Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 230, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 September 1916 — Great Fiction Becomes Great Fact [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Great Fiction Becomes Great Fact

Did you ever read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, the story about a submarine, which Jules Feme wrote forty odd years ago f The vessel he described, “ Nautilus,”is almost a counterpart of the German merchant submarine, “Deutschland,” which came to this country several weeks ago • • • '*/

nfffl weeks the German undersea II "jfUSIO boat Deutschlnnd occupied the j tirst page of every newspnper gL in the land, to the exclusion of the Mexican problem and a id considerable part of the Euro—i_ . ■•■■■—-] o pean war news. Her journey * across the ocean from Bremen, her avoidance of the English and French war vessels and her theatrical disclosure of her identity at Cape Charles constituted the sensation of a century. Mr. Charles P. Tower of the New York Tribune has written an article comparing the Deutschland with the Nautilus, the submarine boat of imagination which Jules Verne, the great French novelist, described in “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” published about 45 years ago. No doubt many of you have rend the story. It is a great boy’s book, like “Tom Sawyer” or Fenimore Cooper’s “Leather Stocking Tales.” Mr. Tower assumes - thr.t the Nautilus was never destroyed, and that the Deutschland is the old boat of Action rebuilt. He says: “But the sensation will be the greater when it becomes generally known that the boat is not of German design or build; that she is really the original submarine boat Nautilus, designed by that wonderfully skillful naval architect, engineer and scientist-at-large, Jules Verne, built and navigated over and under many seas by Captain Nemo, and for many- years supposed to have been engulfed in the whirlpool between the Islands of Faroe atfd Lofoten, off the coast of Norway,'in June, 1868; the same vessel, rebuilt In some degree and reAtted in a German ship yard, but the Nautilus, as truly as she was the Nautilus when .she was launched, in 1865 or 1866. “It has been only a supposition that the boat was lost in the whirlpool, based on the fact that no survivors of her crew, who wrote the log on board the vessel on her sensational and somewhat erratic voyage of ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,’ and his two personal associates, Conseil and Ned Land, never appeared in public or ever told anything to the contrary. But it will be remembered that Mr. Aronnax declared in his edition of the log, which was published. In 1873, that he did not positively know whether the boat was lost or not. ‘What has become of the Nautilus?’ he asks. ‘Did it resist the pressure of the maelstrom? Does Captain Neino still live? “Don’t believe it? Why, it is so thoroughly true as to be axiomatic. Bead such a description of the boat that arrived at Baltimore on a Sunday evening;- then read Mr. Aronnax’s logbook; make careful comparison of the description of the Nautilus which is contained therein with that of the so-called Deutschland —and dare to say that they are not one and the same vessel. The power plant is new in part, and in part renewed. Mr. Verne designed the Nautilus to be driven by electric power generated by primary batteries, something that-would be oqt of the question today, but possible in the case of the Nautilus,, because her owner was a man of enormous wealth and because he had discovered an inexhaustible source of supply of the materials required to renew his batteries. ' 1 “The primary battery was the only available means of providing power for underwater propulsion, as the Diesel motor, now in use on all submarine vessels ns a power plant for use on the surface and for generating electricity 'for power to be used under water, had not been developed. In fact, neither the Germans nor any- » one else made any considerable use of the Diesel principle of motor construction until the Diesel patents had expired. Besides. Mr. "Verne had no dynamos with which to translate the power produced by motors into electricity, although he had the essential principle in the electric motors with prhich he turned his propeller. * "And the vessel is now fitted with periscopes,

which the Nautilus in her early days did not have. If she had been equipped with periscopes in 3866 and 1867, it is probable that she would not have been in collision with the- Columbus, the Shannon, the Helvetia and other ocean steamships during those years, much to the annoyance of their owners and the mystification of the public. Also, the Nautilus In her reincarnation has wireless telegraph equipment, something which she did not in her early days, because Marconi had not Then been—born. For the rest of it, the Nautilus is the Nautilus still. “A very full description of the Nautilus is contained in the log as writtpn up by Mr. Aronnax from the dictation of Captain Nemo. He mentions that the captain showed him the plans, sections and elevation of the vessel; doubtless the original drawings made by Mr. Verne, or perhaps tracings of the originals. If they had been blue prints, Mr. Aronnax would doubtless have spoken pf them as such; but, of course, they were not, as blue prints were not in use in those days. The captain went on: “ ‘Here, M. Aronnax, are the several dimensions of the boat. It is an elongated cylinder with conical ends. It is very like a cigar in shape, a shape already adopted in London in several constructions of the same sort. The length of this cylinder, from stem to stern, is exactly 232 feet and its maximum breadth is 26 feet. It is not built quite like your long-voyage steamers, but its lines are sufficiently long and its curves prolonged enough to allow the water to slide off easily and oppose no obstacle to its passage. “ ‘When the Nautilus is afioat one-tenth is out of the water. Now, if I have made reservoirs of a size equal to this tenth, and if I fill them with water, the boat, weighing then 1,507 tons, will be completely immersed. These reservoirs are in the lower part of the Nautilus. I turn on taps and they fill, and the vessel sinks. “ ‘Also, when I have fit mind to visit the depths of the ocean, I make use of slower but not less Infallible means. To steer this boat, following a horizontal plan, I, use an ordinary rudder fixed on the back of the sternpost, and with one wheel and some tackle to steer by. But I chn also make the Nautilus rise and sink, and sink and rise, by a vertical movement by means of two inclined planes fastened to its sides, opposite the center of flotation, planes that move by powerful levers from the interior. If the planes are kept parallel with boat it moves horizontally. If slanted, the Nautilus, according to this inclination and under the influence of the screw, either sinks diagonally or rises diagonally as it suits me.’ “Set aside the obvious errors in the log or in the translation, and the description of the Nautilus might as readily pass for that of the socalled Deutschland as any that have been printed. Look it over in detail. The Nautilus was 232 feet long; the length of the undersea boat at Baltimore was “guessed" at anything from 200 and some odd feet to 300 feet. Of course, as she has been rebuilt, the boat may have been lengthened, to suit modern ideas. “But the Nautilus had a conning tower, in place of the present superstructure. The beam

of the Nautilus was 26 feet. That of the Deutschland is- “guessed” at something less than 30 feet. The Nautilus was cylindrical in shape; the vessel that has created the sensation during past weeks is not quite cylindrical, in that her tO P* sides are carried up for a space nearly ver ca , and then tumble home with an easy curve, or, a least, it is so indicated by such photographs as have come to light. The change was undoubtedly made in the rebuilding, in order to increase the carrying capacity; for it is to be remembered that the Nautilus was not built to carry cargo, and had no great excess of buoyancy. Th *_™ otiv ® power of the Nautilus was electricity. tia o the vessel from Germany is electricity when submerged, while for use above water the Diesel engines supply the power. That is of no importance's bearing on the identity of the vesse . It is a common thing in rebuilding a ship to make some changes in the propelling mechanism. “There is still more to come. Both boats or, rather, the same boat in the two periods of her car eer—were—was—is—fitted up in some degree of luxury. Listen to what -Mr. Aronnax says about a room into which Captain Nemo conducted him: “ ‘lt was a library. High pieces of furniture supported upon their wide shelves a great number of books. The electric light flooded everything. It was shed from four unpolished globes, half sunk in the ceiling.’ And again, in speaking of the saloon, filled with treasures of art beyond price, Mr. Aronnax mentions the organ, of which he says later in the chronicle: ‘At that moment I heard the distant strains of the organ, a sad harmony to an Indefinable chant,'the wail of a soul louging to break these earthly bonds. The Organ on the Nautilus. “One may not approve of Captain Nemo’s taste in music; some of us may prefer the Tun of mill’ music which one may have with a phonograph and a selection of records made haphazard; but he was musical, at all events, and had provided himself with means with which to gratify his taste. But the organ has given way to a phonograph, with which the crew of the boat entertained themselves on the way across or under the Atlantic. And when they were ‘full up’ on music there was the library, with fewer books than that of old, but with Shakespeare as a foundation of literary satisfaction. “Still skeptical? How was the food of the crew of the Nautilus cooked? By electricity. Says Mr. Aronnax: ‘Then a door opened into a kitchen nine feet long, situated between the large storerooms. There electricity, better than gas itself, did all the cooking. The streams under, the furnaces gave out to the sponges of platina a heat which was regularly kept up and distributed. They also heated a distilling apparatus, which by evaporation furnished excellent drinkable water.’ How was the, ‘grub’ of the crew of the so-called Deutschland cooked? By electricity, said Captain Koenig, although he did not give a description of the cooking apparatus in anything llfce as full a detail as does Mr. Aronnax of that of the Nautilus. The boat that Captain Koenig commanded was furnished with all the comforts of home, according to the one man who was aboard of her in any other than an official capacity, and who does not consider himself held to secrecy. “It’s a clear case. In every essential the Deutschland is the Nautilus. In size and form, excepting as any vessel may be modified in process of overhauling and refitting, in power plant, excepting as the Diesel engines take the place of electric motors for surface propulsion, for economy’s sake; in the intricate electrical equipment for lighting, cooking and in the control and movement of all parts of the ship; in the means provided for going below the surface of the water at will, and in returning to the surface at pleasure; even in the provision for the comfort and entertainment of the crew, the Deutschlau-J and the Nautilus are one and the same. Only in the use made of the craft is there a difference. The Nautilus vias built and opemted to satisfj the whim —let’s call it a whim forget the tragedy of it. all. —of a man wealthy enough to afford it; while as to the Deutschland, she crossed the ocean to bring a few pounds of dyestuffs of which we are in need. It is the case of a thoroughbred harnessed to an express wagon In his old age.”