Submarine Boats: The Beginnings of Underwater Warfare by Compton-Hall, Richard - 1983

UK: Windward, 1983. Soft cover. Very Good. p/b 192 pages, condition is very good. In the winter of 1982 an odd cigar-shaped vessel was raised from the murky waters of the English Channel after seventy years on the seabed. This tiny boat was Holland /, the Royal Navy's first submarine, but sister vessels provided the navies of the United States, Russia, Japan and many smaller countries with their first practical underwater warships. Now restored and displayed at the submarine Museum at Gosport, Holland I is the only surviving example of this historically important type. Richard Compton-Hall, as Director of the Museum, was the inspiration behind the search for Holland I and planned this book to celebrate the successful salvage of the boat. It is a witty and perceptive account of the early years of submarine development, with much new material on the lives of the forgotten pioneers. It includes the more weird and wonderful inventions, and their even more colourful inventors, but concentrates on the greatest of them all - the brilliant Irish-American John Philip Holland, who took submarine development out of the hands of lunatics and visionaries and turned it into a deadly weapon of war. Submarine Boats is illustrated with a spectacular collection of early photographs (many published for the first time) from the huge archives of the Submarine Museum.