Wars below the surface were fought in antiquity - long before submarines were invented. Who were the first submarines?
The pursuit of a decisive, lethal advantage over the enemy has for many centuries been the goal of those undertaking military operations under water.
In imitation of Achilles
Before there were ships capable of going underwater, there were people who carried war below the surface, and for them there was no greater example of ferocity in battle than the greatest warrior of ancient Greek mythology, Achilles.
Its lethal prowess in water is vividly described in the Iliad. According to Homer, "Achilles, born of Olympus," left his spear on the banks of the Scamander River and "fell into the river with a sword, spread slaughter in all directions."
Before there were even ships capable of going underwater, there were people who took the war below the surface
In real life, however, the first underwater warriors had a more prosaic background as they used the same diving skills they used to catch seafood, pearls and sponges and for retrieving treasures from sunken ships. According to Thucydides, during the siege of Syracuse in Sicily in 414 BC, the Athenians sent their men under the water to find some way to remove the beams blocking the entrance to the port. As a result, they broke the underwater chains to allow galleys carrying soldiers to break into the port. Cutting enemy ships' anchor lines - to get them washed ashore and damaged or to collide with each other - was another favorite tactic used by ancient divers.
Ancient divers
The oldest image of people under water with weapons in their hands is a wall painting from the Nile valley. It depicts spear-armed duck hunters sneaking up on their prey using cane for breathing.
Aristotle claimed that the diving Greek warriors used an instrument that looked "like an elephant's trunk" and resembled later submarine snores. However, many Mediterranean underwater fighters were able to hold their breaths incredibly long.
They carried stones, which served as ballast necessary for them to descend to the bottom, and prevented the negative effects of the increased pressure at great depth by filling their ears with oil to prevent the eardrums from breaking. They also kept the oil in their mouths to get rid of it after reaching the bottom. However, while they were useful on a tactical scale, divers could not give anyone control of the sea. The waves were ruled by those who sent their soldiers to war on surface ships. The Greek, Roman and Phoenician triers and the Persian galleys ruled supreme.
The first submarine?
As for people confined in specially constructed vehicles to descend into the water with them, the prospect of descending into the depths reportedly did not scare the ruler who conquered most of the world known in his time. In 332 BC, Alexander the Great besieged Tire and ordered his divers to clear the port there. In order to check the progress of this work, was supposed to immerse himself in a glass diving bell lowered from the galley on long chains.
Eureka!
Another ancient Greek related to the history of underwater shipping was the mathematician Archimedes. He invented many strange and miraculous weapons, and during the next siege of Syracuse (214–212 BCE) he helped defend the city against the Romans. He used mirrors to focus the sun's rays into a beam in order to set fire to Roman galleys. He also invented a kind of crane with a chain ending in a huge metal claw, with which lifted enemy ships and then smashed them to the surface of the water .
Archimedes used mirrors to focus the sun's rays into a beam in order to set fire to Roman galleys.
Although Archimedes did not construct a submarine, one day, while bathing, he made a groundbreaking discovery. Reflecting on how to fulfill the wishes of the ruler of Syracuse, King Hieron II, and to determine the purity of the gold used to make his crown, he found that when he immersed himself in the bathtub, he was displacing water equal to his own weight. Thus arose the law of buoyancy, which he formulated as follows:"Every body wholly or partially immersed in a liquid is acted upon by an upward buoyant force equal to the weight of the liquid displaced by the body".
Shouting "Eureka!" ("I found it!"), Archimedes jumped out of the bathtub so excited that he ran naked into the street .
A challenge beyond ancient possibilities
Those who tried to travel under water in the following years were to use Archimedes' law to design a vehicle capable of changing its density. By reducing the density of such a vessel below that of the surrounding water, a positive buoyancy was to be obtained, allowing it to remain afloat. From the wheel and by increasing the density of this vehicle above the density of water, it was possible to achieve negative buoyancy and submerge . Achieving an overall density equal to that of the surrounding water - zero buoyancy, allowing a craft to stay submerged at the same depth - has plagued many inventors for centuries.
The prospect of going down into the depths reportedly did not scare Alexander the great
Providing the vehicle with propulsion and enabling it to carry an effective weapon system, while keeping the crew driving it alive, it was supposed to present challenges of a completely different order. Archimedes was unable to explore the military possibilities offered by his law of buoyancy, as he did not survive the siege of Syracuse. He died at the hands of a Roman soldier who felt offended that Archimedes ignored him, devoting more attention to solving a mathematical problem.
Greek fire and heirs to ancient submarines
So waging war underground for the next few centuries remained the domain of divers, and their weapon was "Greek fire" , a mixture of kerosene, tar and other ingredients, the exact recipe of which was kept secret. This predecessor of napalm could not be quenched with water. During one of the wars fought in Europe in the thirteenth century, a French diver, equipped with Greek fire in sealed jars, destroyed a row of piles driven by the enemy into the bottom of the Seine, smashing the jars against these beams. An alternative way to achieve this damaging effect underwater was to simply make a hole in the enemy ship's hull. During the Battle of Sluys, fought on June 24, 1340 off the coast of Flanders, English and French divers used drills to drill holes under the enemy's waterline. They wore a kind of safety helmet that looked like a kettle turned upside down, into which air was supplied through a tube.
There were also those who tried to create means to completely destroy enemy units.
Soldiers on board the attacked ships threw stones at them, trying to prevent drilling. In order to enlarge the opening, boulders were also thrown towards those parts of the hulls of enemy units that had already been damaged.
According to the general rules of naval warfare of the time, the goal of combatants was usually to capture an enemy ship and take over any cargo on it, but there were also those who tried to create a means of completely destroying enemy ships.
Source:
The text is an excerpt from the book by Iain Ballantyne, Killer Craftsmanship. History of the Underwater War ", which has just been released by Dom Wydawniczy Rebis.