Inspiring innovators

IN PARTS OF west Clare, the Christian Brother who went on to reinvent modern naval warfare is a local hero, with a street named after him and his likeness on the walls of local pubs. But in the rest of the world, the name John Philip Holland barely registers more than a quizzically raised eyebrow. This is a shame, because the “father of the submarine”, as he is rightfully known, is a fascinating figure.

Born as he was – in 1841 in Liscannor, Co Clare in an Irish-speaking household – within sight of the Atlantic ocean, it was fitting that his intellectual curiosity was so intertwined with a fascination with the sea. His father died while he was young, but Holland managed to survive the famine years and attended the Christian Brothers school in nearby Ennistymon. He subsequently became a Christian Brother himself, teaching in schools around the country, including Limerick and Cork. It was during this time that he developed an interest in science and engineering, with a particular view to developing a functioning, modern submarine – he wrote that he began his study of submarines in the 1860s.

Like many technological developments, the submarine had already seen many aborted designs and incremental improvements over the preceding few centuries – including the French Nautilus, designed by American engineer Robert Fulton, which debuted in 1800 – but the feasibility of long-distance subaquatic vessels was very much in question when Holland embarked on his earliest designs.

According to a 1996 profile of Holland in the Clare Champion, he was inspired by Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,which featured another Nautilus under the surface of the water, to bring his inchoate plans to reality.

By 1873, Holland had left the Christian Brothers and moved to the US, where his mother and siblings already lived. Although he resumed his teaching career, this was where he pursued his grand scheme in earnest, aided by the unlikely assistance of the Fenian Brotherhood. Eager to undermine British naval might and disrupt shipping channels, the Fenians agreed to fund Holland’s experimental designs – Holland’s reported desire to see an independent Ireland also played a part in the unusual alliance.

His first effort, the one-man, 14-foot Holland No 1, wasn't an unqualified success when launched in the Passaic River in New Jersey in 1877, but was deemed satisfactory enough to secure funding for a more advanced model (the remains of the Holland No 1are now in a museum in Paterson, New Jersey). The result, in 1881, was the Fenian Ram. This may sound like a small-town ice hockey club, but was actually a landmark in the evolution of submarine design, most notably in its cylindrical, cigar-shaped design that has become the classic submarine shape. It also marked the end of of Holland's association with the Fenians, who refused to fund any more of his designs.

After so many years of working on submarines with so little success, many lesser men might have resigned themselves to the classroom, but Holland demonstrated the quality that denotes so many pioneering innovators – sheer, bloody-minded stubbornness. Thus, he proceeded to seek new benefactors, this time with somewhat deeper pockets: the US navy.

The navy had been commissioning various submarines since the 1860s, with the Alligatorbeing the most notable, but Holland oversaw a more sophisticated series of designs, many of which met with scepticism. It was a long, arduous journey, but when Holland unveiled his 53-foot-long, gas-powered Holland No 6on St Patrick's Day, 1898, it was the successful culmination of years of obstinate experimentation. It was two years before the US navy actually purchased the design, but at the dawn of the 20th century, the Holland No 6became the first commissioned submarine in the US Navy, the USS Holland.

It was to mark the start of a fruitful relationship for his company, the John Holland Torpedo Boat Company. The company that built Holland’s designs, the Electric Boat Company, continues to be the main builder of submarines for the US navy to this day, although it is now a subsidiary of the giant defence contractor, General Dynamics Corporation.

Holland actually became mired in a protracted patent dispute with the Electric Boat Company when he tried to create a new submarine company in the Netherlands, fittingly enough, and the end result was the loss of control of his business. But by that stage he had sold submarines to the Japanese navy (earning a Rising Sun as recognition for his contribution to the Japanese victory over Russia in the war of 1904-05), and even the British navy (his sense of Irish nationalism evidently being more pragmatic than idealistic).

He died in 1914, days before the first shots of the Great War, during which tragic conflict his invention would prove its military worth. In his final years, however, he had been preoccupied with thoughts on aviation technology rather than submarines, and his short book on the topic, How to Fly As a Bird, contains a most telling insight into what separates the great innovators from the rest of us: "Although it has been remarked that professional persons are generally conservative, that is, opposed to the acceptance of new ideas, and that many of them even manifest a tendency to run in a rut and to keep running there persistently, yet, in this particular, they are no different from the rest of humanity."