The Submarine, 1776-1918

Abstract : When, on 11 April 1900, the U.S. Navy thought the Holland, named for its designer, that little submarine joined a fleet consisting of two armored cruisers, six monitors, seven first and second-class battleships, and seventeen each of protected cruisers, gunboats, and torpedo boats. At sixty-four tons the Holland was not the smallest vessel then possessed by the Navy, but at fifty-four feet it was the shortest. Though many of the ships in the not-very-old and not-very-large U.S. fleet of 1900 would last for years afterward (the Holland would not be among them), all would be obsolete when the "Great War" broke out only fourteen years later. So would all those ships still being built in 1900, and all those yet only concepts and not only in the U.S. Navy but in all navies. Technology was moving swiftly. Among those types of warship that made up the American fleet at the beginning of the twentieth century, the submarine alone would survive until the beginning of the twenty-first century. In what size, shape, or any other particular the submarine will make it into the second half of this century, we cannot know, but we can be confident that survive it will.