• About INA
• Projects
• Our Blogs
• Science
  & Technology
• INA Quarterly
• INA Turkey
• Photos
• Videos
• Publications
• News & Events
• Support INA
• Online Store
• Archaeology
  Resources

An Evolutionary Branch...

After three field seasons and seven years of research and analysis, it is clear that Sub Marine Explorer is an evolutionary “branch” in the family tree of submarine development. Sub Marine Explorer is, as a Civil War veteran submarine engineer noted, a link between the diving bell and the submarine, borrowing her basic systems configuration for pressurization from an earlier bell, Van Buren Ryerson’s Explorer of 1858, but with fundamentally different aspects that make it a true submarine, and particularly a submarine with a lock-out diver chamber (Baird 1903:852).

Different in design and form from the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, Explorer is most closely linked to Intelligent Whale, another New York-built submarine of the period. Historical accounts and “conventional wisdom” of the 19th century placed Intelligent Whale in the category of a “failure,” even a deadly one, but as early as 1900, submarine developer and engineer John P. Holland had dismissed those allegations and perceptively commented that Intelligent Whale had not been competently handled (Holland 1900:902). The archaeological, architectural and historical assessment of Intelligent Whale, completed by Peter W. Hitchcock in 2002, confirms the accuracy of Holland’s assertions (Hitchcock 2002). The same is true of Sub Marine Explorer. Technologically ingenious, the craft was only dangerous if not properly handled. The fatal flaw for both craft was the fact that technology outstripped human ability to understand and cope with the consequences of employing it, as will be seen later in this article. 

Similar to Intelligent Whale, Explorer like it, is not representative of the principal thrust in submarine development, which is better seen in other American-built craft like H.L. Hunley, and Holland’s own craft, Fenian Ram of 1881, and his subsequent “Holland” class boats, the submarines ultimately incorporated into the U.S., British and other navies in the early 20th century. The same holds true with foreign-built submarines such as de Villeroi’s Alligator, Peral’s Peral, or Reverend Garrett’s Resurgam. These one-atmosphere, sealed craft (Alligator had a separate lock-out chamber), led directly to the modern submarine (Compton-Hall 1999:81–106).  

Sub Marine Explorer and Intelligent Whale represent an alternate line of evolution, in which the diving bell became a submarine, only to die out, and the basic principle devolved back to the sophisticated diving bells of today. Explorer was also incredibly sophisticated. One of the key observations of the ongoing excavation and analysis of H.L. Hunley is the discovery of key features of modern submarines that surprised the pundits. Flush-riveted construction, pumped ballast tanks, sublimation of form to submerged operation characterizes Hunley, and they characterize Sub Marine Explorer. Modern submariners have commented on Sub Marine Explorer’s turtleback form, one reminiscent of modern nuclear submarine hulls, and the use of compressed air tanks to “blow ballast” and surface.   

Some shipwrecks are artifacts that relate to an associated maritime landscape of where the land meets the sea (Westerdahl 1991:5). Sub Marine Explorer, wrecked in close context to the site of its final operations, is such a resource. Isla San Telmo, as the 2008 AUV survey showed, rests at the edge of a formerly rich series of pearl oyster beds that were known to the pre-European contact inhabitants of the islands, and after their demise, the beds were successively depleted by heavy “fishing” in the early Spanish colonial period and again in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The “Pearl Islands” were a seemingly ideal locale to operate the submarine and utilize its technological advantage for greater profit than the earlier, breath-holding divers. Such would not be the case, however. Human activities take place in both physical space and time. In the case of Sub Marine Explorer, it was a technology that was in the wrong place because it was there at the wrong time. By the time Sub Marine Explorer arrived, the pearl beds had effectively been fished out; pushing the submarine into increasingly deeper, more dangerous waters that ironically were less favorable habitat for the oysters.