Future of the Submarine
Author of the Nautilus Says Its Use Will Be Confined
to War
and It Will Bring Peace
By Jules Verne
For some inexplicable reason many people insist upon regarding me as
the inventor, or the imaginer, of the submarine. I am not in any way the
inventor of submarine navigation, and reference to the authorities will
show that many years -- fully fifty, I should say, before I wrote about
the Nautilus -- the Italians were at work upon submarine war vessels, and
other nations were busied with them, too. All that I did was to avail myself
of the great privileges of the fiction writer, spring over every scientific
difficulty with fancy's seven-leagued boots, and create on paper what other
men were planning out in steel and other metals.
The future of the submarine, as I regard it -- and let me here disclaim
all gift of prophecy -- is to be wholly a war future. The Nautilus, as
I have written of it, will never be, I think, an actual fact, and I do
not believe that under-sea ships will be built in future years to carry
traffic across the ocean's bed to America and to Australia. Even if the
air difficulty were successfully encountered (and I have my grave doubts
as to the possibility of that", what would be gained by any such sub-ocean
traffic except freedom from sea-sickness? No submarine would ever cross
the bed of the Atlantic faster than a ship upon the waves would traverse
it, and surely freedom from that bugbear is not a sufficient incentive
for the creation of a Cunard line beneath the sea.
I am an old man now, and working, as well as my deficient eyesight will
allow me, upon my one hundred and second volume of boys' stories and as
I look back on the years which have passed since I first wrote the life-story
of the Nautilus, and of its owner, I see no progress in the submarine which
makes me hope for its use as a commercial medium. It has been wonderfully
improved, I grant you -- miraculously improved almost -- but the improvements
have all tended to one point -- its efficacy as a war weapon; and that
will be its one use in the future, I believe. I even think that in the
distant future the submarine may be the cause of bringing battle to a stoppage
altogether, for fleets will become useless, and as other war material continues
to improve, war will become impossible. As time goes on, each nation will
acquire a large and very rapid fleet of submarines. Each little vessel
(I am inclined to think that in the future they will be smaller than they
are today, and manned by one of two men only) will be absolutely in control,
and will be able with scientific accuracy to place torpedoes underneath
the greatest vessels, and to blow those vessels up. I do not think that
any apparatus will be found to counteract the intense rapidity and certainty
of the submarine, and eventually, when every nation has its fleet of hundreds
of these little vessels, what is to war with them? They may be able even
to blow up huge tracts of country, and retreat unseen, some day; who knows?
Of course, before these things can be, improvements in the submarine
will have to be manifold, and almost as wonderfully ingenious as the beginnings
of this greatest wonder of man's science; but these things will, I think,
be possible.
I followed very carefully the experiments made lately during the French
maneuvers in the Mediterranean, and during the maneuvers of the English
fleet, and I was very much struck by the accuracy with which the submarines
of both fleets managed to slip in, strike, and get away in safety.
Imagine hundreds of these vessels with their deadly freight. Can you
suggest that any means would counteract their deadly power? I do not think
so. The refraction of the water, the depths to which the submarine can
sink, its freedom from all observation -- all these things make it the
deadliest of war inventions, and in future years, when I myself am under
ground, these powers will be enhanced. I do not think that apparatus will
be found to render them more harmless. The sea is hard to pierce, and I
can think of nothing, even upon paper, which will enable men on board the
supermare vessels to trace the tracks of their deadly little foes beneath
the waves.
But as a commercial item in the world's civilization, I do not think
that submarines have any future. Air may be found for them, but even so
it will never be found plentifully enough to make it possible for a large
number of passengers to travel for a length of time in comfort. Electricity
for their propulsion may, one day, be gathered from the sea itself, but
I have doubts of it; and even if these things were done, the pressure of
the sea at any depth would crush a submarine to fragments unless some hitherto
unheard-of metal were discovered which would withstand the pressure. Think
of the size a trans-Atlantic submarine would have to be, and think how
slowly it must travel, owing to the pressure of the waters round it, and
tell me if you think a Majestic will ever be made to travel to New York
upon the sea bottom.
I doubt it -- doubt it very gravely; and, as I have said, I do not see
that there is any need for submarine trans-ocean vessels. But submarine
fleets are in the near future and they will, I believe, prove the thin
end of the beneficent wedge which will cause war to cease between the nations,
owing to their very deadliness. Unfortunately their work will not be done
in my time. I am a man of peace and should have loved to see it, but it
seems that my fading eyes are destined to behold sickening carnage in the
unequal contest of the improved submarine machine with the heavy battleship,
whose days are numbered.
- the above is the article, previously published in 1904 in Popular
Mechanics magazine - |
