JF Science Books Quick Post Overall Post #5152
Charles Goubet designed an interesting and technically advanced submersible boat, an electrically-powered submarine, which was the first of its kind to be powered in this way. The image below appeared in La Nature in 1886--the boat was about 16' x 6' x 3', much deeper than wide, and was powered by a Siemens motor being driven by batteries, and the whole of it unsuccessfully rudderlessly steered by a highly moveable screw propeller. The electric power applied in this design was the innovation, while the navigating end of the operation of the boat seems to have been, well, not a success.
"Das Unterseeboot von C. Goubet" [following] is an alternative, slightly cleaner and with less peripheral imagery view of the submarine as found in Die Gartenlaube (1886) page 146.
The "torpedo"-labeled section on the plan view is exactly that—the explosive was fixed to the outside of the sub, and seems to have worked more like a mine than what we would consider to be a torpedo in the present. The sub would work its way under an enemy ship where it would release the weapon, which would attached itself to the ship; the sub would then withdraw trailing an explosive/detonating wire when, after reaching a safe distance, the torpedo would be detonated via the wire. Evidently the design overall was a failure—the major complaint being the sub was very difficult to navigate underwater and the attaching/detonation part of the torpedo was problematic. (It seems as though those "teeth" were supposed to attach the torpedo to the bottom of the target ship...and they seemed not to do so very well.) That said, there were design elements and tech bits that carried forward to more substantial submarine attempts.
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