick Holland's opinion ing something similar for their, coun- some anti-British activity short of total "knew as much about natural tries. The Fenian habit of conducting' war, at any rate. Rossa, the arch- philosophy as a cow". their arguments in public, often Provisional of his day, talked of What they did have was the under- through their various newspapers, John Philip Holland

meant that a good deal about the Ram alongside, getting back in, and peddl- otherwise, he opted for these, apart got into print. The ordinary papers did ing away before the charge went off. from one aberration into steam, until that anyway. It was the New York Not until World War II would midget his final boat. Sun that gave her her name. subs succeed in doing that. had used planes midships She took to the water in May 1881, By the time he got to installing one to force her bodily under, like tiny air- and for years provided New Yorkers of the new petrol engines, the actual plane wings in reverse. That was how with unfailing spectacle. The Keystone Holland I had become pure experiment. orthodoxy would have it. Some designs Cops element was often there, as when Without an air-supply the engine used vertical propellors for the same they tested her erratic armoury, or sur- would not have worked for more than purpose. Holland sometimes remarked faced in the path of a ferry-boat, or the briefest dip underwater, and if the that the people who ran down his ideas realised in the middle of the bay that a cockpit was flooded it would not have (and by implication failed to unders- little boy had hitched a ride up top. But worked at all. tand submarines) were invariably those she also provided something new by In the new design, the Ram's engine skilled in ship-building. The point way of spectacle - she was a sub- worked on compressed air while sub- should be made that such people marine that worked. "There is scarcely merged, and exhausted through a would find it hardest to make the anything required of a good sub- valve. Holland rightly guessed against necessary mental leaps, such as from marine", said Holland in his dry way, all opposition that this would work as level-keel sinking to diving. On the new "that this one did not do well enough". long as pressure outside and inside boat he put the planes aft, so that she remained the same. He had planned upped her end and thrust her nose un- that the engine would have its own air- der at a sizeable angle. supply, so that cockpit pressure could The tilt would have made another He had come a long way from the remain at atmospheric. In the event, boat unstable. But he knew enough to drawings on his school blackboard. The engine and operators (there was a make sure the ballast-water couldn't boat as originally conceived was to be crew of three) breathed the same air at move about and shift the centre of driven by foot-pedals, of which all one a pressure which varied with depth - gravity to the lower end. Well might he can say is that they would have made rather uncomfortable, but simple and compare the Ram, in lines and perfor- extra problems underwater. The safe. mance, with the porpoises he liked to operator, in primitive scuba gear, was Electricity, of course, held the future point out as the experts on the subject. supposed to engage the enemy by in underwater power. But batteries Lastly, there was the gun. Not yet a flooding the cockpit, getting out, plac- were still primitive. So were petrol torpedo-launcher, but still a pneumatic ing an explosive, ,phich was slung engines, for that matter. Wisely or affair ofmsomecomplexity. Underwater guns of any size are, in fact, a for- its being held by the authorities. Quite pany was taken over by men with a midable engineering proposition if the possibly they thought Holland was keener eye to business. He died a tail is not to wag the dog to disastrous more intent on pursuing an inventor's rather embittered man, speculating effect. Holland's pioneering design was experiments than on providing them towards the end on peaceful uses for said to be capable of lobbing a with an instrument of war. his invention. A few weeks after his hundred-pound shell nearly a quarter of Strictly speaking, they owned the death in August 1914, the little Ger- a mile. boats anyway - they had spent some man U9 showed what submarines sixty thousand dollars on them. But it could do in war by taking on three was a bad business. One winter's night British heavy cruisers and sinking the in 1883 Breslin showed up at the lot. The remarkable thing is that the docks, armed with a tug and a forged Ram was permitted to go freely about imprimatur, and towed the Ram and The three Fenian boats survive, one her business in New York harbour, gun the little Fenian Model in convoy into way or another. The Model lies where and all. The British worried about what the night. They were bound for New she sank that November night in 1883. was going on. "This is presumably a Haven, some distance up Long Island A freelance attempt to raise Holland I Fenian enterprise for the purpose of an Sound. That involved crossing the Hud- for scrap succeeded only in pulling off attempt to, blow up British War son and rounding Manhattan into the her tower. Long afterwards she was Vessels", the zhargg d'affaires in East River. Of all the Ram's voyages, hauled up to take an honoured place in Washington wrote home to his this must have been the strangest. The the Paterson museum. superiors in the course of a detailed ac- Model foundered in rough water at the The grounded Ram remained for

The Fenian Ram count of the Ram's movements. It was mouth of the Sound; the Ram made it many years an incubus on the Fenians, noted that she "appears to have most to New Haven. .and the focus of such dispute that wonderful powers as a destructive "I'll let her rot on their hands", said Devoy found himself wishing her on his machine; more so than any Boat yet in- Holland. She did that, more or less. Her enemies as a white elephant. In 1916 vented". They tried to persuade the new skippers gave her such a bad she turned an honest penny for the Americans to step in. But the rulers of name for dangerous practice around cause by being exhibited at a bazaar to the land where every citizen might New Haven that the port authorities raise money for the victims of the carry a gun reasoned that the same presently ordered her off the water. Easter Rising. Mick Holland was still went for submarines. Holland went on full of fight on her account. If he had to build his third Fenian boat, a scale- charge of her, he told Devoy, "mighty model he would use to test modifica- few Canadians would ever have tions on the design. reached the war, and few ammunition Holland went on to make two pretty ships either". unpromising boats - unpromising She was not to go to war. She probably because the backers gave him stands today in a public park in Pater- It is not clear why an element among less of his head than the Fenians had son, giving piggy-backs to the descen- the Fenians decided to annex the Fe- done - before Holland VI in 1900 dants of that kid who hitched the ride. nian Ram. Possibly they feared that the became the prototype submarine of the But yet a monument, as Mick stoutly internal wrangle about the disposal of American navy. By then, his ideas were declared her, "to the honesty, ability the Skirmishing Fund, which was then becoming the common property of the and earnestness of the revolutionary Irishman". going before the courts, might,b in world's navies. Control of his own com-