Catywampus

The United States Navy’s Submarine Service dates from the War of 1812, if you don’t count the use of David Bushnell’s Boat used on September 7, 1776. A revolutionary soldier by the name of Ezra Lee used this devilish product of Yankee ingenuity to attach a mine to the bottom of Admiral Lord Howe’s ship, HMS Eagle, which was at anchor in New York harbor. The War of 1812 was primarily a naval war fought by the British and American Navies. When war was declared with Great Britain on June 19, 1812, our navy consisted of only 17 ships of the line which totaled 15,000 tons. The officers and men of the United States Navy consisted of 5,000. Great Britain had 1,048 ships of the line which totaled 870,000 tons. The officers and men of the British Navy consisted of 150,000. How were the victories in our harbors, rivers and in the Atlantic Ocean achieved, then? The answer was through the use of small boats and submarine mines, called torpedoes. A naval torpedo in 1812 consisted of an explosive device designed to destroy a ship by blowing a hole in the hull below the water line. There were two types of torpedoes used against the British. A small boat was used at night to fasten the torpedo to the hull of the British ship, these were called torpedo boats. Those men who operated these boats and fastened these mines were known submariners, because they worked below the water level. The second type of torpedo was fastened to the bottom of the river or harbor and attached with a rope of varying lengths. Some of these floated on the surface and some were a few feet below the surface. These mines contained a set of pins, when one of the these pins was struck by a passing ship, the pin was driven down upon a fulminate primer and exploded the charge within the casing of the torpedo. The two types were known as self-acting (a ship comes in contact with it) or controlled (these were set by divers under a stationary ship and a timer allowed the diver to escape before the torpedo exploded). Not all of the sea battles of the War of 1812 involved the use of submarine charges, but many did. Here are a few that did; USS President vs HMS Belvidera, USS Essex vs HMS Minerva, USS Constitution vs HMS Guerriere, USS Wasp vs HMS Frolic, USS United States vs HMS Macedonian, and the USS Constitution vs HMS Java. The total number of British ships captured or sunk during the war was reported in the London Times of March 20, 1813, as 504 captured in seven months, 527 merchant vessels sunk during the same period and 3 men-of-war sunk. How did the Americans do it? They used one of Robert Fulton’s inventions, called the Nautilus. Fulton used a plunging mechanism which was invented in France in 1795 and added his own mechanisms for vertical and horizontal rudders and he provided for the artificial supply of air. The Nautilus could descend to a given depth and reascend at will. The torpedo boat concept was popular in Germany (1851), England (1887), France (1889) and the United States. In 1854 the periscope was made practical and added to all US torpedo boats. The next naval conflict within the United States was the Civil War (1860-1865). A total of eight submarines were built during this period. The most famous of these was the CSS H.L. Hunley, built by J.W. McClintock. The Hunley was hand propelled and carried a crew of eight. It attacked a number of wooden Federal ships in and around Charleston Harbor. The Hunley attacked the USS Housatonic on February 2, 1864. There were 160 men on the Housatonic and five were killed in the torpedo explosion. The captain of the Housatonic ordered kegs of gunpowder with lighted fuses thrown overboard. The Hunley was sunk, history’s first successful use of the depth charge. The Housatonic sank an hour later. Four types submarines are involved in this story. The first is the Plougeur-Marin, built in Germany by H. O. Bauer. During a test dive at Kiel, Germany, one of these models was crushed by the sea’s depth and increased water pressure. Bauer concluded that was because of the shoe box like design and changed to a circular cross-section design for all further production runs. The second is the HMS Nordenfeldt, built in England by a Norwegian designer. It was rectangular and could not reach proper diving depths until the cross sectional shape was made circular. The third is the Goubet, built in France. Its cigar shape proved to be the design for all future submarines. The fourth is the Holland, built in the United States by Robert Fulton and it is the submarine design used by James J. Caldwell II from 1897 until 1906. So what does catywampus mean? It is a common term used by all men who served in the submarine fleet of the United States from 1896 until 1906. The submarines used during this period were small war vessels, with crews of less than a dozen. These vessels were fitted to use the torpedo as its primary weapon of attack. The principal requirements of a torpedo boat were high speed, efficient means of launching torpedoes, handiness and fair sea worthiness. To attain these essentials the boats were long, slender, very lightly built and low in the water. The torpedo tubes, which contain the torpedoes to be fired, could be pivoted on deck. When the torpedo boat is on the surface of the water, the tubes may be pivoted to any position. When a tube was fired diagonally across the deck, the men on the boat referred to this as a catycorner shot. This was basically a two-dimensional shot in a flat plane. When a submarine of the Goubet or Holland class were submerged under the water, the shot became three-dimensional, this was known as the catywampus shot.