A right royal time for submariners and their mice

The future King of England went a sailing and a submerging in a small, pioneer submarine, his life guarded by three little white mice. The voyage was arranged for the Prince of Wales the future King George V - in March 1904 by the man who kick-started the British submarine service, Admiral Jacky Fisher.

A War Office committee chief of the time recalled of the Prince: "Everyone was averse to the prince's going down, but he insisted and I think he was right. It will give a lift to the submarines (crafty Jacky) and, being a sailor, why should he not take risks." In The Submarine Pioneers, Richard Compton-Hall says:

"The prince was greeted by officers correctly dressed in wing collars and sea boots. Three white mice were standing by in the engine room, ready to die for King and Country: they would turn up their little toes if carbon monoxide (from the exhaust system) leaked into the interior without the crew noticing.

The Princess of Wales cheerfully remarked that she would be 'very disappointed if George doesn't come up again' and they all had a good laugh, although Fisher himself was 'jolly glad when he saw the heir to the throne reappear' after a dip in the Solent."

The three white mice may not have rallied to save the heir in any case. According to the author: "...the mice would probably not have noticed (gases) anyway: reputedly credited with one shilling a day for their upkeep, they were stuffed so full of food by the sailors - notorious pet-lovers at the best of times - that they were virtually insensible throughout their service careers."

The ill-fated A1

More seriously though, the submarine the heir had submerged his royal person in, was the A1 which was accidentally rammed by the SS Berwick Castle just a few days later.

"The boat sank immediately, taking her two officers and nine men with her. "Fisher hastily penned a positive letter to the prince to put the tragedy in perspective: it was crucial to convince all concerned that submarines were not inherently dangerous."

The submarine was the first of the A-class boats, which were hurriedly designed to improve on the shortcomings of the navy's first submarines, the five Barrow-built Holland-class boats.

The latter were invented and designed by an Irish Christian brother working in America and funded initially by British-hating Fenian forerunners of the IRA. The first was launched in secret on October 2, 1901. Like their manner of proceeding sneakily under the waves instead of honestly atop them the whole history of submarines is peopled with strange folk, strange events and tales taller than fiction.

Did you know, for instance, of the alleged plan to rescue the Emperor Napoleon from exile on the island of Elba using a primitive form of submarine, or of the Manchester vicar who preferred designing Victorian submarines or "bottom crawlers" to the spiritual needs of his flock?

In a chapter wryly titled Unhappy Day, the author also tells the story of John Day, an 18th century English millwright, shipwright and sometime potholer from Suffolk. He converted a small market boat into a diving machine by installing a watertight chamber.

Compton Hall says: "Some accounts speak of him deliberately sinking to a depth of 30ft in a Suffolk Broad and surfacing unharmed 24 hours later; but the version which has him simply allowing the tide to cover and uncover the beached contrivance is a lot more credible. External pressure at 30 ft (9 m) would have been more than 13lb per sq in." The pressure lesson was learned the hard way by Day, who saw submarines as more a vehicle for profitable wagers than for war.

FIRST CASUALTY: The Maria, in which the first submariner death was recorded

Finding a backer, Day acquired a 50 ton sloop, the Maria, and had her refitted to include a 12ft long chamber containing 75 hogsheads of air. "Maria carried ballast such that she would sink when water was admitted to the open hull through two plugged holes in the bottom. "When Day was ready to surface, he could release (by turning iron rods which passed through watertight tubs into the chamber) some 20 tons of boulders held in nets below the keel."

The arrangement also included coloured signal buoys, which could be released to say if Day was well. On the afternoon of June 20, 1774, and with a lot of money riding on his contention that he could submerge a full size boat in deep water for 24 hours and then return to the surface safely, John Day pulled the plugs on the Maria's bilges. He waved goodbye to watchers on the Plymouth shore and "with the greatest composure" threw off his jacket and climbed into the hatch.

A foreboding silence followed. A quarter of an hour later ominous bubbles were seen on the surface. John Day became the first of the 65,000 submariners whose bones rest in Davy Jones' Locker.

The Submarine Pioneers by Richard
Compton-HaIl, Sutton Publishing.

Reproduced with kind permission from
The North-west Evening Mail