The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-10-01
NEW SUBMARINE BOATS
SHOULD BE PROPELLED BY ELECTRICITY.
Lieutenant Commander Who Has
 Been Engaged in Investigating the Matter Gives His View. Storage Batteries Costly.

Washington. Sept. sO-(sepcial )-"The submarine boat of the future should be propelled by electricity" is the opinion Lieutenant Commander John R. Ed wards. U. S. N, expressed today.
 Commander Edwards is one of the youngest officers of the navy, who is mak- ing a special study of submarine tor pedo boats. and Rear. Admiral Melville Chief of the Bureau of Steam Engineer. ing, to which Commander Edwards is connected relies to a large extent on his judgment.
 Tt is impossible to utilize steam fol submarine sailing" continued Comman- der Edwards, "as the heat would be toe great. Inventors. therefore, turned to gasoline for surface work and the cleo tric storage batteries when submerged. On the question of motive power opinions of naval officers differ. l believe gasoline motors should be abandoned altogether while others hold they are valuable for surface work. All inventors cling to the gasoline engines, for 1t give their boats a radius of action they could not secure by the use of storage batteries exclu- sively. This Is, of course, a great ad- vantage, for the greater the radius o1 action, the more useful the boat. and the more valuable to the Government.
 Hc FESDCIi DOdtS, uilu6TSldHu, uSt electricity alone, but this limits their range to some forty miles and makes them comparatively valueless except foI harbor defense The French, however are building on other lines, and have one which uses steam on the surface. II takes two hours to put out the fires and sink the boat, however.
 "I believe 1t would be possible to build submarine torpedo boats sufficiently large to accommodate batteries which would give a radius of action of several hun dred miles. The boats now being con. structed for the navy are about 120 tons and I see no reason why they should not be built of 200 or more tons displacement Of course this operation of submarine boats by storage batteries exclusively would be a very expensive matter as the batteries are the most expensive feature of the boats. Those in the Holland cost at least 25,O00. and larger ones would he approximately expensive. However, with so many electricians and inventors who are seeking to solve the problem of light eninE the batteries while increasing their capacity, prominent among them Wiz ard Edison. I think before many years electricity alone will be used.
 Gasoline as a f1uid." continued Com mander Edwards, "does not appear to be
 
 board making extensive experiments with liquid fuel and we have found that liquid gasoline can be handled with compara- tive safety. You can almost plunge a torch into it without setting it afire But 1t evaporates very quickly and the gas Is extremely dangerous. I would sug- gest that if the gasoline tanks of the submarine boats were placed outside of the vessel instead of inside of 1t, it would be a decided advantage. I would sug- gest that the shell of future boats of the Holland type be constructed first and then sort of false top be built above the boat conforming to it's shape. so as to make a tank. Thus the gasoline would be outside the boat and not inside, and could enter the boat only through pipes. No difficulty would be experienced in using the gasoline, as while 1t is much lighter than water, 1t IS much heavier than air and would easily flow down to the engines"