Beneath the Waves

Connecticut is widely known as a center of submarine development and production, but few people are aware of the long history of Connecticut’s involvement in this specialized field of naval architecture.

Connecticut’s David Bushnell helped pioneer undersea warfare during the American Revolution with his wooden TURTLE. Though unsuccessful in combat, this barrel-like craft showed the potential of submersible warships. Then in 1814, a man named Silas Clowden Halsey is believed to have crafted a cigar-shaped submersible that employed a hand-cranked propeller and a detachable mine similar to Bushnell’s TURTLE. A sketch of this unnamed vessel, found in the papers of Samuel Colt (an avid proponent of undersea mine or “torpedo” warfare) noted that it was lost in New London harbor in an unsuccessful attempt to attack a British warship blockading the port.  

The success of the Confederate HUNLEY during the Civil War illustrated the continued interest in submarines. The development of internal combustion engines and self-propelled torpedoes in the late 19th Century drove many nations, including the United States, to engage in an undersea arms race. Among the submersible pioneers was engineer and inventor Simon Lake, who established the Lake Torpedo Boat Company in Bridgeport in 1901. Over the next decade a handful of small experimental submarines were built there, and during the years 1910-1922 the firm constructed twenty-five submarines for the U.S. Navy, in direct competition with John Holland’s Electric Boat Company in New Jersey.

Electric Boat Company’s Groton facility, long a builder of marine engines and other components, launched its first submarines in 1924—for the Peruvian navy. It was not until 1934 that EB delivered its first U.S. Navy submarine. The run-up to World War II saw the operation expand dramatically and during the war some seventy-four large “fleet-type” submarines had slid down the ways into the Thames River. Following the war, EB pioneered the nuclear-powered submarine, beginning with USS NAUTILUS in 1954. Since then the yard has constructed many of America’s nuclear submarines, and now collaborates with Virginia’s Newport News Shipbuilding in submarine development and construction.