Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 126, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 May 1919 — SUBSEA VESSELS AN OLD IDEA [ARTICLE]

SUBSEA VESSELS AN OLD IDEA

Inventors Had Thoughts of Such Craft Centuries Ago, as Ancient Records Give Proof. Not in 1660, when Lord Verulam first made a vague allusion to the subject, but in 1648, it seems, was first mention made of the submarine; and then at some considerable length in a memoir published at "The Brazen Serpent, in Paul’s Churchyard.” And with this discovery conies another, that the submarine, or “Ark for Submarine Navigation,” as the author, John Wilkins, terms it, had been tried and found a practical possibility in the days of the civil wars. “Cornelous Dreble” had experimented with “the contrivance,” “here in England, and “found it feasible.” There is something captivatingly Elizabethan about this John Wilkins, "Chaplain to the Prince Elector Palatine,” and his farsighted consideration of the submarine as a war auxiliary. Londoners became acquainted with him one March evening recently, as they opened their Pall Mall Gazettes and dipped into the contents. “Comelmis Dreble and his contrivance” arouse a tantalizing curiosity.