Fenian Ram from
Wikipedia
Fenian Ram is a submarine designed by John Philip
Holland for use by the Fenian Brotherhood, American counterpart to the
Irish Republican Brotherhood, against the British. The Ram's construction
and launching in 1881 by the Delamater Iron Company in New York was funded
by the Fenians' Skirmishing Fund. Officially Holland Boat No. II, the role
of the Fenians in its funding led to the New York Sun to name the vessel
the Fenian Ram.
Design
Fenian Ram's design was partly modeled on the
Whitehead torpedo, and like it had cruciform control fins near the tail.
The boat did not simply take on ballast until she sank like other contemporary
submarines; she maintained a slightly positive buoyancy, and simply tilted
her horizontal planes so that her forward motion forced her under.
Fenian Ram was armed with a nine-inch pneumatic
gun some eleven feet long, mounted along the boat's centerline and firing
forward out of her bow. It operated like modern submarine torpedo tubes:
a watertight bow cap was normally kept shut, allowing the six-foot-long
dynamite-filled |
Fenian Ram at the New York State Marine School some time
between 1916 and 1927
Name: |
Holland Boat No 11 |
Nickname: |
Fenian Ram |
Owner: |
Fenian Brotherhood |
Launched: |
1881 |
Displacement: |
19 tons |
Length: |
9.4 m (30 ft 10 in) |
Beam: |
1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) |
Test Depth: |
18 m (59 ft) |
Complement: |
3 |
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steel projectiles to be loaded into the tube
from the interior of the submarine. The inner door was then shut and the
outer door opened by a remote mechanism. Finally, 400 psi (2.8 MPa) air
was used to shoot the projectile out of the tube. To reload, the outer
door was again shut and the water in the tube was blown into the surrounding
ballast tank by more compressed air. It was powered by a 15 hp (11 kW)
Brayton piston engine.
Ship history
During extensive trials, Holland made numerous
dives and test-fired the gun using dummy projectiles. However, due to funding
disputes within the IRB and disagreement over payments from the IRB to
Holland, the IRB stole Fenian Ram and the Holland III prototype in November
1883. They took the submarine to New Haven, Connecticut, but discovered
that no one knew how to operate it. Holland refused to help. Unable to
use or sell the boat, the Brotherhood had the Ram hauled into a shed on
the Mill River.
In 1916, Fenian Ram was exhibited in Madison Square
Garden to raise funds for victims of the Easter Rising. Afterwards, she
was moved to the New York State Marine School. In 1927, Edward Browne purchased
her and moved her to Paterson, New Jersey, where she can still be seen
at the Paterson Museum.
Presumably as a tribute to this vessel, the submarine
which features in Frank Herbert's classic science-fiction novel of submarine
warfare, The Dragon in the Sea, is named "Fenian Ram".
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