John Philip Holland

Engineer

• Born: February 29, 1840
• Birthplace: Liscannor, County Clare, Ireland
• Died: August 12, 1914
• Place of death: Newark, New Jersey

Irish-born American inventor

Holland was not the first person to build workable submarines, but he was the first to develop and manufacture submarines capable of traveling long distances under water, and his innovations fundamentally altered the future of naval warfare.

Area of achievement Engineering

Early Life

John Philip Holland was the second of four sons of John Holland and Mary Scanlon Holland. Although his father’s living as a member of the British Coast Guard was secure, Holland witnessed the Irish famine years, an experience that left him with a lifelong anti-British resentment. Holland attended Saint MaCreehy’s National School in Liscannor, where he learned English (the language of his home was Gaelic), and later went to the Christian Brothers secondary school at Ennistomy. After Holland’s father died, the family moved to Limerick in 1853, where Holland entered the monastery school. On June 15, 1853, he took the initial vows, joining the Teaching Order of the Irish Christian Brothers. After a brief novitiate, he was sent to teach at the North Monastery in Cork, where he was significantly influenced by Brother James Dominick Burke, a talented science teacher credited with founding vocational education in Ireland.

In 1860, ill health interrupted Holland’s teaching career for two years, during which time he first became interested in submarines and the mechanics of flight. He was subsequently assigned to a series of teaching positions at Maryborough (Portaloise), Enniscorty, Drogheda, and Dundalk. At Dundalk he experimented with a clockwork submarine model and prepared plans and sketches for a one-man iron submarine.

Holland’s brother, who was deeply involved in recurrent nationalistic uprisings, was forced to leave Ireland with his mother in 1872. Shortly thereafter, on May 26, 1873, alone and in poor health, Holland withdrew from the Christian Brothers and followed his family to the United States.

Life’s Work

Shortly after arriving in Boston, Massachusetts, in November, 1873, Holland slipped and fell on an icy street, suffering a broken leg and a slight concussion. While confined to his room during recovery, he completed another submarine design. For the next two years, however, Holland worked as a lay teacher in St. John’s Parochial School in Paterson, New Jersey.

In February, 1875, perhaps urged by a pupil’s father who was a friend of the secretary of the Navy, Holland sent his submarine plans to the Navy. Although his description of a fifteen-foot, treadle-driven, one-man boat was included in a lecture on submarines at the Naval Torpedo Station in Newport, Rhode Island, the Navy rejected his submarine as impractical. Undiscouraged, Holland continued brainstorming with an engineer named William Dunkerly.

In mid-1876, Holland’s brother Michael introduced Holland to Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, a member of the Fenian Order, a secret society of Irish revolutionaries. Rossa then introduced Holland to Jerome Collins, founder of the Clan-na-Gael (the United Order), a Fenian “umbrella” group. Later in 1876, Holland met John Devoy, chairman of the Fenian Executive Committee, and John J. Breslin (alias James Collins). Convinced of the practicality of Holland’s submarine as a weapon against the British Royal Navy, the Skirmishing Fund of the Clan-na-Gael allocated $5,000 to construct Holland’s first full-scale submarine, the Holland No. 1.

The 2.25-ton boat was launched on May 22, 1878, and promptly sank. The boat was easily raised and underwent several days of tinkering. On June 6, Holland successfully dived and cruised a short distance. After several more dives, the longest lasting for one hour, the Holland No. 1 was dismantled and sunk. In the process, Holland demonstrated the need for a constant reserve buoyancy and a low, fixed center of gravity to ensure lateral and longitudinal stability. He also proved the superiority of hydroplanes located at the stern and the practicality of an internal combustion engine for propulsion.

The trustees of the Skirmishing Fund then ordered a larger boat that was fully armed and capable of breaking an enemy blockade. With this order, Holland’s teaching career ended, and he embarked on his life’s work as an inventor, engineer, and promoter. Supported by the Fenians, Holland designed a three-man, 31-foot operational submarine. He engaged the Delamater Iron Works of New York to build the vessel, and work began on May 3, 1879. In spite of the continual argument and skepticism of the workers and staff of the iron works, the boat was launched on May 1, 1881, at an estimated cost of about $60,000. While the submarine was under construction, Swedish, Russian, Italian, German, and Turkish observers visited the yard; the Turks subsequently offered Holland a contract for a boat of their own.

The 31-foot Fenian Ram displaced 19 tons and was driven by a Brayton internal combustion engine rated at about 15 to 17 horsepower. The surface speed was 9 knots, and Holland believed the ship’s submerged speed was probably about the same. (This was not an unlikely assumption because the ship was hydrodynamically clean, and similarly shaped nuclear submarines are faster submerged than on the surface.) In tests between May and November, 1883, the Fenian Ram submerged to 60 feet for one full hour. Holland also built a third submarine, the 16-foot Fenian Model, for testing modifications of the basic design. While Holland worked, the Fenians fell into dissension, and one faction “stole” both submarines. They sank the Fenian Model on their way to New Haven, Connecticut, and were incapable of operating the Fenian Ram after their arrival. Holland severed his association with them.

Holland later met William W. Kimball of the United States Navy, who introduced him to Edmund L. Zalinski, an artillery expert. Both of these men furthered Holland’s plans. Kimball unsuccessfully sought a naval position for Holland, so the inventor went to work for Zalinski’s Pneumatic Gun Company. Kimball and Zalinski then organized the Nautilus Submarine Boat Company to build Holland’s fourth submarine. The 50-foot Zalinski Boat, constructed at Fort Lafayette during 1884, had a steel-framed wooden hull. Its centralized control station was a major innovation: The depth gauges, levers operating the flood valves, diving plane controls, steering lever, and throttle were all accessible to the operator’s platform below the conning tower. An unsuccessful attempt to design a modified camera lucida for underwater visibility proved that underwater steering by direct vision was impracticable. The submarine was badly damaged during launch and made only a few trial runs. It was dismantled, and the Nautilus Submarine Boat Company was liquidated in 1886.

On January 15, 1887, Holland married Margaret Foley of Paterson, New Jersey. They had five children: John, Robert Charles, Joseph Francis, Julia, and Marguerite. Two additional children, John P. and Mary Josephine, died in infancy.

During the next three years, Holland and Charles A. Morris, an engineer who had been converted to Holland’s projects during construction of the Fenian Ram, entered two Navy competitions for contracts to build a submarine. Both times, 1888 and 1889, their plans won, but problems with the contractor and political maneuvering prevented construction. As a consequence, Holland occupied himself with developing designs for a flying machine and, to support himself, took a job with the Morris and Cummings Dredging Company on May 1, 1890.

Finally, on March 3, 1893, Congress appropriated $200,000 to reopen the submarine competition. Holland and Morris, in association with Elihu B. Frost, a lawyer for the dredging company, organized the John P. Holland Torpedo Boat Company. Frost effectively dominated finances of the business as Holland’s stockholdings were less than a controlling interest. All of Holland’s patents, inventions, and devices became company property. The company submitted plans for the competition on June 4, 1893. After further political maneuvering, the John P. Holland Torpedo Boat Company finally received a $200,000 contract for construction of the Plunger.

In order to meet naval specifications, the 85-foot Plunger was powered with two triple-expansion steam engines generating 2,500 horsepower for surface operation and a 70-horsepower electric motor for submerged operation. Another steam engine drove a generator for the bank of storage batteries supplying current to the electric motor. Construction was plagued by the Navy’s continual close supervision. Also, the steam power plant was too bulky and generated excessive heat within the hull. As a consequence, Holland promoted construction of a sixth submarine of his own design, with Morris as his superintending engineer.

Construction began in the winter of 1896-1897, and the Holland VI was launched May 17, 1897. The first surface run was made February 5, 1898, and the first dive on March 11, 1898. The first successful submerged cruise, however, occurred on March 17, when Holland demonstrated the boat and its dynamite gun before a representative of the Navy Board of Auxiliary Vessels. Although performance specifications set out for the Plunger were met, the board called for further modifications and testing. After two years, acceptance trials were completed, and on April 10, 1900, the Navy bought the Holland VI. On August 2, 1900, the Navy ordered six more submarines. In addition, England, Japan, and Russia ordered either Holland submarines or plans for them.

Meanwhile, the John P. Holland Torpedo Boat Company was merged with the Electric Boat Company, and Frost and his associates effectively eliminated Holland and Morris from further influence in the company. Naval architects in the Electric Boat Company began building submarines with flat decks that carried guns and other impedimenta contrary to Holland’s advocacy of hydrodynamically streamlined hulls.

Holland resigned from the Holland Torpedo Boat Company on March 28, 1904, and on May 18, 1905, organized the Holland Submarine Boat Company to build submarines of his own design. The Electric Boat Company, however, successfully blocked Holland’s access to his earlier patents, and his financial backers withdrew. This ended his career as a submarine designer and builder. Despite periodic spells of poor health, he survived to age seventy-three before dying of pneumonia.

Significance

John Holland was not the first to build submarines: Cornelius van Drebbel attempted a submarine in 1620; during the American Revolution, David Bushnell’s Turtle (1775) was the first submarine to attack an enemy ship; and during the Civil War, the Confederate Hunley (1864) was the first to sink an enemy ship. Holland’s innovations, however, resulted in the first submarines capable of successfully attacking surface vessels and, equally important, escaping intact thereafter.

Other contemporaneous experimenters include the American J. H. L. Tuck and his Peacemaker; the Swedish manufacturer Thorsten Nordenfeldt, who described his first submarine in 1886 and subsequently built submarines for Greece and Turkey; the French, who built the Gymnote, the first submarine accepted by a major naval power in 1888; and other builders active in England, Italy, and Spain. Holland’s Holland VI, later called the USS Holland (SS-1), however, was the first submarine capable of naval warfare. His John P. Holland Torpedo Boat Company, when it merged into the Electric Boat Company, became the principal U.S. submarine builder. Only sixteen years after the USS Holland was commissioned, submarines became a major naval weapon during World War I.

Bibliography

Cable, Frank T. The Birth and Development of the American Submarine. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1924. This book was written by one of Holland’s close associates in the early development of the submarine.

Holbrook, S. H. Lost Men of American History. New York: Macmillan, 1947. This volume includes an easy-to-read account of Holland’s career that will satisfy casual readers.

Hutchinson, Robert. Jane’s Submarines: War Beneath the Waves from 1776 to the Present Day. London: HarperCollins, 2001. This history of the submarine includes a ten-page chapter, “The Holland Boats,” describing Holland’s contributions to submarine development.

Morris, Richard Knowles. John P. Holland, 1841-1914: Inventor of the Modern Submarine. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998. A new edition, with a new title, of the book originally published in 1984. Morris’s comprehensive biography covers all aspects of Holland’s life. The definitive but uncritical account may be too detailed for the average reader.

Parrish, Thomas. The Submarine: A History. New York: Viking Press, 2004. Parrish, a military historian, includes information about Holland’s contributions to the submarine’s development.

Potter, E. B. The Naval Illustrated History of the United States Navy. New York: Galahad, 1971. Potter discusses the development and the tactical and strategic significance of submarines. As the title suggests, the book includes illustrations of the Holland and later U.S. Navy submarines.

Rush, C. W., et al. The Complete Book of Submarines. Cleveland: World, 1958. The authors provide an illustrated history of submarines from their beginning through the nuclear age. The volume shows Holland’s place among his contemporaries and evaluates his significance.

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